In April, Facebook took its popular Messenger app to a new level by unveiling a platform tailored specifically to brands wishing to enhance the customer experience. With Businesses on Messenger, brands can engage with the actively growing Messenger user base (currently at 900 million) for optimized and personalized customer service and sales acceleration. In addition to enabling live messaging with rich and personalized content, Facebook also introduced a chatbot service that allows businesses to use automated communications with customers.
With the multiple contact channels available these days for customer service, one might ask why Facebook Messenger should be a welcome addition. However, many industry experts believe that Messenger is not only a critical evolution in the domain of customer experience, but a truly revolutionary channel that will transform customer service and sales as we know it. As a dominant channel in the growing sphere of conversational commerce, Messenger offers numerous opportunities. Here are five ways Facebook Messenger streamlines customer service for a more seamless customer experience.
Rich and personalized content keeps the customer better informed.

Facebook Messenger offers numerous rich content features for optimum customer engagement. Businesses may use custom layouts to offer such features as quick and easy purchase, order confirmation, shipping updates, shipping information with attached images, maps for shipment tracking, and other relevant links. Such features together create a truly personalized and informative experience for customers.
Payments will become easier to make.

While peer-to-peer payments are already possible on Messenger, Facebook has yet to enable a full-service feature for customers making payments. According to Forbes, Facebook anticipates a forthcoming software release that will allow customers on Messenger to pay for items in person or pay directly in the Messenger app once an item is picked up.
Automation and humans together give faster and sharper answers.

Humans may give service a personal touch, but chat bots may deliver sharper and faster responses. Messenger acknowledges the importance of both by striking a balance between the two. Through textual or audio means, chat bots engage in conversations with customers and provide accurate answers through their artificial intelligence function. For example, when customers need to ask a simple, fact-based question such as the nearest location of a retail store, chat bots may deliver a quick and accurate answer. For more complex questions, customer service agents may step in. As chat bots continue to evolve and handle low-level tasks through the continuous refinement of their artificial intelligence tools, the more businesses can assign complex tasks to live agents for better use of human resources.
It enables and promotes real-time responses with greater accountability.

Customers already ask for swift, real-time responses on social media. On Facebook Messenger, brands are held even more accountable due to a specific feature. As timeliness is critical in customer service, Facebook developed a badge that essentially rewards businesses that are quick to respond. If a company has responded to 90% of messages within five minutes in a seven-day period, Messenger grants the business a “Very responsive to messages” badge to let customers know of their quick turnaround time.
Customer communications and discussion moderation are improved.

Businesses can easily engage in personalized communications with customers, but they can use template messages as well. Messenger offers the option of creating pre-saved responses that may be customized before being sent to customers. In addition, businesses are better able to moderate any discussions that may be generating on a Facebook company page. To respond to customer concerns on a company page, businesses may contact such customers privately via Messenger for personalized attention and improved brand reputation.
In our increasingly mobile world where social media continues to dominate, Facebook Messenger is a prime channel for conversational commerce. As a global leader in cloud-based contact center software solutions for customer service and sales, Vocalcom is transforming the future of customer experience with its conversational commerce platform, offering a data-rich context that enables customers to switch easily between channels in a single interaction for true satisfaction. Conversational interactions through text messaging, in-app messaging, and platforms such as Facebook Messenger, Telegram, WeChat, Viber, and more allow customers to engage with brands in real-time or asynchronously through a single thread. Currently, 40% of companies have seen a call deflection rate when shifting customers to SMS, and 23% have plans to add it this year, resulting in more than 60% of all contact centers offering SMS support by the end of 2016.