Facebook chatbots: the beginner’s guide

Customers have certain expectations when they interact with a business. They want quick replies and the ability to engage with a brand whenever they choose. When a business doesn’t meet these expectations, 96% of customers leave without dropping a note.¹ Considering 65% of a company’s business comes from existing customers, it’s a huge loss.²

While companies can’t decide when a customer needs help, what they can choose is a tool like Facebook Chatbot to help them deliver on these expectations.

A Facebook chatbot helps businesses respond quickly, 24/7. It can take the customers through a buying journey, book meetings/ movie tickets, hand over the conversation to an agent, and help customers with FAQs.

With 2.8 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the most popular social media platform. That’s why it should be one of the first few channels a business should prioritize to deploy chatbots.

What is a facebook chatbot?

A Facebook chatbot is an automated software programmed to chat with a human through the Facebook Messenger platform. It is capable of responding to basic queries, asking relevant questions, and automatically providing suggestions.

Currently, there are more than 300,000 active chatbots on Facebook Messenger that engage with users daily.

Why should businesses use facebook chatbots?

✔️ Reduce wait time and provide a quick resolution to repeated queries – Unlike email or live chat, Facebook Messenger chatbots can respond within seconds. Questions related to order tracking, return requests, or even responding to a casual “Hi” can take a lot of the agent’s time.

Automating these queries using Facebook chatbots leaves agents with more time to respond to the questions requiring human assistance and helps improve SLA.

✔️ Reduce operational costs – Facebook chatbots are more affordable for your business as you don’t have to invest a lot in configuration and setup. Unlike other customer engagement channels, you aren’t dependent only on agents who have to work around the clock. It also helps you strike the right balance between human support and automation.

✔️ Provide personalized chat experience – Facebook chatbots are capable of providing a personalized experience as they use two types of user data available on Facebook:

1. Data from their Facebook profile – Chatbots on Facebook Messenger have access to a user’s basic profile details. That means your chatbot can greet prospects by name or customize messages by their location or time zone.

2. Data from past conversations – Chatbots can store data from previous chats as attributes and use those to customize future conversations. A chatbot can tell the user about related products, show shipping availability based on the past conversation.

✔️ Support customers 24/7 – The biggest benefit of implementing a Facebook chatbot is that it can offer round-the-clock support. If you have lots of queries related to order purchase or return, booking appointments, delivery status, and return policies, then automation provided by Facebook chatbots can go a long way.

✔️ Improve conversion rates – Facebook chatbots can pop up when users visit your Facebook page, capturing their attention. These triggers can be based on common points of visitor bounce and can nudge the visitor from consideration to purchase. Unlike live chat, no matter the time of day, if a customer initiates a conversation, the chatbot can continue the conversation without agents on the other end.

Example – UFC, the world’s premier mixed martial arts (MMA) organization, used Facebook Messenger and chatbots to promote one of their UFC 244 events. Knowing that Facebook Messenger helps remove friction when interacting with fans, UFC built an automated experience on Messenger to educate and excite prospective customers about its upcoming UFC 244 event

For this campaign, they created region-specific content for the event, optimized the ads for mobile, and provided all the details that people were looking for, and as a result, achieved:

✔️ 2.1X higher conversion rate from message to purchase compared to previous campaigns

✔️ 25% higher conversion rate from interest to purchase compared to previous campaigns

✔️ 15% lift in return on ad spend compared to previous campaigns

How to get your own facebook chatbot?

Building your own Facebook chatbot requires zero coding knowledge. With just a few clicks, you will be able to build your Facebook chatbot in no time. Follow the steps below to create a Facebook Chatbot with Freshchat.

1. Sign up for Freshchat

2. Go to the “bots” section and click on “New Bot”.

1. Build the custom flows. Custom flows are the automated messages triggered when a user sends a message or selects an option.

4. Select “messaging channels” from the “Deploy” section and add a new messaging channel by clicking “Add”. Follow the on-screen instructions to complete the process.

Hop on to the messaging channels bandwagon

A great customer experience is delivered when businesses are empathetic towards customer problems. And the best way to achieve that is by providing them the right solution, fast! Customer messaging software like Freshchat gives you the opportunity to interact with your customers on Facebook Messenger and other messaging channels like Apple Business Chat and WhatsApp.

When you integrate Facebook Messenger with Freshchat, you can –

✔️ Get a unified dashboard to monitor and respond to all customer queries

✔️ Smartly route queries to the right team

✔️ Use Smart plugs to get users’ context

✔️ Get customized reports on team performance

✔️ Use email campaigns to engage with lapsed customers.

With Freshchat, the opportunity to grow your business is endless. Want to know what Freshchat can do for you? Click on the banner below.

Sources

1. https://www.smallbizgenius.net/by-the-numbers/customer-service-statistics/https://www.markinblog.com/customer-loyalty-retention-statistics/

2. https://www.markinblog.com/customer-loyalty-retention-statistics/