The Importance of Facebook Autoresponder Messages

Making a good first impression is important.  If you have a decent following on Facebook, you may want to think about your Facebook Messenger strategy.

When a customer sends you a message on Facebook, have you thought about the journey you can take them on once they visit your page or have a question for you?

There are two places in your Facebook Page Settings where you can truly customize the experience for your customers. Let me explain where you can find those two areas and offer some tips:

1.) MESSENGER SETTINGS:

Have you tweaked Messenger settings to work for you and your business? Go to your business page, click on settings, then click on  “Messaging”

• General Settings
  • Return key – you can change this setting so when you hit return, your message gets sent. Many of us automatically hit “return” to send a message, but if this isn’t turned on you’ll have to manually hit the “send” button.
  • Prompt people to send you a message – you can turn the prompt function on so as soon as someone visits your Facebook Page, the messenger chat box pops up prompting the person to send you a message if they have a question.
  • Start a conversation – in this area, you can create preset FAQ’s so customers can get common questions answered or they can send you a personalized question.

• Response Assistant – here you can set autoresponders and you can even personalize your message.
  • Send an instant reply to ANYONE who sends you a message
  • Send an instant reply during your AWAY hours – in this area, click the “Message” tab to personalize your reply and click the “Schedule” tab to create your AWAY hours

• Appointment Messaging – if you are booking appointments for your shop, this one might be helpful to you.

EXAMPLES OF MESSENGER RESPONSES:

I love this personalized message by Emma Gray Boutique:

2.) MESSENGER PLATFORM:

Want to take messaging to another level?  Go to your business page, click on settings, click on  “Messenger Platform”.  Whoa!  Are you mind blown yet?

There’s so much you can do here!  Many of the options here are advanced so I won’t go into detail but here a few of the things you can do in this setting section:

You can connect Messenger Bot Apps here, you can grab your messenger link here, there are advanced messenger features (this requires approval from the Facebook Messenger team), there’s even a Customer Chat Plugin for your website!

CONCLUSION:

For our store, we receive many questions through messenger and we want to make sure the customer feels like they are being heard and responded to quickly, that their question(s) can or will be answered, that we will respond as soon as possible, or that they have options for more answers – like directing them to our website.

Messenger is simply another way to offer excellent customer service.  You don’t have to implement the advanced options to offer your customers a good experience. But, I do recommend that you take advantage of the basic settings to help your customer get questions answered, in a timely fashion.

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