Customer service is at the heart of every business. It helps foster a loyal following, generates new business, and spreads a good impression of your brand.
While many brands still lean on traditional channels of customer service, customer expectations have moved on and messaging apps have established themselves as the modern way to communicate. 63% of people across generations prefer messaging over call or email.¹
And it’s not just family and friends they are messaging; 1 in 2 people say that they use messaging to contact businesses, and it makes them feel more connected to a brand.² While people have made their choices, it’s time for companies to leverage a messaging channel like Facebook Messenger to deliver delightful customer service.
Why should you use Facebook Messenger for customer service?
1. Huge User base
Facebook Messenger is used by more than 1.3 billion active users around the world. For businesses, this presents the opportunity to connect with customers on a platform they’re already connecting with each other.
2. Real-time messaging
Unlike email, which is a send-and-wait mode of communication, Messenger is real-time. This enables users to get instant replies and gives them the flexibility to leave a conversation and come back without starting all over again.
3. Multi-platform and device availability
In October 2020, Facebook introduced the cross-messaging feature between Instagram and Messenger. With this, Facebook Messenger has become a multi-platform channel that allows users to contact your business using Facebook, Instagram, or your website. This flexibility of switching between different platforms while using the same app and the same conversation thread provides a seamless way to support your customers, whether that’s on Facebook, Instagram, on your website, or offline.
4. Supports chatbots
Unlike email or live chat, Messenger chatbots can respond within seconds, are available 24×7, and can handle repetitive queries, thus saving a lot of agent’s time and enabling them to focus on questions requiring human assistance.
Cinépolis – With over 600 movie theaters worldwide and 16 million followers on Facebook, Cinépolis wanted to use Facebook Messenger to help people find film schedules, purchase tickets, and have questions answered quickly and efficiently. By using Messenger, they were able to resolve 90% of the conversation without human intervention.
5. Reduce operating and hiring costs
The main goal of a chatbot has always been to help your agents serve your customers better and not replace them. With the right mix of automation and human support, you can significantly reduce hiring costs while scaling your business.
Chatbots require one-time installation, can be trained and scaled to meet any demand without requiring further training. Hiring and training new agents to do the same repetitive tasks which chatbots can handle is not the best use of your team’s time and is not a cost-effective expansion strategy for your business.
Decathlon UK – They implemented Facebook Messenger chatbots with an aim to offer faster and more productive customer support along with reducing support costs by assigning repetitive queries to chatbots. As a result, they saw a 55% increase in the number of queries resolved through the automated experience and a 25% decrease in support costs.
6. Easy integration
Facebook Messenger supports integrations with third-party support channels, automation providers, CRMs, Customer Messaging Software, and more. Using these integrations, you can create advanced chatbot flows, streamline your existing workflows with Messenger, and provide better customer service overall.
Instantprint – During the Covid-19 pandemic, the largest UK-based online printing company – Instantprint, wanted to broaden the scope of customer service and reduce long wait times on phones. They decide to use Facebook Messenger to make it convenient for their customers to contact them.
They integrated their Facebook page with Freshchat for seamless chat support and automated repetitive queries with AI chatbots. The team also integrated the meeting scheduling app Arrangr with Freshchat to allow customers to schedule a video consultation at a convenient time and interact with agents over Zoom. Read the entire case study here.
How to use Facebook Messenger for customer service
1. Proactively start a conversation and respond to your customer’s queries
Messenger’s chat plugin helps you proactively chat with customers visiting your Facebook page or website, and provide answers to their queries. Chatbots are the best way to go for initial interactions as they can interact with your customers 24×7 along with providing a personalized, rich-media experience as they talk to your customers.
2. Help your customers with product selection
Helping your customers find the right product is one of the best ways you can help your customers. You can use different chatbot flows to help them find products, personalized recommendations, and much more. Companies like Instantprint use this feature to provide a delightful experience and build better customer relationships on their Facebook page.
3. Use Messenger chatbots for self-service, automating FAQ’s and answering queries
Bots for Messenger are perfect for any business trying to reach consumers on mobile – no matter how big or small your company is, or what business objective you are trying to achieve. Whether you’re building apps or experiences to share weather updates, confirm reservations at a hotel, or send receipts from a recent purchase, bots make it possible for you to have more personal and proactive customer interactions.
With chatbots, businesses can integrate their knowledge base and provide customers with immediate answers to common questions and free up their human agents for more complicated tasks.
4. Collect customer feedback
Messenger helps brands build lasting relationships through conversation. Whether you are talking to a loyal customer or someone brand new, Messenger lets businesses help customers with their pre and post-purchase inquiries. Businesses can collect Customer Satisfaction (CSAT), Net Promoter Score (NPS), and Customer Effort Score (CES) using the Feedback template available and the effectiveness of your customer service.
Here are the industry-wise use cases to help you leverage Facebook Messenger for customer service:
| Industry | Use Cases
|
| Retail and e-commerce | • Store hours
• Refund and return policy
• Modes of payment
• Shipping inquiries
• Track my order
• Late payments on a store card
• Incorrect amount charged to the card or bank card issuer declined payments
• Reminders and alerts (e.g. shipping, order confirmation, returns, and refund status)
|
| Financial services: Banking | • Bank hours
• Nearest ATM
• Routing number
• Checking balances
• Billing (e.g. view bills, pay bills)
• Billing disputes
• Making deposits
• Report lost or stolen cards
• Reminders and alerts (e.g. overdraft fees, low balance, transfer status)
|
| Financial services: Insurance | • Tracking claim status
• Policy coverage and questions
• Proof of insurance
• Reporting an incident (e.g. glass damage)
• Filing a claim
• Billing (e.g. view/ pay bills, postpone payment, update payment method)
• Cancel policy
• Reminders and alerts (e.g. claim updates, renewal notification)
• Roadside assistance (e.g. request a tow, cancel roadside assistance, check status)
|
| Telecommunication | • Coverage
• Nearest store locations
• Billing (e.g. view bills, pay bills)
• Reset password
• Data usage
• Changing due date
• Addressing network coverage and roaming issues
• Resolving billing disputes and special requests
• Scheduling a technician visit
• Reminders and alerts (e.g. outage alert, when payment is due, when a device has been shipped, late payment fees charges)
|
Facebook Messenger customer service best practices
Some of the best practices you should take note of while using Facebook Messenger are listed below.
1. Use a greeting message
Set up a welcome message greeting on your opening screen to set a friendly tone and provide information such as how quickly the user should expect to hear back from you.
2. Introduce ‘Ice Breakers’ to help customers easily start a conversation
Ice Breakers provide a way for users to start a conversation with your business using a list of frequently asked questions. By showing the most common customer care inquiries, you can give your customers a way to start a conversation and let them help themselves.
3. Let your customers know if they are reaching outside business hours
When your business is closed, send an “outside of business hours” automated reply detailing operating hours and when customers can expect to hear back from you. This sets the right expectations, shows that you care for your customer (even though it’s an automated message) and makes your brand look more empathetic.
4. Setup quick replies to reduce customer effort
Quick replies minimize the need for customers to type their answers. In Messenger, you can choose up to five answers and they’ll all be displayed on the screen. If you need additional details, consider adding extra questions after the user selects a reply.
5. Always enable live agent support or live agent handover flow
While most of your conversational flows can start with a chatbot conversation, allow customers to reach a live agent or a website resource if they have more complex questions that can’t be handled by the automated experience. This automatic handover makes sure your agents and chatbots are not working in silos and are providing unified customer service.
6. Resolve queries fast, but also set expectations with your customers
You should aim to resolve queries within an hour during regular business hours but if no live agents are available, display an appropriate message to set expectations, such as: “Sorry, we are experiencing heavy query volume. All agents are busy at the moment. An agent will be with you in a few minutes”.
5 Examples of businesses using Facebook Messenger for customer service
Brands across different regions and industries, from retail and e-commerce to travel, are using Messenger with customer experience platform providers to support customers and drive real business results.
Here are 5 examples where businesses have leveraged Messenger to meet their customer service business goals.
- Ikea Hong Kong saw a 300% growth for Messenger as the preferred customer care channel over a two-year period.
- TPBank saw a 50% reduction in customer wait time on support channels after implementing a Messenger-powered digital assistant on their website.
- TechStyle’s new automated experience with Messenger led to 95% customer satisfaction.
- Grab’s automated Messenger experience has become the preferred customer service option and has seen a 23% saving in operational costs.
- Samsung Benelux saw a 25% reduction in call center costs after investing in Messenger as a new digital assistant for customer care.
Why should you set up the Freshchat integration for customer service?
A key feature of Messenger is that it can be easily integrated with your existing systems. You can start building your customer experience with Messenger with the help of customer experience platform providers like Freshchat. They’re experienced in understanding how to implement Messenger to drive a successful end-to-end customer experience, from raising awareness to driving transactions.
Here are the top reasons why you should integrate it with Freshchat. If you want to learn more on how to integrate your Facebook account with Freshchat, check out this quick guide.
1. Manage multiple Facebook accounts in one place
Connecting your Facebook pages with your Freshchat account is simple, instant, and safe. And after the integration, you can route all messages from your multiple Facebook pages to one Freshchat Inbox.
2. Make the most of experts and bots on your team
With Freshchat, you can create complex chatbot flows without coding, and automatically assign chats to agents or to bots based on the choice of the Facebook page.
3. See results in real-time
With the real-time dashboard, managers and admins can get important insights into your Facebook conversations, response time, query volume, and other performance metrics without leaving your Freshchat account.
4. Integrate with your familiar apps
Freshchat easily connects with payments, order management, or CRM tools for real-time conversations on order updates, refunds, and more.
5. Smart, scalable, and future proof
Freshchat is powered by Freddy AI and ML engine which learns over time and form the basis of its AI chatbots. Whether you are a 2 member team or scaling to 100’s of agents, Freshchat is ready to scale with your business. It also supports integration with other messaging channels like Whatsapp, Apple Business Chat, LINE messenger to help you be on the top of your customer service.
Get started with a fresh new way to engage with your customers. Try Freshchat.
Sources
1, 2 – Facebook Messaging Survey by Nielsen
