A Small Business Guide to Facebook Chatbots

Facebook chatbots are becoming an increasingly important aspect of how customer service is managed. Global research firm Gartner predicts that chatbots will power 85% of customer service interactions by 2020, while 80% of businesses say they currently use or are planning to use chatbots.

So, what is a chatbot? A chatbot is an automated chat program that sits on your website or a messaging service like Facebook Messenger and interacts with your customers to answer their questions and help them with requests.

According to Facebook’s stats, there are over 1.3 billion people on Messenger and over 300,000 active chatbots already active on there, so if your business uses Facebook but doesn’t have a chatbot, you are missing out on a valuable tool.

Small businesses don’t have the customer service resources available to the giants of the corporate world, but that doesn’t mean that customers should have to wait for a response to a simple query. this is one of the major advantages that a chatbot can bring.

If a customer wants to know your opening hours or check on the status of an order, they don’t necessarily need to speak to a human member of staff.  These are requests that a chatbot can easily deal with. You’ve saved time and resource and your customer has received an answer quickly and efficiently.

Chatbots can also help with your sales processes, offering information to potential customers doing their online research. Targeting your existing customers with deal alerts and personalized offers can drive impulse purchases as well as keeping them engaged with your brand.

When it comes to making those purchases, your chatbot can also assist anyone who gets into difficulties. With 83% of customers saying that they need help at the point of purchase, a chatbot could significantly improve your checkout conversion rate.

These are just some of the ways that a chatbot can change the way your business interacts with your customers. In our in-depth guide, we’ve given you instructions on setting up your own chatbot as well as tips on how to create one. We also explain how to speak the language your customers will expect to give them the kind of experience that keeps them coming back.

Facebook Messenger chatbots can make a huge difference to small businesses, so read through our guide and get started with one of your own.

Sources

1. Kelly, S. (2017) Messenger’s 2017 Year in Review facebook.com
2. Beaver, L. Anzalone, C. (2016) The Chatbot Monetization Report businessinsider.com
3. Pemberton Levy, H. (2016) Gartner Predicts a Virtual World of Exponential Changegartner.com
4. LivePerson. (2013) Connecting with Customers Report liveperson.com
5. Segment. (2017) The 2017 State of Personalization Report segment.com
6. Chatfuel. (2018) Chatfuel – Relationship-based Messenger marketing chatfuel.com
7. Botsify. (2018) Botsify – Create Website Chatbot in 5 minutes botsify.com
8. Sequel. (2018) Sequel – Create messenger bots with personality onsequel.com
9. Bennett, G. (2017) 9 Tips to Design Conversational Style for Your Bot medium.com
10. Facebook. (2018) Design Best Practices messenger.fb.com
11. Facebook. (2018) How do I edit or delete my Page’s call-to-action button? facebook.com
12. Oboishchyk, O. (2017) How to Promote Your Chatbot Like a Pro chatbotsmagazine.com

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