Reduce Time Spent On Customer Service With Facebook Messenger Chat Bots

Owning or running a digital business can be hugely rewarding by allowing businesses to scale far past their physical location and service customers all over the world. The internet has created so many new ways to reach customers, engage with them, and of course exchange goods and services with them over a digital connection.

One of the key factors in the growth of the internet as we see it and experience it today has been the birth of social media. These free to use platforms have given users access to a platform where they can reach businesses in an instant, and if you're not on these platforms, you're losing out on potential leads and promotional opportunities.

Social media customer service

Much is made of social media's targetted advertising and its ability to bring in customers, but the platform has also become a customer service tool. More customers are turning to social media to voice their concerns, follow up on queries or reach out to brands.

This behaviour has seen social media managers and contact centres having to split their time dealing with queries that can ammas volumes that often reduce their productivity and see other tasks being deprioritised since customer service is of the highest priority for any business looking to remain open and build a reliable and avid customer base.

Screening queries

The issue with this easy access to businesses is that consumers often abuse this low barrier to entry with many of the queries being answered by FAQ's on the site or the various terms and conditions already available to them. These consumers are either too lazy to do the research themselves or prefer to be told explicitly what the conditions are as it pertains to their specific situation.

These queries often lay an unnecessary burden on social media managers/community managers and customer service contact teams who could be focusing on high priority queries instead.

Which is why it is so important to be able to screen these queries and reduce the contact ratio with staff, but how is this possible? By using chatbots of course. 

Facebook Messenger Chat Bots

Twitter DM's can be a source of customer queries for most businesses who have a strong social media presence Facebook's Messenger app is where the vast majority of online queries come funnelling through and inundating them with issues that can often weigh teams down and reduce response times or even discovering of critical queries.

While human interaction is always the preffered choice for any business to consumer relationship, chatbots can offer an effective screening process that can reduce contact ratios with humans and ensure your team focus only on the most critical of cases by optimising workflow.

So how to do you implement these helpful little chatbots? One option is to create one that suits your system and meets all Facebook's requirements while the other is to use one of these popular applications listed below.

MobileMonkey

MobileMonkey is primarily designed for non-technical users. That means no coding required. It also integrates with Hootsuite Inbox using the Facebook Messenger handover protocol. This free tool features a visual chatbot builder for Facebook Messenger with several bells and whistles, including:

• Q&A triggers
• Live Chat Takeover 
• Chatbot Templates 
• Custom Attributes
• and more.

There’s also a “Chat Blast” feature, similar to Chatfuel’s “broadcasting” feature, that allows you to send messages to multiple users at once. If you upgrade to a “Pro” plan, you’ll have access to some of the more valuable features, like scheduling, analytics, and drip campaign setup.

Check out MobileMonkey

Streamchat

If you want to keep it simple and just dip your toes into the chatbot ecosystem then Streamchat is one of the most basic chatbot tools out there. It’s meant to be used for simple automation and autoresponders, like out-of-office replies or “We’ll get back to you as soon as we can!” messages, rather than for managing a broader workflow. 

Streamchat integrates with Hootsuite Inbox using the Facebook Messenger handover protocol, so if you already have a Hootsuite account you may want to opt for this service.

Check out StreamChat

Chatfuel

As one of the largest self-serve platforms for building Facebook Messenger bots, Chatfuel has an impressive client list: everyone from TechCrunch to Netflix to the Cincinnati Bengals. They have an intuitive visual interface for those without a coding background, but developers will like the editable front-end and customization options.

While you can build a bot for free, a lot of the more complex (and interesting) tools are only available with Chatfuel Pro accounts. Either way, it might be helpful to know that Chatfuel integrates with Hootsuite Inbox using the Facebook Messenger handover protocol.

Check out ChatFuel

ManyChat

ManyChat’s interface is one of the least intimidating out there. However, it may be better suited to those making simpler bots—message management can get cumbersome as the conversation gets complex. ManyChat works on a freemium system to allow you access free at first, but after you hit a certain number of subscribers you’ll need to start paying for a Pro account. 

ManyChat also has plenty of tools that will help you promote your bot and evaluate user analytics. 

Check out ManyChat

Keep the conversation going

Now that you have a screening process in place you can begin to tweak it as you uncover more data. You can create better Q&A's, FAQ's and other material that may answer questions you receive consistently and reduce the burden on your teams to answer every query. Once your chatbots service starts to improve, you can focus on key queries, irate clients and specialised queries that would require the human intervention of deliberation on your part.

Tell us your customer service story

Have you struggled to cope with the level of customer service queries you received lately? Are there any sites or services you feel should be added to the list?How have you been using them? Share your tips with us in the comments section below.

Contact us

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Are you looking to promote your business?

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If you require a more detailed guide on how to create your profile or your listing, then we highly recommend you check out the following articles. 

• How to create a nichemarketer profile 
• How to create a nichemarket business listing 

Recommended reading

If you enjoyed this post and have a little extra time to dive deeper down the rabbit hole, why not check out the following posts on chatbots.

• What Is Chat Commerce & How To Use It
• Bing Introduces Chat Bot For Local Searches
• 10 Chatbot Marketing Mistakes You Should Avoid

Tags: chat bots, social media marketing