Discover the main advantages of using Facebook Messenger as a tool to provide support to your customers, wherever they are

Facebook Messenger today has about 2.01 billion monthly active users and about 1.32 billion active daily users. Not satisfied with just being one of the most popular direct messaging apps among consumers, Messenger is also becoming a tool used by companies to communicate and manage requests for assistance, in real time.

For some time now, Facebook has in fact released a new chat plugin that, once installed on a website, allows visitors to start chatting with the company, via Facebook.

This release therefore allows to use Facebook to communicate with a company even outside the social media app, allowing at the same time the consumer to resume the conversation from the Messenger app on his/her smartphone at any time.

Why should a company integrate Messenger as a customer support channel?

At the same time, companies that use this channel can keep track of the history of interactions with a specific customer, thus avoiding to start the conversation from scratch – an important turning point for brands that use chat tools and/or traditional support channels.

Gartner predicts that in 2019 direct messaging app, including Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp, will outperform – for the first time ever –  social media in terms of support requests made by consumers to businesses.

It seems clear that direct messaging (and its mobile-first nature) is giving life to a new paradigm in customer assistance communication and management. In addition, the numbers show that consumers are satisfied if the customer experience is integrated into tools they already use and, for this reason, direct messaging apps such as Facebook Messenger represent a crucial turning point in the relationship between companies and consumers.

Here’s how you can start to use Facebook Messenger to chat and communicate with your customers

So let’s try to understand how we can integrate Facebook Messenger as a channel for our customer service.

1) Activate the “Messages” function of your company Facebook page. Within your Facebook page settings, under the “Messages” section, you will find an option called “Allow users to contact my page privately”, using the “Send a message” button

2) Install the Facebook Messenger chat widget: this widget can be easily integrated into your website by copying and pasting the code that you will always find in the “Messenger Platform” section, under the “Customer Chat Plugin” section. If this process is too complicated, you can try alternative methods, such as our chat widget that you can find here.

3) Decide how to manage incoming chats from both your Facebook page and your website. At this point, you can choose to use the platform provided by Facebook, recommended for small volumes, or choose solutions such as Callbell (free for Facebook) or ZenDesk Message (€ 14/month per user) that allow you to manage the incoming chats in a more structured way

By following this procedure you will be able to integrate Facebook Messenger into the channels of your customer service in just a few minutes. In addition to providing a superior customer experience compared to the traditional live chat that we often find on the web, Facebook Messenger will allow you to collect an important amount of  user data, such as their Facebook profiles, their IDs (for retargeting purposes) and their geographical position.

Not just Messenger: direct messaging apps, in general, are the future of customer service

“The future of customer service goes through direct messaging,” says Conversocial‘s CEO and founder, Joshua March. “It’s simpler and more convenient for customers: the new Messenger widget amplifies the possibility of starting a real-time conversation from a company’s website, but without being forced to wait for an answer since it will go on on the consumer’s smartphone”.

If direct messaging apps can become important customer sales and support channels feven for your company, we suggest you create a free account on Callbell to integrate, aside from Facebook Messenger, also WhatsApp, Instagram Direct and Telegram in a single customer service platform.

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