Introduction

Automated messages like “Hi, how may I help you?” are quite familiar when a customer requires some service online. Want to know what’s that? These are the chatbots for businesses that have improved customer service by making service available round the clock, and 64% of online users are satisfied with the automated system.

As a fact, chatbots will most likely take care of 85% of all customer dealings by early 2022. Almost 50% of businesses prefer chatbots to mobile apps, proving it a viable future of customer service. Let’s see what they are!

1. Boost Customer Service

The automated messaging feature of Facebook Chatbots can garner an immediate response from the customers. A well-developed Facebook Messenger Chatbot with an inbuilt cache of FAQs provides quick answers to customer queries. Moreover, chatbots can offer multiple-choice responses to understand the specific needs of a customer.

The quick response from chatbots permits customers to make their purchase decision faster and lessens the probability of shifting to a competitor.

Vital Statistics show that there are more than 300,000 active bots on Messenger. This implies that businesses can thrive well in the competition with the help of Facebook Chatbots.

Currently, conversational marketing through Facebook has a lead of roughly 70% higher open rate than email marketing.

A use case is Domino’s chatbots on Facebook. The chatbots allow customers to choose their favorite dish from a plethora of items and place orders. The chatbot links the customer’s Facebook account to their Domino’s account. Customers can track their orders, seek support, and do many more things. These digital innovations have helped Domino’s increase their customer base by allowing them to have a good experience on their platform.

2. Offer Personalized Recommendation

Customers can view online catalogues of your store within the Messenger application. For instance, Shopify offers e-commerce stores with The Messenger Sales Channel engineered by chatbots that enables buyers to browse products through Messenger. Once buyers make a purchase decision, they will be automatically redirected to your website. The messenger chatbots via the sales channel let companies send automated notifications regarding their orders. Such chatbots can come as a blessing for small businesses.

Few brands move beyond customers’ expectations and use chatbots to recommend during purchase. Rather than searching many products independently, the customers may ask for suggestions as per their choice of products. Conversational AI plays a significant role in this.

Babylon Health, a renowned British online subscription service, has taken the help of chatbots to provide consultation based on the patient’s medical history and can contact patients via video call from a physician.

3. Collect Feedback Seamlessly

Your Facebook chatbot can effectively conduct a brief survey for customer feedback in a conversational manner, almost like human interactions. Thus, in a few clicks, your company can gather vital information and form an idea of buyers’ response to your brand, products, or services.

Chatbots save your customers’ time, for they just need to click rather than typing out. Prepare a satisfactory scale or few statements for the customers to choose from. A meticulously-designed chatbot boosts the process of getting feedback from your customers.

Take the use case of a typical survey chatbot. The Facebook chatbot asks the buyer if they would like to participate in the survey. Once the buyer gives their consent, the survey starts instantly. The buyers don’t even have to take the pain of typing anything. They can just select from the ‘options’ furnished below the question to progress through the survey. On top of that, GIFs, images, and videos displayed above the questions make the survey fun and less tedious.

4. Makes Scheduling Appointments Easier

You can use Facebook Messenger chatbots to schedule appointments for your customers. Booking a slot for an appointment through a bot lets customers schedule appointments anytime, without the hassle of contacting a customer service representative.

The beauty brand Sephora enables customers to fix appointments using the Facebook Messenger chatbot. By opting for “Book A Service,” the buyer is directed to a trail of questions from the Facebook chatbot. It helps them select the location and services they would like to schedule. Finally, the chatbot generates a scheduling pop-up that lets customers select a particular slot available at the store. Once the time is fixed, Sephora collects the email and name of the user from Facebook to finalize the appointment.

An 11% upsurge was seen in in-store booking conversation rates after they introduced the scheduling chatbot. Allowing customers a separate way of scheduling their appointments through Messenger also helps the in-store employees to converse and connect more with customers on the spot personally.

5. Enhance Brand Awareness

Your brand’s Facebook chatbot enables customers to know about what your company does, especially when interacting with people who have forayed into your brand’s ambit of influence. This is an impactful way to capture customer attention, moving them down your sales funnel because marketing via Facebook Messenger has 10-80 times better engagement than email and incurs 70-80% open rates on an average.

You can directly present your brand as a part of your chatbot conversation by telling people about your business’s latest event, which might have been an exciting project. In this way, audiences can stick to your brand advertisement.

An interesting use case is the Upbeat Advertising Agency, whose Facebook chatbot allows users to develop awareness about the agency directly as part of its bot conversation. The agency messenger bot gets Facebook users started by letting them know about a recent event or an exciting project that Upbeat has been a part of. Such tactics are likely to capture the audience’s attention.

6. Influence Customers to Visit Your Product Page

Once you warm your audience up via Facebook Messenger, you can start directing them to your product pages. As Facebook messenger bots can be conversational and amiable while communicating with their target audience, the whole interaction looks pretty natural and not like a sales pitch. However, if you do not want to direct people to your product pages in this way, include a shop button to the menu, but a disciplined conversation does help.

Burberry, a luxury brand, has a well-organized bot conversation facility on its Facebook page that provides visitors with the option to browse its products in both the menu and the conversation.

With Facebook messenger providing highly engaging and personal communications, 40 million businesses have taken to this platform to set up amiable interactions with potential customers and increase their sales. Thus, Facebook Chatbots can play a crucial role insofar as effective customer engagement and conversational marketing is concerned.

Facebook messenger has been prospering exponentially over the past few years and became a well-performing mobile platform rather than simply an app. As a fact, about 3,00,000 chatbot developers have joined the Facebook messenger app.

7. Enable Shopping Directly Via Facebook Messenger

A “Buy Now” button lets customers enjoy a seamless buying within the Messenger app, cutting short the buyer journey and increasing conversion rates. The Facebook chatbot will fill out the form automatically with users’ data during this quick checkout process.

Beauty Gifter, the Facebook messenger chatbot for L’Oréal, aims to enhance personalization. The messenger chatbot gets to know every buyer’s needs and choices and makes customized product recommendations from 11 L’Oréal brands, integrating with L’Oréal’s e-commerce system for checkout. Beauty Gifter chatbot statistics prove 27 times better engagement than email, 31% detailed profiling, and 82% buyers loved the experience.

Around $8 billion will be saved by 2022 from businesses using chatbots, as per IBM. Also, 85% of customer conversations with businesses will occur via chatbots by 2020, as per Gartner, and 53% of customers would heartily text than call a customer care agent.

8. Notify Customers With Broadcasts to Increase Customer Retention

Facebook Messenger chatbots for business can convey your brand’s message by making it effectively engaging, which can compel the target audience to make the right decision. Its high click-through and open rates will bear the right results for your brand’s marketing intent. A bland email template like “Your Cart Is Waiting” might not have what the subscriber wants. Hence, the subscriber will most likely not open the mail. However, crisp and short broadcasts automated by Facebook chatbots using friendly emojis and stickers make them more persuasive.

Observe your organization’s internal style of pitching, customer care terminology, advertising strategy, etc. This will provide you with a strong conscience of your voice of exposition and the attitude to use in your Messenger broadcasts.

A simple use case is a Facebook chatbot forging relationships by sending broadcasts to customers to educate them about your brand. For example, if you own an athletic store, your target customer base must be people who love running a marathon and you aim to sell more and more sneakers.

Use your Facebook chatbot to create a sequence of messages, with each message consisting of an actionable tip to convince them to get started. This implies your sequence gives them insightful information on how to run their first marathon with the expectation that when they need to purchase running shoes, your brand is the first one they would think of buying from.

9. Adding Augmented Reality to Customer Experience

Since customers have been opening up to chatbot-based communication, companies are going one step ahead to include Augmented Reality (AR) and conversational AI to make the customers’ experience more immersive. Companies like POND’S, Sephora, Ikea, etc., incorporate AR and conversational AI in their chatbots to make them more targeted and precise.

Advantages of using Augmented Reality and Artificial Intelligence are their extraordinary selling point, improved experience with a personalized experience to the customers, and the enhanced prospects of earning gravity-defying revenue.

One of the famous use cases is that of Victoria Beckham, who is among the many fashion designers to incorporate Augmented Reality as an integral part of her chatbot, producing impressive results. She owns one of the best Facebook chatbots we have ever seen. She uses her Facebook bot to enable users to use their camera to try on her sunglass collection to see if or not they will suit them. This is an innovative tactic to boost conversions.

10. Generate Leads

Chatbots in Facebook Messenger can add an edge to your sales approach. By communicating with users, you can know their preferences and categorize them and identify your leads. All you need to do is adjust your bot’s situations to your sales funnel and develop a positive buyer experience.

You can use your Facebook chatbots to find out the challenges your potential buyers face regarding a product or a service by asking some multiple-choice questions and then offer valuable suggestions and enable accessible contact. By entertaining consumers through a chatbot, you can engage your customers.

Bots can contribute to your business by nurturing leads. You can send regular automated messages personalized with a follow-up or an interesting new piece of content that can keep your customers hooked on. You can build a formidable bond with potential buyers and increase your leads.

Conclusion

While revising your social media policy, do not forget to include Facebook Messenger Chatbot for business in it. Begin with simple FAQs and automated answers to enhance the quality of customer support, and add more options over time, e.g., product recommendations, content distribution, and events. Do not flinch while interacting with your customers in a more engaging discussion, albeit through Facebook chatbots. In this way, you can develop better and more long-lasting relationships with them.

Originally published here.