Social Media giant Facebook has been investing heavily to lure businesses. It has been expanding its portfolio to bring more engaged users in its umbrella. It is also expanding the reach of its own product by creating new uses for them. One of the instances which shows Facebook is planning to be more than just a social network is by acquiring messenger platform like WhatsApp.

Now, it has released a new Customer Chat feature through Messenger platform to enable businesses to provide better customer service and increase engagement on their website. It is also commonly searched as Facebook messenger live chat. However, it is in closed beta stage and only a few companies have been allowed to use it namely Adore Me, Air France, Argos, Goibibo etc. They have also given an option to join the wait-list by filling up a form. People in the list will be notified when it is available for public.

I’ve decided to drill down to help you understand what Facebook messenger chat actually means for your business and how’s it different from other live chat software:

1. Instant Real-time Communication

In today’s time a customer expects a quick solution to his problem. And if you’re not able to address the problem quickly, then customer satisfaction rate goes low. Facebook messenger customer chat allows you to interact with your website visitor in real-time and provide instant solution. But live chat solutions like REVE Chat has already been providing this benefit to businesses.

It also helps in increasing website engagement and increasing sales since customers love live chat. A research suggests that 79% of customers prefer live chat because of the immediacy it provides. So, it may be an important feature, but it is not addressing something which is not already taken care of.

2. No Third-Party Integrations

Every firm today likes to streamline their sales process and hence they want every prospect to enter their CRM. Customer chat from Messenger does not allow you to enter the prospect into your CRM directly since it has not announced any integration so far! What it means for your business?

You’ll have to enter all the details in your CRM manually which takes toll of your time and effort.

There are no third-party integrations either with leading eCommerce platforms like Shopify, Open Cart or CMS platforms like WordPress, Wix etc. These integrations help businesses to integrate the services easily with the help of plugins or widgets without any coding.

Many live chat solution providers today are already integrated with popular CRM systems to make your lead nurturing and sales process easy.

3. Team Assignment & Routing

Live Chat software allows multiple agents to be online at a given point in time hence providing support to huge amount of traffic as well. Needless to mention that these agents can belong to different departments like sales, support, logistics etc. allowing you to do department routing easily.

However, this functionality would be missing in Customer Chat platform since it would allow only the admin to chat from messenger. Even if it allows multiple login at a single point of time, it does not address the issue of department routing which is an important feature for growing industries like eCommerce.

4. Can’t integrate with other Social Platforms

When using Customer Chat platform, can you think of providing support on another social channel from same platform?

No!

It hampers the consistency in providing support and hence hampers the customer satisfaction rate. In fact, according to a study by Kampyle on customer experience, around 87% of customers think that brands need to put in more effort in providing a consistent experience.

Whereas, you can do that with live chat platforms like REVE Chat allows you to provide support on Facebook Messenger and Viber from a single dashboard.

It streamlines your process of providing support hence increases customer engagement and retention.

5. No Visitor Info such as location, referrer/ page visiting

Imagine you browsing a product page of a “running shoe” on a website and have some query. Now, if someone asks you “Hi! What kind of running shoes you would like?”

It would give you a better experience and you would share your requirement. This happens because live chat software companies track the website visitor footprints and show them in dashboard. It helps agents to understand the customer better.

It would be a challenge for customer chat to provide and since it has not announced anything like this, you should better stick to your live chat software provider.

6. No Team Performance Analytics

One major area where live chat software companies are really working hard is analytics. REVE Chat allows you to check agent ratings, chat history, website visitors etc. right from the dashboard. It also allows you to email chat transcripts for you to keep track of all conversations.

Customer chat will have to think of this scenario and create a separate section otherwise you would not be able to optimize your performance.

Since multiple agents can chat from your live chat software dashboard, you can rate their performance on the basis of agent ratings given by consumers. It helps you analyze who needs training.

7. No Customization

There is less scope of customization in Customer Chat plugin since it would be doing self-branding in terms of logo and brand color.

This may hamper your customer experience if your brand colors are not aligned with it. However, you can customize your chat window color, text, shape, position according to your brand colors.

Live chat software companies also allows you to remove brand name to align it better to your website.

8. No Screen Sharing or Voice/ Video Chat

From the current announcement from Facebook, it is just a live chat plugin allowing you to provide support only by chatting.

Whereas live chat industry has already advanced catering to the needs of consumers. Some advanced features like voice chat, video chat, screen sharing have already been introduced. Screen sharing is a great feature which allows you to give a much better customer experience. Video Chat is another feature with helps you to boost your business.

These features are yet to be adapted by Messenger Customer Chat.

Conclusion

In the end, messenger customer chat is another step take by Facebook to help businesses, but it has to catch up a lot. If you would like to throw some more light on this topic, then please share in comments. I’ll be active!

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