Facebook’s ‘Businesses On Messenger’ Opens Up New Customer Service Possibilities

At Facebook’s F8 developers conference in San Francisco, the company announced Messenger Platform, which opens up the app to third party publishers and developers who will be able to build additional functionality and features directly into the Messenger app.

One of the features of Messenger Platform that will interest a wide range of businesses and marketers is called “Businesses on Messenger,” which has the objective to “reinvent the way people communicate and interact with businesses.”

By utilizing this feature, there is the potential for users to have in-depth conversations with businesses. For example, once someone purchases a product from a website, they can choose to receive updates in Messenger to continue their conversation with the business in the app. Subsequently, they will be able to receive relevant messages from the business, such as order confirmations and shipping status updates, as well as being able to take actions including modifying, tracking or returning an order. Additionally, the user will be able to ask the business questions and make requests, with the ability for the business to reply with text messages and photos. All of these interactions will be unified in a single thread between the business and the person.

Ideally, the new feature will result in improved customer service, which could increase sales for merchants. Certainly, the platform’s success will depend on the manner in which businesses utilize the tool. At this point, Facebook is initially launching the service with a select number of partners that the company believes will deliver a great experience with the product.

Over time, there are many possibilities for the types of interactions that could be facilitated by Messenger. For example, if someone is considering purchasing a car, they could ask questions directly to a local dealership who could provide them with all of the information that they need to decide to go into the dealer and make the purchase. Although “Businesses on Messenger” is not widely available at this point, there’s a great likelihood that many SMBs will be interested in exploring its possibilities if the platform is rolled out across the board in the future.

If it becomes widely adopted, the new tool could greatly enhance the customer service offerings by auto dealerships as well as businesses in a wide variety of sectors. Businesses could answer questions about inventory, product details, prices and expected delivery times, all in a quick manner that could create a more personal and valuable connection than other customer service methods.

For now, the initial integrations are with the companies Everlane and Zulily.

It will be interesting to see how well the initial integrations work and whether or not Facebook will decide to make this offering available to other businesses in the near future. The possibility to use this tool to enhance customer service will certainly be an attractive option for many merchants to consider if Facebook rolls it out widely.