The Rise of Facebook Messenger Chatbots
Facebook Messenger Chatbots
One of the biggest changes and the most massive amount of upside that I see the facebook Messenger App having is this new Chatbot feature and its Artificial Intelligence.
Let’s talk about, AI, artificial intelligence first.
According to Devin Coldewey, writing for NBC News, it’s one of the hottest trends in artificial intelligence and marketing right now. He states:
“Chatbots have existed for a good while — at least since ELIZA, an early bot that attempted to psychoanalyze people, was created in the ’60s. But the last few years have seen an explosion of applications that make people interact with bots as though they’re talking to another person.”
Facebook Artificial ‘M’ Chatbot
Facebook have their own artificial intelligence “robot” if you like called M. That’s the Facebook Messenger M, and basically what it does is it suggest features for you to use based on the conversations you’re having with connections inside Messenger app.
For instance, you might write to somebody, “Hey, you owe me $35,” and Messenger will suggest that you use its payments feature to pay that money or go ahead and request that money. If someone says goodbye, then the Messenger will recommend a GIF. A little animated GIF for you as bye-bye.
As far as businesses go, and this is where, this is becoming really, really powerful is if somebody is asking your business a question on Messenger. This little M will go and scour your website details or your business page details, and offer answers to the person asking questions on your behalf.
If you’re a business owner you’ve got the ability to be having questions answered for you from Facebook without having to do a thing. This is very, very powerful.
This artificial intelligence assistant will actually privately interject all of these recommendations in your little Messenger conversation, so your visitors will not be able to see the results until you actually approve it, which is pretty cool.
Facebook M is a little bit like Siri or Amazon’s Alexa. It’s its own personal assistant except it’s going to be taking commands via text rather than voice commands. Of course, if you don’t like what M is suggesting can always turn it off but it really is a new version of artificial intelligence.
It’s going to learn individual users habits and personalize itself for those individual users, like if you always ignore the suggestions that M gives you then you’re not going to see as many of them.
If you’re not interacting with a certain feature, like the payments feature, then it will stop showing that and maybe show you something else that you use, like stickers or animated GIFs.
The rise of Facebook Messenger Chatbots
User generated Chatbots are a little different, and this gives the ability for businesses to create automated Chatbots so that when somebody visits your business page you can interact with them at scale.
These Chatbots are designed by individual page owners using tools like ChatFuel or ManyChat. (there are new tools popping up on the market everyday).
These chatbots can take over from the burden of trying to be answering people messages that they leave on their facebook page.
In the first six months of 2016, there were 30,000 Chatbots created. Now, in one year on there’s over 100,000 bots on the platform.
Let’s say that somebody visits your page and they’ve got a question or you’ve got a series of frequently asked questions, You could have your Chatbot automatically answer these questions. When somebody types in those questions or a keyword about a certain topic, this Chatbot will actually answer them for you.
Facebook Messenger really wants to be your one stop shop for everything, If you want to check on your flight or buy some new shoes, Facebook want you to never leave their app.
Facebook are calling this Chatbot 2.0 and all of these new features are a very powerful weapon for the small business owner.
One of the new features they’ve got is a discovery tab where you can actually find new popular and featured bots from all sorts of brands like CNN or NBA or Nike.
You can find chatbots from nearby restaurants or businesses that let you order food or book an appointment through their bot.
These Chatbots let you do some amazing things.
You can send money.
The Chatbot can take payments on your behalf, so you can steer new prospective clients through a sales funnel via chatbots. They can even go ahead and deliver a digital product in return.
Facebook are also introduced new QR codes that you can find when you’re out and about. These are physical QR codes that can also be printed. Here is my QR code..go ahead and scan it.. I dare you J ( Actually, let me know you read this article, I would sure appreciate it )
You scan the code with your phone’s camera and a Messenger bot is going to give you more information. For example, Facebook partnered with the Golden State Warriors basketball team and they put QR codes on the back of the team’s seats, so that when the fans were sitting there watching the game they could scan the QR code and get new experiences for people at the game.
There was ways to get highlights, they can go and buy merchandise as well as all sorts of parking information, upcoming games and events all delivered through a Chatbot that was accessed just from this physical QR code.
The rapid growth of Chatbots
The other thing that has just launched is a thing called chat extensions, which lets more than one person in a group actually talk to the same bot at the same time.
If you’re in a chat group or a chat thread you can control other apps from inside Messenger. For example, Spotify has gone into partnership with Facebook and it lets you choose to play music right from a chat screen. You may want to be able to share that music with a friend, so you can do that as well directly from the Spotify chat app.
So, if you’re a small business owner wanting to delve into Chatbots ,then here are some extra things that you can do.
1.Sell products or Services;
So if you’re in business and you want to be able to sell things, then chatbots could be your best sales assistant. You only have a limited amount of time in a day to do everything…how do you clone yourself? Chatbots could be a great solution…these little helpers could easily take the role of an assistant to field question about products and services that you do not have time to deal with.
2.Make and take Payments
You can take payments or process payments as well. Use your new found chatbot to do that task for you…and it is easy for the customer to handle.
3.Collect intel on new leads.
This is one of the most underrated features of chatbots in my opinion. You can gather insight and data on people who the chatbot interacts with. This is really, really powerful.
When you’ve got a Chatbot working away for you and you ask your visitor certain questions, you can actually record and keep the data that that person shares with you. You can subscribe them to your database and then you can segment your list according to the choices they have made in that interaction. You will discover all types of new things about your customer that were not easily available before…
4.Customized Marketing
You can really personalize your marketing too. By giving your customers that personal touch, you are inspiring loyalty. You can use a range of variables in a chatbot conversation that really speaks to each individual person.
5.Increase Engagement
Engagement is one of the most important aspects of marketing and these chatbots can go far beyond just answering questions and sending people to a link on your website. These bots can actually start to converse with your customers. The more creative you get, the more likely the customer will spend time engaging with you.
Last year Disney created a bot for Zootopia and had officer Judy Hops Bot that was answering questions ahead of the movie release…it proved to be super powerful with users spending more than 10 minutes each chatting to the bot.
6.Qualify your leads
Chatbots are also great at qualifying your leads and prospects.
They can ask your visitors pertinent questions and lead them on a sales journey…and at every step of the way, they could be determining what product or service you could be offering them.
The Rise of Facebook Messenger Chatbots are changing and evolving nearly every day….the creators of the chatbot platforms are coming out with new innovations on a daily basis and it is truly exciting to watch.
As you have just seen, chatbots are giving business owners a myriad of ways to automate their business processes and I only think this is going to get a lot more practical
If you’re thinking about using chatbots for your marketing efforts, use the tips given in this post. You’ll be glad you did.