Earlier this week, Facebook introduced Messenger 2.3, the latest version of the Messenger platform, which includes updates to customer chat tools and the quick-reply feature. The platform now also offers advanced customization tools for more targeted customer support.
Back in November, Facebook introduced a customer chat plug-in that enabled businesses to integrate Messenger into their own websites, so that customers wouldn’t have to navigate away from a company’s site. This week’s update takes the plug-in a step further—companies can now customize the default greeting text that appears when a conversation is initiated, and can change the color of the Messenger icon to better match their site.
“Recently we started giving businesses on Messenger the opportunity to customize their greeting text and color to match their voice and brand,” Facebook said in a company statement. “Over the course of this week, we’re expanding these customization capabilities and adding a few more features.”
The new features will include an easy setup tool that simplifies this customization process, a notification capability that alerts customers on a company’s website when the company has responded to their message, a persistent menu that houses the ongoing conversation for easy access, and support for Messenger on Internet Explorer.
The latest version of Messenger also gives customers a quick-reply option to use when businesses ask for their contact info during a conversation. Now, the quick-reply option will auto-populate the response with the contact info that the user has already provided to Facebook.
“If the person has more than one email address or phone number connected with their profile, they will be given the option to select which they would like to share with the business,” Facebook clarified in a statement.
Finally, Messenger now also offers new metrics in the Messaging Insights API, including information on the total number of open conversations between a company and Facebook users, and the number of conversations initiated by people who had never messaged the business before.