One of the biggest changes in the customer experience over the past few years has been the introduction of chat apps and messengers. Facebook has even released a toolkit for their own Messenger that allows the service to deploy artificial intelligence (AI) when interacting with customers.
This is an important development for smaller businesses. Could you imagine a flower store a couple of years ago having an AI customer service centre available 24/7? Now it’s possible thanks to the free tools Facebook makes available.
But what is really happening is a shift towards text-based communication. People now prefer to text and have conversations on Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp, rather than making calls. With this shift taking place in the way people communicate, it’s important for companies to adjust to customer desires and improve the ways that they offer chat app- or Messenger-based customer service.
It’s worth knowing that Facebook is constantly rolling out new features for Messenger. The latest is a polling system and peer-to-peer payment. The polling service allows groups of friends to take decisions together interactively. Imagine you are meeting a group of six friends for dinner, but you don’t know where to go. Create a poll featuring the top three choices of venue and let everyone who is on the chat vote on their preference – a great way to speed up group decisions!
Peer-to-peer payments and payment reminders are interesting too, because they enable individuals to send money to each other using Messenger. If you owe your friend £20 then they can request to be repaid via Messenger and the system will automatically remind you if you have not paid. The reminder service is very useful, but the ability to pay friends anywhere in the world, so long as they are on Facebook, is a very exciting financial service.
It’s clear from these developments, and the way the public is generally behaving, that messengers are only going to become more important in 2017 as a link between brands and customers. How far are you in your own strategies when it comes to what chat apps can do for your business? Leave a comment below and let me know, or contact me on LinkedIn.
Author: Melanie Buckley, HEAD OF PEOPLE CORPORATE SERVICES UK, INDIA & SOUTH AFRICA Gen Z represents an untapped goldmine of talent and innovation, but challengingly, they bring the job market a set of values and desires entirely unlike any previous generation. Here Melanie Buckley, Head of People Corporate Services, Webhelp UK, India and South Africa, looks at the top 5 secrets employers...
ReadIt was a successful night for global customer experience expert, Webhelp, and leading telecommunications provider Sky, at the UK Customer Experience Awards yesterday. The fiercely competitive awards, which highlight excellence in the CX industry, were held at London’s Wembley Stadium. In a...
ReadWebhelp hosted the second of our Disruptor Dinners at the Shangri-la at the Shard in London yesterday, as part of our highly regarded yearlong series, which examines and identifies significant disruptors of Customer Experience (CX). This session looked at the impact of changing generations on...
ReadThe Webhelp Disruptor Series Part 2: Generation: Cohort views on CX and the workplace This paper reveals the results of our exclusive YouGov study on age-influenced attitudes to multi-generational working and customer experience, as well as gathering informed viewpoints from sector leaders,...
Read...
ReadStrictly Necessary Cookies
The website requires the use of cookies for essential functional requirements and these are outlined in the cookies policy.
Enhanced Functional Cookies
Some features of this website use services provided by third parties websites. These features use cookies to implement their services on this website and may collect data about your visit to help them optimize their functionality. The Webhelp cookies policy outlines the cookies used by these services.