Telestax Blog

RestcommONE Push Notifications Pull In More Business

Push Notifications is a technical term that doesn’t immediately tell the story of the enhanced user experience provided by the feature. Let’s break it down further. If you’ve ever had the score of your favorite team pop up on your screen, if you’ve ever been reminded that you have 2 items in your shopping cart, if you’ve ever been called by a former roommate on Skype while they’re visiting Portugal, you’ve been push notified!

Push notifications look just like traditional SMS texts or phone calls, but are only sent to customers who’ve installed that particular app and opted into the service. That message is sent from a Unified Communications platform and to the end user, it’s the same as receiving a text from their best friend. However, magically it is established within the rich context of the business that initiated it. The history of the relationship between the user and the business is available to the all participants in the communication. Respectively all events during that communication can be recorded and become part of the enriched relationship between the user and the brand. Both Apple’s notification screen and Google’s lock screen have enhanced the reliability and utility of push notifications in the latest versions of their OSs. Now, a Unified Communications(UC) or Over The Top(OTT) application can be as reliable as a carrier voice or messaging service for two way communications.

When UC and OTT applications such as Skype, Broadsoft UC One, and WhatApp first started appearing on IOS and Android devices, developers were plagued with issues around integrating the application usage into the users organic experience. While the user experience improved because friends and colleagues could reach you, the battery life of the smartphone was negatively impacted due to heavy CPU and network usage. The constant communications also generated more expense for mobile data. Not good. Given the choice between longer use, lower mobile data cost and better battery life – or staying reachable on the UC or OTT service, most users chose against reachability. So UC and OTT applications and services had a hard time gaining traction on mobile devices.

In addition, as mobile devices and operating systems like Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android have evolved and improved over the last 10 years, device manufacturers continue to focus on longer battery life – even as the devices get thinner and screens get larger and brighter. Now we have amazing, large screen devices that work all day (unfortunately, most only last a single day… ), but we have even more trouble keeping UC and OTT applications reachable. This is because the latest iterations of iOS and Android are even more aggressive about terminating any battery-sapping communications connections or CPU-intensive background applications. This is great for users in general, but not for UC or OTT applications and services.

Fortunately, there is a way to improve the reliability and user experience of the UC or OTT service, even with all the latest battery and network optimization techniques— Push Notifications.

With user opt in rates for push notifications at 59% for Android users and 40% for IOS users, new use cases are popping up in every vertical imaginable. Companies like JetBlue, Ticketmaster, Uber, Amazon, and most other enterprise companies that offer applications are using push notifications to engage, opt in, notify, remind, secure, and many other things.

The key point for business decision makers regarding push notifications used for the actual communications services is that users will not be annoyed by requests for these kinds of push notifications. They bring real value in that battery life and reachability are great, and cost for mobile data is dramatically lowered. The auxiliary benefit is that with push notifications available and enabled, your other messages also get through– a win:win for marketers all around.

Enterprise Push Notification Benefits

  • Reliable in-app communications channel
    • Receive calls and messages even when the app is in the background, the lock screen is on, or installed but not even running.
    • OTT service can be as reliable as legacy voice and messaging approaches, with better quality and more flexible implementation.
  • Cross-platform notifications
    • Supports iOS, Android and web apps.
    • Standardized delivery notifications simplifies user experience and reduces developer time and cost.
  • Infinite use cases
    • Reminders
    • Increased Engagement
    • Security Measures
    • Notifications
    • Support

Telestax wants to be your UC and OTT push notifications “Easy Button”.

RestcommONE has iOS and Android WebRTC SDKs with built-in support for push notifications. We also have a well-documented REST API for push notifications and the back end services to send them to millions and millions of devices. Our latest iOS and Android WebRTC SDK sample applications include a lot of great user-oriented features like Apple CallKit, enhanced backgrounding support for Android Oreo, address book synchronization to the app, and more. This means you can now build a world class, modern mobile UC or OTT app using our WebRTC SDKs for iOS and Android. RestcommONE can provide the reliable back end REST APIs and push notification services for your next UC or OTT development.

If you are interested in learning more about RestcommONE’s push notification service and how we can help enable your next UC or OTT app or service, sign up for a free Restcomm CPaaS account. You will be glad you did.

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