Private Facebook messages have been around, and well used, for some time with many people choosing to communicate in a private and less public forum. Until now there were some limitations with Facebook page messages, but the recent updates are about to change it all. So if you are a business Page admin or are thinking about creating a business Page on Facebook read on…
Firstly as a business Page you want to make sure that you are ready to turn on messaging, not only because your customers will start to reach out and contact you via private message, but because Facebook has also introduced visible ‘responsiveness ratings’ to show customers how responsive businesses are to private messages.
If a business responds to 90% of messages with a median response time of less than five minutes, Facebook adds a ‘very responsive to messages’ badge on the business Page profile. Currently only businesses that meet the above criteria are awarded the badge, however, all businesses that have messages turned on will be able to see their Page’s response rate and median time from the last seven days in Page Insights. Business Page messages can be turned off during non-working hours, this may be worth considering for your business.
Facebook page messages
Until now business Page admins could only respond to customers via the same method that they were initially reached on, for example, if a customer posted on a Page’s wall, Page admins could only post a reply to the original post. Now businesses can respond directly via a private message which is great for handling personal or sensitive queries. When a business responds privately a note is added to the post so that other page visitors can see that the query has been acknowledged.
Work smarter and harder
Facebook have added a feature that allows admins to create and save responses to frequently asked questions, meaning that they can respond faster to similar incoming messages, for example, what are the opening hours? Saved responses can also be edited which is another great feature that allows admins to keep the response personal.
Messages from ads
Consumers can now also start a private conversation with businesses from a ‘Send Message’ call to action button from News Feed ads. Not only is this great for customers to be able to reach out easily and directly to businesses from their ads but Pages can also track which ads have prompted the private message.
Keeping your inbox tidy
With easier ways to be contacted by and respond to customers, managing the private message inbox is going to be crucial to businesses. To help with this, Facebook has introduced a number of additional features including; flag, delete, mark as unread and archive which all should help managing business Page messages much more efficient.
