With more than 50 million small businesses across the globe using Facebook Pages to connect with their customers, the social network has announced a range of new features to make communication easier.
According to the company, customers are increasingly turning to social media as a convenient way to interact with businesses, with 81 per cent of Facebook users in Australia connected to an SME on the social network.
Globally, the number of messages sent to businesses on Facebook has doubled in the past year, reaching 2.5 billion comments per month.
“Pages are increasingly the mobile solution for businesses all over the world because they are the best way for businesses to reach customers where they are—on mobile,” Facebook CEO Sheryl Sandberg said in a Facebook post announcing the updates.
“Small businesses create jobs and drive growth in every economy so when they succeed, everyone wins. We’re thrilled to be helping 50 million entrepreneurs reach their customers and grow their businesses.”
The new features will give businesses more control over the response time displayed on their page, including the ability to show a response time of ‘within minutes’, ‘within an hour’, ‘within hours’ or ‘within a day’.
Prior to the updates, the average response time was automatically generated by Facebook and to receive a ‘very responsive to messages’ indicator businesses needed to respond to 90 per cent of messages within five minutes.
You will now also be able to set an ‘away’ message so customers know when you are unavailable to respond. This is an important tool for managing your customers’ expectations, as they have been told in advance not to expect an instant reply.
Facebook has also redesigned the Pages inbox, making it easier to use and proving insight into the people messaging your business. This includes showing past interactions the person has had with your page and the ability to add notes such as their current order or past customer service preferences.
All the changes will make delivering customer service via Facebook easier, something that’s vital at a time when more consumers expect to be able to communicate with businesses in a way that is the quickest and most convenient for them.
The new features are starting to roll out globally and will be available to every business page in the coming months.
By Ruth Cooper
