June 3, 2021 10 min read

Instagram DM API: now available on Trengo ✨

The Instagram DM API is now live on Trengo

With the new Instagram Messaging API, you and your team will be able to manage all Instagram DMs (direct messages) in Trengo. Before, teams could only answer comments on their Instagram posts from their Trengo inbox. This already saved a lot of time that you didn’t have to spend on navigating from your inbox to Instagram. Especially when you receive a lot of messages a day.

However, replying to direct messages wasn’t possible yet. And with the growing importance of these messages for businesses, this had to change.

Why your business should use the Instagram Messaging API

Modern businesses need to be available on their customer’s favorite channels. The days in which only an email address and a phone number were enough are over. If your target group is on Instagram, you should be there too. And judging by the numbers, there’s a good chance that they are.

Back in 2018, 71% of all businesses in the United States claimed they were already using Instagram. 50% of all Instagram users in 2018 were following at least one brand. Besides that, the social platform has a big influence on consumer behavior. Here’s a list of actions that consumers have taken after seeing a brand or product on Instagram:

Need for speed: customer service via Instagram DM

If you choose to use Instagram to promote your brand, there’s no way around offering customer service there too. A couple of years ago, you could still get away with forwarding all your Instagram customers to an email address or a website. But now, they want their questions answered right where they asked them.

And this can be challenging for customer service teams. The platform is all about speed and instant gratification, with consumers expecting fast answers. That’s why many customer service teams were always forced to click back-and-forth between their regular inbox and their Instagram DMs to make sure messages were answered on time. This took a lot of time and made it tough to keep a clear overview of all communication.

But with the new Instagram Messaging API, you can now manage your DMs together with all your other channels in one view. 🎉

How it works

Here’s how Trengo makes managing your business’ Instagram DMs easy:

1. All your channels in one view

Instead of having to click back and forth between your Instagram tool and your customer service platform, you can now manage all your channels in one view. This allows you to keep a clear overview of all your communication. If a customer reaches out on multiple channels at the same time, you can easily spot this and only answer them on one channel.

2. Work together with your team

Without the right tool, working together on answering Instagram DMs can be difficult. It’s tough to know who’s picking up what. And if you need to discuss a customer’s question with your colleague, you need to switch to your team chat or walk over to their desk.

In Trengo, you can easily pick up or assign a message to a colleague. You can @tag a colleague right within a message thread with a customer — all without the customer noticing anything. This makes for an easier and faster experience for both your team and your customer.

3. Keep a pulse with statistics

The analytics in Trengo can tell you a lot about your Instagram DM performance. You can measure the number of messages you get, how fast your team responds to them, and how long it takes for them to close a conversation. Besides that, it also allows you to spot trends. Are customers complaining more than usual? Are they asking for specific types of products? No more need to rely on your gut feeling to answer these questions.

4. Automate the busywork

In order to give your customers all the attention they deserve, you need to get rid of the busywork. That’s why in Trengo, you can automate repetitive tasks that save you time with the following features: