Messenger’s New Chat Plugin Lets Businesses Connect With Customers Beyond Facebook

Facebook’s all-new Messenger Chat Plugin lets businesses connect with their customers without them having to sign in to their Facebook accounts.

Facebook has rolled out a new version of its live chat plugin aimed to help businesses connect with their customers seamlessly both on and off Facebook. Originally launched in 2017, the tool allowed customers to interact directly with a business. However, the plugin required site visitors to be logged into their Facebook accounts, thus limiting its adoption. Today, it has changed, says Facebook.

 The need to be logged in to interact with a business posed a challenge for multiple reasons. What if the customer was not on their personal device and did not wish to log in for security reasons? What if the customer wished to communicate anonymously?

 The mandatory login requirement affected the plugin’s adoption as opposed to other similar services such as Zoho, LiveChat, Zendesk and many others. Soma Toth, Founder of Recart explains, “As a developer, it’s much easier to convince a business to use a live chat offering that is available to all its customers. It also reduces the complexity of having to work with or support a fallback for users, who are not logged into Facebook.”

 Read also: 5 Keys for Selling with Live Chat

With the all-new chat plugin, users/customers don’t need to log into their Facebook accounts and access it via ‘Continue as Guest’ option. This would help a business reach out to customers beyond Facebook as well. In fact, Facebook recorded a remarkable spike in customers inquiring about products and services to businesses using the new chat plugin.

“Our customers are seeing sales directly tied to engagement on Messenger and the Chat Plugin helps them leverage the same investment across both their Facebook page as well as their website at no additional cost, added Toth.”

Ryan Pamplin, CEO at BlendJet said, “We noticed that customers who engage with us are three to four times more likely to checkout. With the Chat Plugin allowing us to reach more customers, we’ve tripled our sales since offering it as a customer engagement channel.”

See Also: New Live Chat Functionalities for Windstream’s UC Contact Centre Services

On the business front, the plugin makes available all the tools for managing conversation with the users – whether they choose to log in using their Facebook account or opt to continue as guests.

Since Messenger enjoys the benefit of being associated with one of the largest social media hubs, it would be exciting to see how businesses leverage this offering to drive their customer support game in coming days.  

Businesses can opt to install the new plugin on their own or through Facebook partners WooCommerce, ManyChat and Haravan.

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