{"id":40735,"date":"2023-10-20T15:09:42","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:09:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startupsmart.test\/2023\/10\/20\/facebook-messenger-updates-aim-to-simplify-customer-communication-but-no-social-media-customer-service-is-set-and-forget-startupsmart\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T15:09:42","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:09:42","slug":"facebook-messenger-updates-aim-to-simplify-customer-communication-but-no-social-media-customer-service-is-set-and-forget-startupsmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/uncategorized\/facebook-messenger-updates-aim-to-simplify-customer-communication-but-no-social-media-customer-service-is-set-and-forget-startupsmart\/","title":{"rendered":"Facebook Messenger updates aim to simplify customer communication but no social media customer service is \u201cset and forget\u201d &#8211; StartupSmart"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"td-post-featured-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"640\" height=\"313\" itemprop=\"image\" class=\"entry-thumb\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/New-Facebook-messenger-feature-681x333-640x313.png\" alt=\"New-Facebook-messenger-feature-681x333\" title=\"New-Facebook-messenger-feature-681x333\"\/><\/div>\n<p>Artificial intelligence is playing a bigger role in communications between shoppers and businesses, but Facebook is still refining its functionality on this front, with the latest updates to\u00a0Facebook Messenger aimed at making it easier for customers to know how to kick off a conversation with messenger bots.<\/p>\n<p>On Thursday Facebook unveiled a number of <a href=\"https:\/\/messengerblog.com\/platform-updates\/messenger-platform-1-4-brings-even-more-tools-to-build-great-experiences\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">new developer features<\/a>\u00a0for its Messenger platform that provide more options for sharing content through Messenger.<\/p>\n<p>The changes let developers add what Facebook calls \u201cpersistent menus\u201d to bot functionalities,\u00a0which will allow customers to choose from a number of menu options to direct the bot to what they to know about, like \u201cFeatured Items\u201d or frequently asked questions about the business.<\/p>\n<p>This will give \u201cpeople a way to find and select from all the features that a bot offers\u201d, Facebook says, rather than users being faced with an open conversation window where they need to type a sentence to the bot in order for it to answer.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/videopress.com\/embed\/prkprUKp\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Instead of starting a conversation with the AI, the customer can quickly click on whatever they\u2019re interested in and have the information displayed immediately.<\/p>\n<p>The new features also allow a business to customise more messaging and parts of a post for when a user shares something they have received from a Facebook bot with their other Facebook friends.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDevelopers can customise the content (image, message, button) that appears when people share a message with friends from your bot and link to a website to the bot itself,\u201d the company explains in a blog post on the updates.<\/p>\n<p>Users that receive messages from a customer service bot will now also be able to share these with their Facebook friends inside the Messenger app, with any shares including links back to the bot itself, so that new customers can discover\u00a0details about a business when their friends share interesting content.<\/p>\n<p>The changes were announced this week on the US-based \u201cMessenger Blog\u201d, although it is unclear at this stage when the functionality will be available in Australia.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.smartcompany.com.au\/marketing\/social-media\/83693-ten-easy-things-week-improve-facebook-page\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>Read more:\u00a0Ten easy things to do this week to improve your Facebook page<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<h3>No social media customer service is \u201cset and forget\u201d<\/h3>\n<p>Artificial intelligence may be becoming more common in the retail space, but it works better for some tasks than others, as researchers at UCL\u00a0and the Hult International Business School <a href=\"http:\/\/www.smartcompany.com.au\/industries\/retail\/80558-retailers-using-artificial-intelligence-offer-personalised-shopping-christmas\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">explained last year.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor more complex, emotive and subjective buying decisions\u2014like buying gifts for our loved ones\u2014we may still seek that special human touch,\u201d researchers Rikke Duus and Mike Cooray wrote for\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.smartcompany.com.au\/industries\/retail\/80558-retailers-using-artificial-intelligence-offer-personalised-shopping-christmas\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>The Conversation<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Jessica Humphreys, director of Social Concepts Communications, told\u00a0<em>SmartCompany<\/em> that while the latest changes are good for Facebook\u2019s engagement with companies as they keep communications with customers on the platform, smaller businesses will need to deploy developers to properly take advantage of the changes.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFrom a user perspective it makes the whole purchasing and asking question process much easier,\u201d Humphreys says.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut I\u00a0think the concern particularly\u00a0for SMEs is that while they can customise the services, it\u2019s quite a complicated process.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>However, Humphreys says all businesses should remember that social media is primarily a customer service tool, and improvements to bots will solve initial teething problems for customers that haven\u2019t always been sure how to interact with them.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCustomers can get a bit confused,\u201d Humphreys says.<\/p>\n<p>While customer service platforms like Messenger bots have their place for delivering speedy answers to client questions,\u00a0businesses should regularly review the performance of all\u00a0social media tools, even they are\u00a0\u201cautomatic\u201d, says CP Communications director Catriona Pollard.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat\u2019s great about these bots is you can put standard information up so customers can acess it when they want it \u2014\u00a0that might be in the middle of the night,\u201d Pollard says.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFrom a small business perspective, that\u2019s a time saving mechanism. But\u00a0I do know that with things like [bots], that are in their infancy, you do need to check it regularly. You need to check what changes have been made, what updates have been made.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen it does promote itself as \u2018set and forget\u2019, that is the biggest challenge.\u00a0Say for example over Christmas\u00a0Holidays or over Easter, you change hours \u2014\u00a0there\u2019s often no procedure in place in a business to go, \u2018We\u2019ve got this information in all of these places [including on the bot]\u2019,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n<p><em>This article was originally published on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.smartcompany.com.au\/marketing\/social-media\/84128-facebook-messenger-bots-get-makeover-help-businesses-connect-customers\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">SmartCompany<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Follow StartupSmart on<\/em>\u00a0<em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/StartUpSmart\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Facebook<\/a>,<\/em>\u00a0<em><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/StartupSmartnow\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Twitter<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/company\/startupsmart\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">LinkedIn<\/a>\u00a0and <a href=\"https:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/au\/podcast\/starting-change-podcast\/id1154324497?mt=2\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">iTunes<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Artificial intelligence is playing a bigger role in communications between shoppers and businesses, but Facebook is still refining its functionality<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61104,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40735"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40735\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}