I think iMessage is a smart choice. it lets their customers communicate via a Mac, iPod, or iPad in addition to an iPhone. Text messages also cost me money, so not having to worry about that is another selling point.
It also makes scaling their side of the system easier. Instead of having some sort of CRM/SMS gateway system, they can just hook however many Macs they want to to their account, and all messages sent to it will get copied to all of them. This makes it easy to hand off a communication session between agents in a way that's transparent to the users of the service.
Of course, the downside is that it's an Apple-only protocol, so they will be prematurely excluding users of non-Apple devices, but maybe that's a tradeoff that the company's willing to make at this time.
It also makes scaling their side of the system easier. Instead of having some sort of CRM/SMS gateway system, they can just hook however many Macs they want to to their account, and all messages sent to it will get copied to all of them. This makes it easy to hand off a communication session between agents in a way that's transparent to the users of the service.
Of course, the downside is that it's an Apple-only protocol, so they will be prematurely excluding users of non-Apple devices, but maybe that's a tradeoff that the company's willing to make at this time.