What Are Facebook Messenger Chatbots? [Guide to Facebook Bots]

Do you feel overwhelmed trying to answer every customer message on Facebook? If so, it’s time for you to build your Facebook Messenger chatbot. On this page, we’ll answer critical questions like:

1. What are Facebook Messenger chatbots?
2. Why should I use Facebook Messenger bots for my business?
3. How do I create a Messenger bot for my Facebook page?

Plus, you’ll get some quick tips on how to create an effective bot that provides the best customer service for your audience.

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What are Facebook Messenger chatbots?

Facebook Messenger bots are a piece of artificial intelligence (AI) that can be programmed to converse with people. You can program these bots to comprehend questions and provide a subsequent answer to those questions, as well as execute specific tasks.

Why should I use Facebook Messenger bots for my business?

Now that you know what Facebook Messenger bots for business are, you may be wondering why you should build one.

How will making this bot (and investing the resources to do it) help your company and its bottom line? Here are just a few reasons to use Facebook Messenger bots:

Chatbots support the trend of using Facebook to reach businesses

Perhaps one of the best reasons to use a Facebook chatbot is that your audience is already using Facebook to reach companies. More than 1 billion people are active on Facebook.

Many of these people message businesses to ask questions and learn more about their products or services. Since people are already messaging companies through Facebook, you want to create a more efficient way for people to engage with your business when they contact you through Messenger. Implementing a chatbot can encourage more people to message you through the app.

Chatbots help you answer people immediately

When people contact your business, they want an answer fast.

If someone calls your business, they must wait on hold until someone from your team can get to them. That situation can leave people feeling impatient or discouraged because they can’t get an answer right away. The same can happen if someone contacts you through Messenger.

They may expect you to answer your messages right away, and if someone from customer service isn’t available, it can create a situation where your audience doesn’t get answers. With a chatbot, however, you can change that. If you use Facebook Messenger bots, you can respond to your audience immediately and provide them with answers.

If it’s a simple question, like “How much does your wine opener cost?” or “What time is your business open until?” you can program your bots to answer these questions. That way, your audience gets the answer they need fast.

Chatbots save you time by answering simple questions

Facebook Messenger bots are a time saver — which is a universal benefit of bot marketing. Think about how many times a day your customer service team spends answering the same question.

While it’s critical to answer your customers’ questions, you end up wasting valuable time answering simple questions when your customer service team could spend that time helping customers with more complex problems. Instead of having your customer service reps answer the same question a hundred times a day, you can program chatbots to answer these simple questions for you. So, if 20 people message you on Facebook asking, “How much is shipping?” you can program your bot to answer that question for all those people.

When your bots handle the simple questions, your customer service team can focus on the people who have more in-depth or complicated issues.

How do I create a Messenger bot for my Facebook page?

If you’re interested in using Facebook Messenger bots for business, the next step is to learn how to build a Facebook chatbot. There are two options for building a Facebook chatbot:

Use a third-party program to help you build the bot

Your first option for building Facebook Messenger bots is to use a third-party bot builder. There are dozens of tools you can use to build your chatbot, including:

1. Chatfuel
2. Botsify
3. Sequel
4. Streamchat

If you don’t know how to build a Facebook chatbot or don’t feel confident in making one, you may want to consider the second option.

Hiring a digital marketing company to build your chatbot

The other option you have is to hire a digital marketing company, like WebFX, to create a chatbot for you. This option is great if you don’t have the time to build a chatbot or aren’t sure you’ll develop your bot correctly. You can invest in Facebook Messenger chatbot services to help you build your custom bot.

3 quick tips for creating successful Facebook Messenger bots

Now that you know how to build a Facebook chatbot, you’re ready to get started!

Before you start, check out these three quick tips for launching a high-quality Facebook Messenger bot:

1. Make bots conversational

When you’re building your chatbots, you want to ensure that you program them to be conversational. Many bots can sound uptight and rigid. You want your audience to feel like they’re talking to a person, so you must build your bots to send conversational messages.

So, how can you accomplish this? One great way to do this is to build your bots to talk like your customer service reps. It’s great to mimic their chat behaviors, so people can feel like they’re talking to a real person, even when they know they’re not.

  In this example from Leeds Beckett University, you can see that the exchange between the bot and student is much like a conversation that the student would have with an admissions counselor. This conversational approach makes it easy for people to chat with these bots and get the information they need.

2. Try using emojis

When you use Facebook Messenger bots for business, you want to ensure you’re creating bots that mimic your friendly customer service. One great way to make your bots a little more fun is to use emojis in your messages. Emojis can add a little flair to your messages and make your bots seem less rigid.

In this example from Lego, you can see that the use of emojis here and there makes the messages fun without overdoing it.   So, when you’re programming your Facebook chatbots, try integrating emojis into your messages to add a little fun to your messages!

3. Keep messages short

When you’re programming your Facebook Messenger bot, try to keep your messages short. You don’t want to send your audience paragraphs of information, as it will make it difficult for them to comb through the response and understand it. You can send short paragraphs with one or two sentences at a time.

If you need to say more than that, you’ll want to resort to sending multiple messages to help break up the information.   In this example from Hello Fresh, you can see that they send multiple messages of short paragraphs instead of sending one long message and overwhelming their audience. You’ll want to take a similar approach to drive success with your Facebook Messenger bot.

What are Facebook Messenger chatbots?

Your key to customer service success

In this guide, we’ve answered questions like:

1. What are Facebook Messenger chatbots?
2. Why should I use Facebook Messenger bots for my business?
3. How do I create a Messenger bot for my business?

After getting all the answers to your questions, you may not feel confident that you can build Facebook Messenger bots on your own. That’s where WebFX can help. Our team of 500+ social media experts and developers will help you build bots that engage your audience.

Ready to get started? Contact us online or call us today at 888-601-5359 to speak with a strategist about our Facebook Messenger chatbot services!