Digital marketing has changed the way brands communicate with their customers. The personalization and ease of connection this channel offers is unmatched, especially when you compare digital and conventional marketing efforts. And Facebook, being one of the largest digital marketing platforms, has reshaped community management as we know it, especially after introducing Facebook Bots for businesses.
According to Cloudflare, a bot is a program on a computer that helps you perform repetitive tasks by automating them. It sounds pretty technical, but it really isn’t. Basically, bots are AI managed programs that help you automate routine tasks like scheduling, reporting, or in a marketer’s case, communicating with customers.
For a marketer, customer relationship management is one of the most important aspects of their job. It’s what motivates your buyer to move from one stage of the customer journey to the other. And did we mention? The digital world makes it easier than ever. In fact, globally, 54% of consumers say that they expect better quality communication from businesses than they did a year before.
Now let’s go back to Facebook. We mentioned that FB has made life easier for business owners with its seamless communication and marketing platforms. Facebook Messenger alone has 1.3 billion users globally, making it one of the most used communication apps in the world. Not only that, this app has a 70% higher open rate than email marketing, and as of January, it had over 300,000 active bots working on community management. Fascinating, isn’t it?
And that’s just Facebook Messenger. Don’t forget that there’s a whole family of apps owned by Facebook which are constantly growing in use by businesses, including Instagram, WhatsApp for business, and the Business Manager Inbox – which may not be an app in itself but it integrates all your community management channels, easily eliminating gaps for your customer service team.
So considering all the advantages offered by Facebook in 2020, we can surely list down a few reasons why Facebook bots are changing customer relationships for businesses, and why you should be using them:
AI is the Future
Artificial Intelligence is the present and the future. It’s the evolving factor that is taking businesses toward growth, and it’s automating human tasks, eliminating the room for mistakes. So why not take the first step to automate your marketing by using Facebook’s bots for communication? It won’t only make customer relationship building easier, it’s actually a seamless way to bring innovation into your operations, whether you’re a large business or small.
Reduced Customer Care Cost
Customers of the digital age expect to be catered to within minutes, 24/7. But it’s impossible to hire a community manager to look after messages the whole day. This not only takes up a lot of effort on their part, it increases a company’s cost. Facebook bots can reduce that cost to nothing – that’s right! You can easily feed your brand’s FAQs to the bot setup and let it take the center stage. It’s a win-win situation for both you, and your customer.
Higher Chance of Conversion
As mentioned above, customers open messages more than they do emails. And compared to emails, messages are easier to cater to and reply. Thus, an active communication strategy can actually help you convert customers faster and seamlessly. And not only that, chatbots are smart, and can easily filter out your leads by asking questions like budgetary restrictions, product preferences and more.
This means that not only can you can convert customers easily, but you can also keep a record of their conversations to help retain customers in the future.
Smarter Conversations
Humans are prone to making mistakes, and when it comes to community management, you cannot afford that. In the digital world, a customer is offered so many choices that one misstep from you can have them move on to the next best option. Thus, using a chatbot can eliminate that risk by enabling effective communication on your Facebook page.
Bot based communication is also quicker and prompt and reduces your response time which can actually encourage customers to ask questions more frequently, creating higher engagement for your brand.
Better Research Opportunities
Chatbots can make your research and feedback collection easier and more efficient. For example, you’re running a restaurant and a customer just booked a table via messages and the bot recorded that communication.
Now you may not remember to collect their feedback on time, but your bot can. Once the reservation day has passed, it can send said customer a request for feedback, making your customer feel important and remembered.
Not only that, but you can also use your bot’s chat record to follow up on communication with specific customers. For example, a restaurant owner can send birthday wishes to a customer who may have reserved a table for themselves a year before. Similarly, if you’re opening a new branch, you can get in touch with your most engaged customers to increase footfall for your brand.
Are there any downsides to bot communication?
One of the arguments put forward by chatbot users is that bots don’t offer the kind of communication quality humans do. This makes customization harder and it may also seem that your customer is receiving an automated reply every time they message your page. However, there are a few best practices you can follow to make sure that your communication strategy does not suffer:
- Personalize your communication as much as you can. Try to keep the messages you feed your bot informal, while also following your brand’s tone so that the messages don’t sound too robotic.
- Keep the clicks to a minimum – don’t make the communication process too lengthy or complicated because your customers may lose interest.
- Don’t forget human surveillance for the communication. Bots may be easy to use and may offer many advantages, but a human manager who can review quality and feedback can help you manage customers even more easily and seamlessly, improving your strategy tenfold. You can either hire someone from your own team or have your digital marketing agency review communication time to time.
Wrapping it up…
It’s pretty clear that Facebook’s Messenger bots are expected to create better communication for businesses, and it’s always a good idea to experiment with them to see how they impact your operations and results. So tell us, have you used these bots for your page yet, or are you yet to jump on the bandwagon?
