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A Facebook Messenger chatbot can be extremely valuable for the modern-day business. Where most companies still tend to focus their marketing efforts on their social media pages, they tend to forget about the chat. They think that connecting with customers should be done by posting and chat is just the annoying thing that comes with Facebook. They deal with it because they have to, not because they want to.
If you are one of those entrepreneurs, please wake up.
In today’s climate, people are checking their chat apps such as Facebook Messenger more than they check their social media accounts. Being the world’s biggest messaging application, Facebook Messenger has over a billion users every single month.
As a business, you get to talk directly to the consumer on Messenger. Not via a post that goes out to everybody that follows you or coincidentally finds you because of Facebook’s algorithm. Facebook Messenger is accurate, direct and - most importantly - super effective.
Brands are starting to take notice and because of that are figuring out ways to get the best out Facebook Messenger. One way they tend to do this is by using Facebook Messenger bots. The bots help them answer questions, collect leads and upsell existing customers.
What is a Facebook Messenger chatbot?
A Facebook Messenger bot uses technology to answer incoming messages and simulate conversations. This technology is called Natural Language Processing. Chatbots can answer frequently asked questions and point customers to the right information, while also being able to get leads and set up meetings with your sales team. Simply provide your chatbot with the right information and it will do all the talking for you.
You can also create a flow, where consumers get multiple-choice questions, such as ‘do you want to talk to sales or support’, ‘do you want to ask a question about a product or about delivery’, et cetera. This makes it easier and less time consuming to segment customers and forward them to the right departments.
Aside from the fact that this technology is obviously really cool, it saves your customer service agents a lot of time that they can spend on customer issues that require real human attention. The expectation is that in the near future, more than 85% of all customers will get in contact with companies without any real human interaction whatsoever. Chatbots will help your business to improve productivity and can save a lot of resources.
Why you should consider a Facebook Messenger chatbot for your business
Facebook Messenger is becoming increasingly popular
As stated earlier, chat apps such as WhatsApp and Facebook messenger are becoming way bigger than ever before. Facebook Messenger already has way over a billion users every month.
Back in the days, Facebook used to offer a great way for marketers to reach their prospects. The organic reach was great, links were clicked often and the costs for paid advertising were super low compared to how it is now. Today, marketers are more often switching to new channels in order to find customers without spending as much.
However, Facebook Messenger should not be confused with Facebook itself.
Stop missing out on valuable customer interactions
Customer communication via Facebook Messenger is still relatively new. A lot of businesses have not gone further than simply answering questions and forwarding customers to their website. More businesses don’t even check their Facebook Messenger regularly and find out about messages weeks later.
Every message that you get to too late can be a valuable lead vanished, or an angry loyal customer that may stop frequenting you.
Even checking your Facebook Messenger once a day is not enough. More than ever, customers care about high speed in customer service. Facebook Messenger is a chat medium, where people are used to getting quick replies from friends and family. Whether it’s fair or not, they expect that same quickness from your customer service agents.
Sadly, most businesses don’t have the resources to respond to all incoming customer messages that fast. This is where a Facebook Messenger chatbot becomes incredibly valuable.
Facebook Messenger Chatbots don’t sleep
Sleep is important. Making sure that you get enough rest, preferably 8 hours a night, is important.
However, your customers are not really concerned with your sleeping pattern. With the ability to constantly be in contact with everybody, they will try to contact you outside of business hours as well. Especially when you receive messages over the weekend, you’ll be too late on Monday morning.
Luckily, your chatbot doesn’t need any sleep. Or a salary for that matter.
Increase ‘send to Facebook Messenger’ ads conversion rate
When creating Facebook ads, you get the opportunity to add a ‘send to Facebook Messenger’ call-to-action button. With this, a prospect will get sent straight to the chat after being presented with your ad and clicking it.
This is an amazing format that makes it possible for you to engage in conversation with prospects that you can specifically target on Facebook. The problem is, you have no control over when they are actually going to message you. This means that a lot of potential customers will not convert, simply because you are not on time to reply to their chat.
Again, a Facebook Messenger chatbot can solve this problem. It can ask the lead for their contact information so that your sales department can pick up the conversation later.
Forward customers to the right local office
If your company has multiple local offices, but with only one Facebook account, chances are you constantly have to personally redirect customers to the right contact persons.
Not with a bot, though.
Some chatbots have a location finder feature which makes it possible to direct incoming messages to the right local office. You simply add all the locations you want to redirect customers to, and the chatbot will do the rest of the work. This will save your customer service agents a lot of time.
If a customer isn’t explicit enough about their location, the chatbot can ask for a more specific location. For instance, if you have 20 offices in England and a customer says he is from England, the chatbot will ask the customer to be more specific, by naming a city for example. Also, when the customer names a location that is unfamiliar to the chatbot, you can enter a standard fallback message to ask the customer to try again.
You can also configure your chatbot to automatically show a list with the available locations so that the customer can pick for himself.
Personalize Facebook Messenger chatbot conversations with dynamic content
If you want to take it all a step further, you can also add dynamic content to your chatbot conversations. This makes it possible to personalize conversations. You can allow your bot to get information out of other software systems that your organization uses.
Let’s illustrate this with an example. Let’s say you have connected your warehouse software with your Facebook Messenger chatbot. If a consumer asks about the stock of a certain product, the bot will then find and communicate this information.
When this is set up properly, it will make one of the wildest dreams of your customer service agents come true. For many customer service departments, so much time goes into looking into questions like this. Looking up order numbers, simple product specifics, stocks, et cetera. With dynamic content, you can save your customer service a lot of time.
How to make your own Facebook Messenger chatbot
Convinced that you would like to use a chatbot? In that case, you have two options, you can develop your own chatbot and link it to Facebook’s API. This can be pretty difficult to do, so make sure you reach out to a good developer for this.
Another option is to use Trengo, a shared multichannel inbox with a chatbot feature. In this case, you only have to link your Facebook account to the software, and you will be good to go. Configuring the Facebook Messenger chatbot is very easy, and you don’t need to be a developer to be able to do it. Your parents could do it.
Another big advantage is that you can link all of your other communication channels to Trengo as well so that you can receive all of your incoming messages in one inbox. This means that you can use the chatbot for other channels such as WhatsApp too.
What are you waiting for?
You can try out Trengo for 14 days without having to pay a penny. Have a look and find out how valuable a Facebook Messenger chatbot can be for your business.
