Responding on Facebook Messenger

All my cus­tomers have a Face­book Busi­ness Page. Over the years I have seen a few prospects and cus­tomers of my clients reach out com­plete­ly through Face­book, using the Face­book Mes­sen­ger. This past year, I’ve seen con­sumers use the mes­sag­ing fea­ture even more on Face­book as well as oth­er plat­forms: LinkedIn, Yelp, Ang­ie’s List, and so forth. The goal if you accept mes­sages on your Face­book page should be to make it easy for con­sumers to get in touch with you. The prob­lem with this, how­ev­er, can be two-fold: 

1. It real­ly is hard to keep up and reply to these mes­sages in a time­ly manner.
2. A lot of com­pa­nies don’t get noti­fied that they received a mes­sage and don’t reply at all!

6 Tips for Using Face­book Mes­sen­ger for Your Busi­ness in 2018

Here are a few key tips to keep in mind: 

1. Turn on Face­book Mes­sen­ger — It all starts here: Set­tings, Gen­er­al, Mes­sages & Edit View Screen­shot
2. Set Real­is­tic, Clear Expec­ta­tions — Edit your hours of when you will typ­i­cal­ly reply and cre­ate an auto-response (Set­tings, Mes­sag­ing Edit — See Screen­shot). I like to set real­is­tic expec­ta­tions here, let­ting peo­ple know when I am online and when I typ­i­cal­ly respond. If this auto­mat­ic response isn’t in place, I feel peo­ple expect a faster response. Also, when you have the auto-reply fea­tured turned on, Face­book gives your com­pa­ny a qual­i­ty response time rat­ing score. You don’t want a ​“typ­i­cal response time” of 24 hours or even 2 weeks (yes, I’ve seen that!).
3. Down­load and Use ​“Face­book Pages” for Android and/​or iPhone on Your Mobile Device — It’s not as slick as the native Face­book Mes­sen­ger (for per­son­al use), but it does work. And remem­ber, once it’s down­loaded, make sure you turn on Noti­fi­ca­tions so you will know when some­one mes­sages you through your Face­book Page.
4. Book­mark your Face­book Mes­sag­ing Page on Your Desk­top — You’ll want this to be easy to access: go to your busi­ness page and click on INBOX, then book­mark that page (See Screen­shot)
5. Make It a Team Effort — You’ve already got plen­ty to do, so make sure oth­er mem­bers of your team are keep­ing an eye on the inbox as well. More eye­balls + more account­abil­i­ty = faster responses.

Take It a Step Further!

Here’s an option­al tip: install Mes­sen­ger on your web­site as an option for peo­ple to send a mes­sage. It is not as instant as ​“Chat” so not every­one is expect­ing an instant reply. Remem­ber, if you have the auto-reply turned on, that sets the expec­ta­tion that you are (and will be) respon­sive to their request. More large cor­po­ra­tions are mov­ing their teams over to Twit­ter and Face­book Mes­sen­ger to respond to con­sumers. This is real­ly because most con­sumers have an account on one of those plat­forms and are always logged in. So, make sure your com­pa­ny is ready and respon­sive to this grow­ing line of com­mu­ni­ca­tion with your cus­tomers. Don’t be left behind! Here are a few arti­cles that do a great job edu­cat­ing you more on the ben­e­fits of (and how to use) Face­book Mes­sen­ger for your busi­ness. https://​www​.social​me​di​aex​am​in​er​.com/​h​o​w​-​t​o​-​u​s​e​-​f​a​c​e​b​o​o​k​-​m​e​s​s​e​n​g​e​r​-​f​o​r​-​y​o​u​r​-​b​u​s​i​ness/ https://​www​.social​me​di​aex​am​in​er​.com/​h​o​w​-​t​o​-​u​s​e​-​f​a​c​e​b​o​o​k​-​m​e​s​s​e​n​g​e​r​-​f​o​r​-​s​o​c​i​a​l​-​c​u​s​t​o​m​e​r​-​s​e​r​vice/