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As of May 9, 2024, Facebook discontinued its free Chat Plugin, a popular communication tool for online businesses relying on chat communication.
This means businesses can no longer connect with their website visitors via Facebook Messenger. Meta’s recent move is a significant blow that disrupts how businesses connect, engage, and respond to customer queries. This may hinder the whole brand experience and greatly influence business performance.
To avoid a communication breakdown and continue seamless customer communication, let’s look at an alternative to Facebook Chat to help you keep the conversation going and keep your customers–past and future–on board.
The reasons for dropping the Facebook Chat Plugin
Although Meta has not provided official detailed reasons, recent responses from their team indicate that the decision is “by design” as they intend to “deprecate” or gradually phase out the Chat Plugin this year, beginning with the disabling of the guest mode feature.
Because it allowed visitors to chat with a business via the Chat Plugin without logging into their Facebook account, guest mode offered little value to users. Businesses lacked visitor data to provide personalized customer engagement. After all, personalization is key. Fortunately, there is a range of live chat software that collects and facilitates customer data for tailored experiences.
Another weak point of the guest mode feature is the 24-hour life span on conversations, making it impossible to develop and maintain lasting customer relationships.
Available options
Let’s now consider a few solutions to maintain good customer relationships and keep your business running with excellent customer support.
Other live chat software
The market is packed with various customer support apps where live chat is a core functionality.
Moreover, these tools come with powerful chat features and integration capabilities that can significantly improve the customer experience.
Assess these tools based on your needs, their ability to integrate smoothly with your website, features, the level of customization they offer, and affordability.
Have a quick look at this list of live chat software to start your research.
Other live chat widgets
If customer support powerhouses are beyond your needs, think of simple live chat widgets that do the same as the Chat Plugin did. However, there aren’t many tools like this available for free.
Simpler widgets typically offer core chat functionalities without the extensive features of larger customer support tools. They can still allow real-time communication with website visitors, address basic customer inquiries, and provide essential support.
While they lack advanced functionalities, their simplicity can be the right choice for businesses seeking cost-effective solutions.
Other communication channels
You can encourage your visitors to connect with your business through alternative channels such as WhatsApp, Instagram, or your Facebook profile. Ensure that contact information is clearly displayed in your inbox.
Your own a chat plugin
If you have the necessary development resources, consider building a custom chat solution tailored to your business requirements. This can provide complete control over features and user experience. However, this requires time, skills, and money.
A common-sense solution
As you can see above, there are alternatives to Facebook Messenger.
In my opinion, the end of the Facebook Chat Plugin is a blessing in disguise. Moving to a customer support app equipped with powerful live chat surely requires an investment, but it’s one that will pay off and give you more than what the Facebook Chat Plugin was capable of.
The benefits of customer support software include:
Real-time support
Live chat enables immediate communication between customers and support agents, allowing issues to be resolved quickly without customers waiting for email responses or phone calls.
Cost-effective
Live chat can be more cost-effective than phone support. Agents can handle multiple chats simultaneously, reducing the need for a large support team. It’s also scalable.
Increase in sales
Live chat can boost sales conversions by providing personalized assistance to customers who have questions or doubts about products or services. Agents can guide customers through the buying process, address objections in real time, and recommend suitable products.
Customer satisfaction
Prompt responses and personalized interactions through live chat contribute to higher levels of customer satisfaction. Customers feel valued when their issues are resolved quickly and efficiently.
Analytics and insights
Many live chat tools offer analytics and reporting features that provide valuable insights into customer behavior, popular queries, and agent performance. This data can help businesses optimize their support strategies and improve overall efficiency.
Accessibility
Live chat makes support accessible to a global audience, regardless of time zones. This accessibility ensures that customers can receive assistance whenever they need it, leading to improved customer loyalty.
Integration capabilities
Live chat software often integrates with other customer relationship management (CRM) systems, ecommerce platforms, and help desk software, streamlining workflows and providing a cohesive customer support experience.
Omnichannel customer service
Be where your customers are and connect with them however they prefer. By integrating various platforms, businesses to deliver personalized support across all of them, ensuring seamless customer experience no matter where they connect with customers.
Example tool: LiveChat
If any of this strikes a chord with you, consider trying LiveChat.
LiveChat is a customer service platform that helps connect with potential customers across different channels, build meaningful relationships, and assist customers at every step of their buying journey.
- Pre-chat surveys collect customer data and feed it to a CRM so agents can better understand potential customers.
- Customer data shows which pages visitors are browsing in real time. Agents can reach out to them and spark the relationship with personalized greetings.
- Your agents can use LiveChat to connect with customers reaching out via Messenger, Apple Business Chat, SMS, email, and more.
- Using Messaging Mode and chatbots, customers can connect with support even after working hours, so they’re taken care of 24/7.
- Support agents can sneak peek the questions customers are typing and answer faster with message templates.
- Integrations allow LiveChat to connect with over 100 tools, including ecommerce platforms. In this case, agents can view the cart content inside the conversation to cross-promote, up-sell, or assist.
Connecting LiveChat with Facebook Messenger
When it comes to integrating LiveChat with Facebook Messenger, here’s what you can expect:
- Connect numerous Facebook pages to your account: Link multiple Facebook pages to your LiveChat account so you can effectively manage messages from various pages using one account. Each website can be assigned to a specific group for clear distinction.
- Send messages with rich media: Engage customers by sending product cards, product carousels, quick replies, and suggested responses.
This video sums it up well:
Product cards are a quick and easy way to showcase your products and an effective tool for upselling, cross-selling, or simply assisting your customers in purchasing decisions.
They are interactive recommendations featuring an image, description, and a button linked directly to a specific product website within your store. These cards are automatically imported and include information on stock statuses and price labels.
If you frequently answer the same customer questions, canned responses will reduce your response times and minimize repetitive typing. Simply write your response once, save it, and reuse it in chats whenever needed.
In addition to saving time, canned responses minimize typing errors. They are particularly useful for handling foreign names, complex addresses, common phrases, URLs, or any information that you frequently type.
This help center article shows exactly how to integrate LiveChat with Facebook Messenger.
Over to you
With the abundance of live chat software on the market, there's no need to worry about Facebook ending support for its app.
However, replace your Facebook Messenger Chat widget as soon as possible to ensure uninterrupted social media customer service. This transition will help you maintain your sales, revenue, and customer base without disruption.
Make sure you check out LiveChat or other live chat software.
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