• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, December 8, 2015

To further endear itself to businesses, Facebook is trying to help them be more responsive to customer queries, manage expectations and encourage people to reach out through private messages.

Over the next month, all Pages will be able to set the average time it takes them to reply to consumer messages. Page administrators can choose to show that they will respond either “within minutes,” “within an hour,” “within hours” or “within a day.”

The point of the changes to give businesses more flexibility when using their Page and Facebook Messenger as communication channels.

Average response times for Pages are currently calculated for each Page automatically, and the time shown on businesses’ Page defaults to their average response time.

Now, however, even if a Page typically responds to messages within an hour, they can set their visible response time to within a day in order to temper customer expectations.

Page response times will also now show up in Messenger threads when a person messages a business, so people know when to expect a response from the business.

Facebook has created a new messaging status called “away” that allows Page administrators to designate when they are unavailable to respond to messages.

Additionally, when administrators message with a customer, they will see any past interactions that the customer has had with the business’s Page, as well as information the person shares publicly on their profile. That way, businesses are more likely to know who they are dealing with.

Currently, there are over 50 million active business Pages, by Facebook’s count.

More to the point, the number of messages sent to businesses on Facebook has doubled in the past year, and people now leave 2.5 billion comments on Pages every month, according to the social giant.  

The changes are part of a broader effort by Facebook to upend the business of customer relationship management. Facebook also recently announced plans to position Messenger at the center of business-to-consumer communication.

Earlier this year, the social giant launched a Page plug-in so Page owners could more easily connect with customers, fans and followers.

The company recently added new ways for customers to send private messages to Page owners and new tools for Page administrators to manage and respond to messages.

As such, Page owners were invited to add “Send Message” call-to-action buttons directly on their Facebook ads. For Page owners’ edification, incoming messages include an attachment showing which ad prompted a person to reach out.

Page owners can also reply directly to users that message them.