About Facebook bots
Sites like Facebook can do far more than allow business owners to communicate directly with their customers. When properly used, these social media platforms can automate huge portions of the business, reducing operating costs and helping companies compete more effectively in a changing world.
If your company is not taking advantage of Facebook bots, you are missing out on a prime opportunity. Facebook bots can automate your customer service and marketing efforts and help you engage more effectively with both current and prospective buyers. Even better, Facebook bots are relatively easy to build and maintain, as long as you have the right tools at your disposal.
What are Facebook bots?
Even if you are not familiar with bots and how they work, chances are you have interacted with a bot at some point in your online life. From chat programs designed to augment teams of human customer service operators to bots that answer common questions and recommend product, these tiny bits of code are all over the Internet. Companies of all sizes are already using bots to boost their bottom lines and serve their customers, and your firm can do the same.
In the simplest terms, a bot is a small application that works inside popular messaging program, in this case Facebook Messenger. Once it is built and installed, the Facebook bot can automatically interact with users, allowing website visitors to access a wide range of services.
What are bots used for?
The range of services accessible to users of these Facebook chatbots is limited only by the talent of the bot writers and the needs of the company. Facebook bots are often used for customer service applications, with the bot programmed to recognize common inquiries and provide the necessary answers.
Facebook bots can also be used to aid your marketing efforts, augmenting and enhancing the human marketing team and boosting their productivity in the process. From recommending new products based on past purchases to serving up suggestions based on search queries, these Facebook apps can be valuable marketing tools for companies of all sizes.
One of the great things about a Facebook bot is that they have gotten so good that many users may not even realize they are talking to a machine. These tiny programs are great at answering questions, suggesting products and solving problems, and that is one of the things that makes them so useful
Easy to use and accessible
Another thing that makes Facebook bots and similar programs so powerful is their ease of use. Many companies publish specialized apps that make customer service easier and augment their marketing efforts, but those apps require active intervention on the part of the user.
In order to use these specialized apps, the user must find the app, wait for it to download and learn how to use it. While some customers may be willing to take those steps, others may simply abandon their efforts and look for answers elsewhere.
Facebook bots are a much different story, and much easier for both current and potential customers to use. Instead of downloading an app and learning how to use it, those customers can simply chat with the bot, creating a seamless conversation that is nearly indistinguishable from human-based marketing or customer service.
Feels more human
From the point of view of the customer, chatting with a Facebook bot is largely the same as chatting with a human operator on a marketing or customer service line. The user simply types a question in normal language, and the Facebook bot provides the needed answers. All the programming happens behind the scenes, with the Facebook chat bot interpreting the inquiry, searching its database for the answer and providing the information to the user on the other end of the computer.
Create a Facebook bot for your business
Adding Facebook chat bots to your marketing toolkit can have valuable implications for your company and its profitability. With marketing budgets shrinking and companies being asked to do more with less, automating your efforts has never been more important. If you are not yet incorporating Facebook bots into your marketing efforts, now is the time to take a look.