A2P Messaging... still normal

2020 is a year that will live long in the memory.

Even if the new normal reverts a little closer to type and ends up looking more and more like the old normal as we recover, the world has received something tantamount to shock treatment in the form of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Living in a state of alarm and no longer being able to meet with family, friends, colleagues and business partners has elevated the value of remote communications. Whilst friends and family have sadly seen business decimated, jobs lost and customers feel isolated, we are very fortunate to work in the messaging space, providing critical services to enterprise businesses and organisations enabling them to remain in contact with their customers. I don’t take that for granted, nor the fact that our services have made a real difference to so many during these difficult times.

Our industry is developing and adapting to the exciting combination of emerging technologies and consumer choice we see every day. New and exciting opportunities are all around us, and my kids’ generation are going to benefit from a business messaging ecosystem that reflects their lifestyle – that’s pretty cool and it might even mean my kids understand the response they get in the future when they ask “ Dad, what is it you actually do?” We brought our kids into a world that revolves around the mobile phone…for better or for worse.

We are working on integrating these emerging technologies into our product set more and more every day and whilst many of them still need some fine tuning on both commercial and technical fronts, the future will no doubt see our industry continue to shape the way the world’s business community communicates with its customers.

With roughly 5 billion people on the planet able to receive text messages, Application to Person (A2P) messaging remains the backbone of the messaging ecosystem and by far the most ubiquitous part. Governments all over the world have turned to SMS as their chosen method for delivering critical information updates to their citizens during COVID-19 state of alarm. Online transactions and remote authentication requirements have increased significantly as customers have adapted to making purchases or decisions about a wide range of services from their own homes.

For me this reaffirms two things.

Firstly, that there are many, many more use cases for A2P SMS yet to be explored and applied by organisations looking to engage with their clients whether that is for promotional or marketing purposes, or alternatively transactional scenarios that confirm critical information or enhance security and peace of mind for the end user. It is a mature product these days but the growth in adoption still has much more upside as awareness continues to develop.

Secondly, that enterprise decision makers trust A2P messaging as a secure, reliable and efficient mechanism for communicating with their clients and enhancing their user experience. Transmitting a sense of confidence is even more important during uncertain times.

And so we must continue to develop, protect and enhance that sense of confidence as more and more important use cases are unearthed because A2P messaging will remain the fundamental backbone of the messaging ecosystem.

Enterprise adoption of multichannel and full omnichannel engagement is upon us even if we are still in the very early stages, and I expect to see it gather momentum in the next 18 months.

But I’ll keep working on simplifying the pitch to my wife and kids in the hope that they join the dots between A2P messaging and the oh so familiar apps they see and use on their own devices every day because I think the two will live side by side for quite some time yet.