The principle behind a live chat is to help businesses interact with their customers in real-time and in the absence of phone, email and other means of support. And it has spawned over the past years, paving new forms of live chat services, particularly messaging apps. In fact, messaging apps have been the top one preference for chatting services.
And what messaging app is the most sought after? Well, it’s Facebook Messenger. The live chat service of Facebook Messenger has grown exponentially over 1.3 billion users. This reveals a highly untapped potential for many eCommerce owners to start including Facebook Messenger Live Chat as a part of their marketing.
If the richness of potential audience doesn’t quite convince you yet, today, we’ll help you find the reasons why Facebook Messenger live chat is vital for your eCommerce store’s success. Ready?
1 – Follow where your customers are, provide options
While real-time communication can be in a form of phone support, 56% of people would rather use messaging apps than call customer service. And, Facebook Messenger’s more than two billion messages exchanged monthly between people and businesses is a good testament to open Facebook Messenger’s door to your shoppers.
The huge audience in Facebook Messenger is rooted on the fact that customers want options as to how they can contact a business. Customers have different preferences. There are those who like to make a phone call, write an email or chat a support. Giving an option equates to catering to different types of folks, thus, satisfying each of their needs making everyone happy.
2 – Less friction, more immediate support
Many of the available live chats we’ve encountered in the past required you to register and fill out your name, address, phone number, and email address. And most of the time, this frustrates shoppers because they want an immediate support but they have to go through that process.
Using Facebook Messenger live chat eliminates that friction to your customer and gives them an instant access to your support. There are just basically two steps:
Tool: Quick Facebook Chat (free)
Imagine if every time you require your customers to log in and what if they mistyped something? Some people have many emails too, so there’s a tendency that they’ll provide you with the least active one. Unlike Facebook, most people often have just one account.
If you have not added Facebook Messenger Live Chat to your website yet, install Quick Facebook Chat now. It’s 100% free and takes less than 2 minutes to set up.
3 – Mine a rich personal data, improve customer service
Once a visitor engages with your ‘Chat Now’ button, you can immediately mine your audience’s personal data. Facebook shares with you the visitor’s full name, profile photo, gender, language preference, and time zone.
These personal data help you create a rich and more personalized interaction based on who your visitor is and what they actually need. You can get insights from your audience data at your fingertips allowing you to focus more on the customer and create a positive experience.
4 – Archive everything on Messenger
Compared to other communication methods, there’s always the possibility of losing your previous interactions. Let’s say you’re using a chat box that doesn’t store your data, so when a visitor leaves and closes the chat, all your conversations are lost and there’s no way you can go back to them again.
This is where Messenger steps in. Your chats and any other actions performed by the visitor can be stored. The archive serves as an easy reference for your staff or even your customers when they contact you in the future.
The customer’s chat history unravels who your visitor is and what he or she wants. You don’t need to ask them again because some data have been stored already. Were they inquiring about a phased out product? Did they ask about your newly launched product? All these questions can give you more insights than you can imagine. You can even segment your customers based on that information and target them according to the right campaign.
5 – Enable customer transactions and more conversions
People who initiate a live chat goes beyond the fact that they want an answer to a query. They are more likely interested in your products that’s why they reach out to you. Thus, when a customer chats, you need to present your best foot forward because the path to purchase has already started.
In fact, 33% of people who message a business in Messenger wants to make a purchase or place an order. Thus, your presence on Messenger enables your customers to browse your products and then, help you drive them to conversion.
6 – Automate using Quick Replies and Bots
Facebook Messenger also helps you in automating the frequently asked questions to save you time and effort and only assist those who need immediate real-time support. You can do this either by using the ‘Quick Replies’ feature readily available in Messenger or by installing bots.
For instance, you can use Quick Replies to automate the process of asking for a person’s current location, phone number, and email address. Here’s how it looks like:
There are also nearly 20,000 bots for Messenger that you can choose from to build more interesting quick replies. You can build your own conversation flow by anticipating questions and providing defined answers. To know more, visit the example Bots for Messenger.
7 – Flexible Handover Protocol
While there are bots to help you with your quick replies for frequently asked questions, there will be instances when questions raised by visitors will be more complex which requires intervention from the most suitable experts from your support team.
Facebook Messenger has a Handover Protocol feature that allows two or more Facebook apps to join in a conversation by passing the authority of the conversation between them. For instance, a business can use one app to create automated responses from bots and the other app for customer support from live agents.
If you have existing live chat apps, such as Quick Facebook Chat, you can integrate it with Messenger. The handover protocol cuts the way of asking the customers if they need live customer representative or not because it already knows when to transfer the customers based on the conversation.
8 – Overturn the 24-hr business window, send push notifications
Facebook Messenger has 24-Hour Messaging Window which prevents businesses to respond to a message after the 24-hour time limit has already expired. The limit will only be refreshed each time a person messages to the business. This seems like a letdown but it actually safeguards your engagement with your customers by keeping it relevant and timely. Again, people need to make the contact first before you can engage with them.
There are still good ways to bypass this 24-hour policy by sending push notifications using message tags. Message tags allow business the ability to send messages to a person outside of the regulated 24-hour window provided that they are updates or continual notifications.
The message tags can be used as an automation opportunity as well. You can set up a shipping update to notify a recipient’s shipping status or issue resolution to message a recipient about a customer service problem. Learn more about message tags, visit supported Messenger notifications.
9 – Re-engage with sponsored messages
Facebook also announced sending sponsored messages using Messenger. Well, by sponsored messages, it means that your business has to shell out a budget in order to create an ad. The sponsored messages feature of Messenger allows businesses to re-engage conversations from customers who previously messaged them.
Moreover, these sponsored messages can bypass the 24-Hour messaging window. But, the message will be labeled as ‘Sponsored’ in the chat once sent. This allows businesses to nurture the existing relationships with their customers by sending relevant updates and contents. Here’s how it looks like:
Tool: Quick Facebook Chat (free)
10 – Gauge customer satisfaction instantly
30% of people use Messenger to provide a feedback about a business. You can automate the process of asking for feedback or customer satisfaction instantly by using third-party apps such as Survey Monkey.
Depending on how the conversation is going, say, for example, the questions have been answered already and the customer is about to leave the conversation. You can automatically ask the customers to answer a customer satisfaction survey to gauge their experience. There’s available template from Survey Monkey which looks like this:
Offer Real-time Experience
Real-time customer interaction is an inevitable part of your overall shopper’s journey. Not only that it’s a form of customer support, but it has untapped potentials for conversion. With the many live chat platforms available now for many eCommerce stores, Facebook Messenger is one of the most versatile and popular messaging apps today.
Whether you’re starting a conversation with a brand new customer or nurturing a relationship with a long-time client, Facebook Messenger has a lot of things to offer for your business. It helps you expand your messaging channels to where your customers spend most of their time. It also creates a more personal approach to your engagement and encourages conversations into conversions. What we’ve shown you today gives the right reasons why and how Messenger can help your eCommerce store succeed.
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