Commentary

The Game-Changing Facebook Plug-In: Customer Chat

Once in a while, a relatively simple technological advancement comes along that punches well above its technical weight in terms of pervasive impact on everyday behavior.

Such is the case for the newest feature rolled out by the Facebook Messenger team — a team that has quietly been laying the groundwork for Messenger to take over as the most important channel of communication between businesses and customers. On Nov. 29, Messenger opened up its customer chat beta to all developers, and by doing so advanced our notion of what it means to “chat” on-site by lightyears.

How so? Facebook’s new plug-in, Customer Chat, allows people to communicate on company websites in much the same way traditional tools do: site visitor clicks a button, a modal window pops up in which a chat begins. But there are two game-changing features to what is now possible:

First, the Customer Chat bubble initially opens on websites, but remains an active conversation in the customer’s Messenger inbox even after they close both the on-site conversation and leave the website altogether. This is revolutionary! This means that companies are no longer bound by the Rule of 30 Seconds — the prevailing industry wisdom that if an agent doesn’t respond to a chat inquiry within 30 seconds, that lead is lost.

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Think of how burdensome that is for companies, to be on standby to answer all inbound inquiries within 30 seconds, including follow-up responses. And think of how dissatisfying it is to customers when that standard is not met. They click an on-site chat option, only to linger there and wait for an available agent (until they lose patience and churn after roughly 30 seconds) or have the option to leave a phone number or email address in the hopes that their concerns would be addressed or replied to later on. 

Now, on-site chat can finally function the way people actually chat today: A person initiates a conversation with a company by pressing the familiar on-site chat prompt. But if an agent doesn’t respond right away, the person can navigate away from that page, close their computer or phone, and go about their business. When someone does respond on the other end, that person sees it as a message coming into their Messenger inbox, the same way they get messages from friends.

If they ask a follow-up question, the same pattern ensues. The person can ask their question, put their phone away and go about their business and get a message into their Messenger inbox with the response, whether it’s 10 seconds or 10 hours later. With traditional tools, this customer would have been lost after 30 seconds. Now, they are engaged in an indefinite, productive conversation with the company.

Second, Messenger’s customer chat can be combined with the platform’s Bot capabilities to create a highly effective bot-initiated experience. While human agents cannot be present in every conversation, bots can, and companies can leverage bots to automate the initial steps of a support chat conversation.

For example, scarf company Donni Charm uses Messenger for on-site chat. After a user initiates the chat, Donni Charm automated an experience intended to gather the most pertinent information from the user, so that the stylist has it ready when he or she jumps in--in the case of Donni Charm, that meant asking specific questions about the customer's style preferences.

Facebook’s new plug-in, Customer Chat, will foster two-way communication between brand and consumer, while simultaneously boosting engagement rates and encouraging sales. This will not only revolutionize the shopping experience itself by personalizing it, but also become an incredibly useful tool to marketers everywhere for its ability to track valuable web activity and analyze information. It would also be of use to marketers looking for innovative ways to expand brand presence and increase sales on mobile.

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