Like other social platforms, Facebook is constantly evolving to offer optimized features for its users. Brands have also taken notice in recent years, often integrating Facebook into their omnichannel strategy for customer service through the creation of company pages for customer feedback and support. However, it’s only recently that Facebook itself has acknowledged its potential for business by creating features specifically for brands that wish to enhance their customer engagement. Building upon its already popular Messenger platform, Facebook unveiled Businesses on Messenger earlier this year, encouraging brands to engage with the actively growing Messenger user base of 900 million users for personalized customer service and sales growth. So how can your brand make the most of this channel in this new era of conversational commerce? Here are six tips businesses can follow to create great customer experiences on Facebook Messenger.
The kind of service you wish to offer your customers depends on your brand’s products or services. For example, retail brands may wish to provide assistance with searching a product catalogue and finding the best match for a customer’s needs, while a telecommunications company may optimize a customer’s account profile to simplify the payment process. One major distinction of Facebook Messenger for businesses is its potential for using chat bots. Driven by an artificial intelligence function, chat bots may engage in conversations with users and provide accurate answers to customer requests alongside human agents. Once a brand determines the extent of service to be offered through Facebook Messenger, the level of automation and human interaction needed can be adjusted to best fit customer needs.
Chat bots may save customers time by finding answers quickly, but they are also beneficial for the quality of the assistance they provide. Online clothing retailer Everlane was one of the first brands to partner with Facebook Messenger, using its platform to provide customer service such as product research and assistance with purchases through a combination of chat bots and human agents. Some brands have found that chat bots are ideal for assisting with low-level tasks and thus enabling human agents to handle more complex requests, while other brands prefer to use both automation and human interaction more evenly. In any case, chat bots are a great way to implement automated service and save customers time without sacrificing quality customer experience.
Timeliness is always important in customer service, but Facebook Messenger essentially rewards businesses that follow this rule. When a brand responds to 90% of its messages within five minutes in a seven-day period, Facebook displays a “Very responsive to messages” badge on the brand profile. The more responsive you are to customers, the more the platform rewards your business.
Customer comments should never be ignored, whether positive or negative. However, any brand would agree that criticism on a company page can hurt its reputation. For this reason, it’s essential to use Facebook Messenger to address negative comments privately. Brands may address frustrated customers by contacting them directly through private messages, showing both professionalism and a commitment to improvement.
The more accessible you are to your customers, the better. However, should your customer service agents need more time to respond to messages as they search for an answer, or if service is simply not available at certain times, keep the conversation going through pre-saved responses. Facebook Messenger allows brands to create pre-saved responses that may be customized once agents are interacting with customers. Let customers know when agents are available for assistance, and create responses that have a natural tone and can be modified easily to fit every customer’s specific situation.
Perhaps the greatest aspect of conversational commerce is its tremendous potential for personalized service. Facebook Messenger allows businesses to offer rich content to customers, ensuring that every experience is tailored to the customer’s needs. For example, brands may provide clear delivery confirmation information with relevant links, maps for finding retail locations and shipment tracking, and photos to complement product searches, to name a few. Conversational commerce is making it possible for businesses to be as personal as ever with customers through highly customized experiences.As conversational commerce continues to transform customer experience as we know it, Facebook Messenger is sure to dominate as a prime platform. As a global leader in cloud-based contact center software solutions for customer service and sales, Vocalcom chose to integrate Facebook Messenger, Telegram, WeChat, Viber, Kik, and conversational SMS into its cloud contact center platform which has evolved into a conversational commerce platform. Conversational interactions through text messaging, in-app messaging, and platforms such as Facebook Messenger, Telegram, WeChat, Viber, and more allow customers to engage with brands in real-time or asynchronously through a single thread, offering a data-rich context that enables customers to switch easily between channels in a single interaction for true customer satisfaction. Currently, 40% of companies have seen a call deflection rate when shifting customers to SMS, and 23% have plans to add it this year, resulting in more than 60% of all contact centers offering SMS support by the end of 2016. Learn more about the Vocalcom conversational commerce platform for personalized, optimized, and seamless customer experiences.
