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Facebook authorizes businesses to privately message customers

SOCIAL NETWORK Facebook has announced many businesses’ worst nightmare: Pages Messaging. The changes will enable businesses to better handle customer support issues and answer questions.

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Businesses can incorporate a “Send Message” button into their ads, to let Facebook users initiate a private conversation from the ad itself. A new “Message” option is available which opens up a private message thread with the customer and also publicly notes that the businesses has responded to the comment.

There’s a reason many people prefer to communicate with friends and family through private messaging: it’s fast and convenient. Facebook wants to show the world that offering direct access to consumers can lead to increased sales.

Facebook said over a billion people visit Pages every month looking for more information from businesses.

As the new service rolls out, users will notice the “Send Message” option in the bottom right corner of an advertisement.

Other tools for page admins include capabilities to archive, delete, flag and mark messages as read, unread and spam in bulk.

When a enterprise responds privately to a remark, the remark exhibits a notice that the enterprise responded privately to let different Page guests know that the enterprise dealt with the request.

Customers can also block private messages from businesses if they don’t wish to be contacted. So, if someone commented on the Page, admins could only respond on the page. All Page admins will now see their Page’s response rate and median response time in Page Insights, but, for now, only the Pages who meet the 90% response rate and less-than-five-minute response time will have the public badge.

It’s the same way Facebook used for “Promoted Posts” Facebook gradually started letting them pay to get their messages in front of more people.

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“This is a positive step because up to now, interaction on Facebook between businesses and customers has been limited to a handful of things”, said Elliott.

Facebook said over a billion people visit Pages every month looking for more information from businesses