Do you want to be available 24*7 for your customers/prospects on Facebook?
Want a ‘JARVIS’ of your own to interact with your prospects/customers in your absence?
Customers expect instant replies the moment they raise a query with your business on Facebook. That’s where messenger bots can come to your aid. They can help you deliver relevant answer the moment a customer raises a ticket.
I know what you’re thinking now! Don’t worry there are free chat bots available out there and no! You don’t have to know coding to incorporate them with your Facebook business pages.
In this article, you’ll discover how you can customize Facebook messenger bots to suit your business and customer needs.
First, let me answer the following ‘WHY’ question.
Why use messenger bots?
A lot of consumers nowadays are using social messaging platforms including Facebook messenger to contact businesses with their queries. These consumers will expect a timely response from you.
Let’s consider this scenario: Let’s assume that a consumer is interested in your product/offering and ping’s you over the weekend to exhibit his/her interest – a valuable organic lead; will he/she wait until Monday for your response? By the time you get back to the prospect with a valid response, your prospect might have changed their mind.
Facebook Messenger bots will let you automate basic interactions with your customers, providing them with immediate responses. They can answer basic questions like “When can I expect my order to be delivered?”, thereby letting your customer support team handle serious customer issues or concerns.
Suppose you are customer service representative for an ecommerce business and spend hours every day sending customers their order tracking numbers. A messenger bot can handle this task for you.
That’s not it! Messenger bots are capable of more than that; you can also set them up to book a table for two or more at your restaurant. Your customers need only ask.
When you create a chat bot, you can customize it to fit your business and your customers’ needs.
Here’s how you can customize your messenger bots to suit your business and customer needs,
#1. To deliver personalized content marketing:
Some businesses utilize messenger bots to deliver personalized content experiences to its users. These bots will have to be customized in a way that they nurture relationships with their clients and provide them with immediate value.
For example, the CNN messenger bot is geared towards helping users get instant news. They can enter topics like “politics” to browse news related to politics across the world, or move through a series of questions for personalized content.
Keep these in mind, while you create a messenger bot to provide personalized content to your audience:
- Ensure that your website is mobile-friendly.
- Selling shouldn’t be your primary objective. But use content to send users to your site.
- Inform your consumers how and where to contact you in case they need your help.
#2. To provide customer service:
One efficient use of messenger bot is to customize it to provide instant customer support. If your customer support team is being bombarded with the same questions again and again, let your messenger bot answer those boring questions.
WINK Unisex Salon’s messenger bot is a great example for this. Customers can directly schedule a pampering session with a stylist of their preference via the messenger bot.
That’s cool, isn’t it?
When creating a customer service messenger bot, keep these in mind,
- Make sure to include a contact number of a customer service representative in case the user didn’t find what he was looking for.
- I highly recommend that you let the user know upfront that they are interacting with an automated response system.
#3. To provide specialized services
Some businesses have their own apps to provide special automated services to their users. Why don’t you take it a step further and create a messenger bot to do that?
Hi Poncho is the best example for this type of messenger bot. Provide it with your location details and it will instantly send you weather forecasts for your location.
Make sure to check the following boxes while creating this type of bot:
- Include clickable menus to provide your customer with an app like experience.
- Link users to your website for services which you can’t offer via the messenger.
And there are a few other ways to customize your messenger bot. The future is bright for messenger bots and the businesses which utilize them in the right possible way. With all these being said, make sure to do A/B testing with your messenger bot before it goes live.
So, what are your thoughts? What other customized messenger bots have you come across? Do let me know in the comment section.
This article was written by Santhana Krishnan Indrakumar, Social Media Marketer @ echoVME
