Posted by Messaging is now one of the most effective ways for a business to interact with its customers. In fact, almost 64% of people across various age groups state they would rather message a company instead of emailing or calling them directly.
Messenger is one application that stands as an essential messaging application most brands use for connecting with their customers across the world.
Every month, businesses exchange over 20 billion messages with people via Facebook Messenger alone.
Messenger for Facebook is mobile, fast, and efficient, making it an excellent tool for customer/business interactions and a valuable platform for providing customer care and support.
Whether you’re looking for a lead generation chatbot or an eCommerce chatbot, the Facebook messenger can fit your needs.
Want to provide your customers better customer service on Facebook and wondering how Messenger can help?
Well, keep reading and you’ll discover how to use Facebook Messenger for customer support.
1. The Importance of Messaging Apps for Businesses
The reputation of several companies has been tarnished due to providing terrible customer service and chat support experiences.
This is why it’s so important for businesses to adopt new and innovative ways to interact with and serve their customers.
So, whether you run a blog, eCommerce store, or a multi-chain restaurant, messaging apps will help you service your customers and keep them coming back.
While messaging apps serve as the ideal avenue for companies to engage with existing customers and prospects, there is only one that is at the forefront of the messenger app revolution, Facebook Messenger.
According to USA Today, Facebook sees Facebook Messenger for businesses as an excellent platform for conversational commerce.
If you know that your customer base uses Facebook, then using Messenger is an excellent way to reach out to them and provide exemplary customer service.
2. Why You Should Integrate Facebook Messenger as a Customer Support Channel
Besides having a digital presence, consumers expect businesses to be online and accessible. In a worldwide survey administered by Facebook, over 70% of individuals stated they expect to message companies for customer support.
In addition, over 59% of people expect to be able to message a company regarding making a purchase.
Again, this is why Facebook Messenger is so powerful. It allows you to provide fast and efficient customer service and chat support to your customers.
Furthermore, Facebook Messenger enables your customers to instantly get in touch with your company and acquire the information they need so they feel assured that they are making a well-informed decision.
According to a Facebook research poll, here is how individuals use Facebook Messenger.
- Over 81% of respondents claimed they message a business to inquire about a specific product or service.
- Over 74% of respondents claimed they message a company to buy something.
- About 75% of respondents claimed they message a business for customer support.
By integrating Facebook Messenger into your customer service strategy, you are actually allowing your customers to communicate with you on their own terms.
With Messenger, your customers no longer have to wait on hold or keep multiple website windows open.
Additionally, businesses that use this platform can keep track of the entire record of interactions with a specific customer.
This way, the need to start a conversation from scratch can be avoided. The same messenger window becomes a convenient way for customer re-engagement and questions.
This can be an essential turning point for entrepreneurs and businesses that use conventional support channels and/or chat tools.
3. Six Reasons You Should Use Facebook Messenger for Customer Service
(i) Huge user base
Facebook Messenger has over 1.4 billion active users worldwide. For companies, Messenger offers the chance to connect with existing and potential customers on a platform they are already using on a consistent basis.
(ii) Multi-platform and device availability
Facebook launched its cross-messaging feature between Messenger and Instagram in October 2020.
With this, Messenger has turned into a multi-platform channel, enabling users to contact your company using Instagram, Facebook, and the company website.
The ease and flexibility of swapping between various platforms through the same application and conversation thread gives companies a seamless way to support their customers, whether on Instagram, Facebook, your website, or offline.
(iii) Real-time messaging
Messenger is a real-time messaging service, unlike emails which are a send-and-wait for a reply means of communication.
This allows users to receive an instant response, giving them the flexibility to end the conversation and come back on the same note without having to start all over again.
(iv) Minimize operating and hiring costs
The purpose of chatbots has always been to assist your agents in better serving customers. With the right combination of human support and automation, you can reduce hiring costs significantly while scaling your business.
Chatbots require a one-time installation. You can integrate and scale them to meet any demand without giving them additional training.
Case Example: Decathlon UK implemented Messenger chatbots intending to offer faster and more efficient customer support alongside minimizing support costs by assigning them repetitive queries.
As a result, they observed a 55% increase in the number of customer queries resolved via automated experience and about 25% decrease in support costs.
(v) Supports chatbots
Unlike live chat or emails, chatbots on Messenger take just seconds to respond. Moreover, they can handle various repetitive queries and are available 24/7.
This can save an enormous amount of your agents’ time while letting them focus on other important tasks or questions which require more human interaction.
Case Example: With more than 600 movie theatres across the world and 16 million Facebook followers, Cinépolis wanted to use Messenger to help individuals lookup film schedules, buy tickets, and have all their queries responded to promptly and efficiently.
After implementing Messenger, they were able to resolve over 90 percent of their conversations solely by using Messenger without any human intervention.
(vi) Easy integration
Messenger also supports integrations with many automation providers, third-party support channels, Customer Messaging Software (CMS), CRMs, etc. With these integrations, businesses can streamline their current workflows with Messenger, create advanced chatbot flows, and provide better customer service in general.
4. How Businesses Can Use Facebook Messenger for Customer Service
Here are a few ways your business can use Facebook Messenger for customer service.
Proactively start a conversation and respond to customer’s inquiries
Facebook Messenger’s plugin aids you to chat proactively with the customers who visit your official website or a Facebook business page and respond to their queries.
Chatbots (a feature that is programmed with pre-established answers to your company’s most prevalent FAQS and concerns) are an excellent way to start the initial conversation as they can communicate with your customers around the clock and provide personalized messages and a rich media experience as they interact.
Assist your customers with product selection
The best way to help customers is to help them find the right products. You can use many different chatbot flows to assist them in finding products, make tailored recommendations, etc.
Several companies use this feature to give their customers a better experience and establish stronger and longer-lasting customer relationships on their Facebook business page.
Gather customer feedback
Messenger ultimately helps brands in establishing lasting customer relationships just via conversation.
Whether you are talking to a new customer or a loyal one, Messenger allows businesses to help their customers throughout. entire purchasing process, covering pre-purchase and post-purchase inquiries.
Additionally, Messenger allows you to gather feedback from the customer on whether they felt the customer service was helpful or not.
Entrepreneurs and companies can gather Customer Effort Score (CES), Customer Satisfaction (CSAT), and Net Promoter Scores (NPS) simply by using the effectiveness and efficiency of your customer service and the Feedback template available.
Use chatbots for self-service, presetting FAQ’s and responding To Queries
The bots for Facebook Messenger are ideal for businesses who want to reach their customers on their smartphones.
Whether your business is about creating applications to share weather forecasts, send receipts from a recent purchase, or confirm bookings at a hotel, bots make it possible for you to establish a more proactive and one-on-one interaction with your customers.
Additionally, you can easily integrate your knowledge base with chatbots. With this, you can respond with immediate answers to the consumers’ most commonly asked questions.
This frees up your customer service agents, who can then focus their time and efforts on more complicated and high-value tasks.
5. Facebook Messenger Customer Service Best Practices
Here are a few best practices your business should take into consideration while using Messenger to ensure satisfactory customer service.
Use a Greeting Message
Establish a warm greeting or welcome message on your opening screen to set a responsive and friendly tone. Also, provide some information like how soon the person can expect a reply back.
Introduce ‘Ice Breakers’ to make customers start a conversation
Ice breakers are always a good way for users to initiate a conversation with a company, such as using a list of the most frequently asked questions (FAQs). By showing some of the most popular queries, you can give them away to stir up a conversation. This basically allows them to help themselves.
Generate quick replies to minimize customer effort
Instant replies reduce the need for your customers to type in their responses. In Facebook Messenger, you may choose up to 5 answers, all of which will be displayed on the phone screen.
If you need more details, you must add additional questions once the customer has selected a reply.
Inform customers if they’re reaching outside business hours
When your business is closed, you can send an automated reply such as “outside of business hours” along with details of your standard operating hours and when precisely the customer can get a reply back from you.
This sets the right expectations, makes your brand look more empathetic, and shows that you care for your customers. I mean, despite that being an auto-generated message.
Resolve queries quickly but also set expectations
As a business, you should always aspire to resolve customer queries within an hour’s duration during standard business operating hours. Quick response to customer inquiries is crucial for optimizing conversion rates.
Furthermore, it also increases customer satisfaction and enhances the overall reputation of your brand.
However, if no live agents are available to assist, display a message to set the right expectations, for instance:
“All agents are busy at the moment. Sorry, we are experiencing a delay or a high volume of queries. One of our live agents will get in touch with you right away.”
Speed is essential with Facebook. Messenger uses a color-coded badge to display how fast a business responds to messages.
A green badge is the highest reward usually represented by a lightning bolt in a speech bubble. Written next to it is a phrase, “Very responsive to messages.”
So, to achieve this badge, you must have a response rate of a minimum of 90% and a response time of not more than fifteen minutes for each inquiry over the last 7 days.
This is an incredibly valuable tool for acquiring and retaining your customers. It tells people that you will answer their questions promptly. As a result, prospects will trust that they don’t have to wait a whole day or be put on hold.
Always enable live agent handover flow or live agent support
Even though most of your conversational flows occur with a chatbot, you must allow your customers to reach a website resource or get in touch with a live agent for times when they have more complex questions that cannot be generally handled by the automated experience.
This spontaneous handover ensures your chatbots and live agents are providing unified and uninterrupted customer service.
Suffice to say, Facebook Messenger can be a game-changer for your business!
It is the ultimate way to take your customer support to the next level. This is by simply offering a prompt, personalized, and seamless way to communicate with your business or brand!
So, if you want to take customer engagement up a notch, consider implementing Facebook Messenger into your customer service channels.
Just follow these best practices, and you’ll soon be able to create memorable customer experiences. After all, this could just be the customer experience that they are looking for.