Should your business or brand being using Facebook's new "MESSAGES" feature for customer service?

Recently Facebook began to monitor how often brands respond to messages. This is great for a local business, but for most small business owners online who use a blog and a page to build their brand it can have negative impact to engagement and closing sales. My personal opinion on this is simple: REMEMBER direct response marketing.

 


If 20 people see how you respond to a customer publicly on your page vs you writing someone privately by message, you can earn trust and win a new customer, quickly. One of the biggest downfalls in the age of social media is when brands simply don't interact with customers on their page. SHOW you are the host or hostess with the mostest! Let others see you taking great care of people right on the page.

I also think that having messages as a place to answer question defeats the small business owners goal of giving info to many. If 15 other clients or prospects see you answering someone, and they had the same question, not only can they decide quickly to do business with you, they might make a purchase quickly as well. WHO wants to now have to wait to get a reply on a Facebook page through messages? Just like we hate waiting on hold on the phone, we don't like to have to wait for an email reply. Being available on the page publicly during normal hours is a good thing for your small business.

I personally do not recommend you use messages. I even advise people to turn this feature OFF and treat your page like a store front. Be the one with the best attitude, the best service and show EVERYONE you care about your customers. Use a client care portal like ZenDesk for customer service issues that require a little more one on one when needed. We have 5 years of records from our clients. I don't trust Facebook to keep a good log for me of these important one on one issues like order updates, etc. We also use a Live Chat feature, like Zopim.

This article is great on the new features Facebook has to offer with Messages in case it is a good fit for your company: 

https://ravishukle.com/facebook-updates-boost-customer-service/

Ravi has a lot to share and is a great resource!

With love,
Sandi Krakowski