Facebook Messenger, Chatbots and the Opportunity for Customer Engagement

By Alessandro Giordo, Junior Development & Support Technician

When Facebook announced chatbots I went crazy and tried so many different platforms for building one. Being a Developer, I opted for ‘geekier’ versions of it using NodeJS and Python, but I have to say the possibilities are endless. Working with one of the world leaders in virtual assistants and artificial intelligence allows me to spend time exploring this new trend and experimenting with the possibilities.

There are many useful bots that I regularly employ to help me in my daily life routines, and there are others that I talk to once and never again. Bots can be useful but there are horror stories as well, such as Microsoft’s AI bot Tay.

I’ve recently read this post about Facebook ‘business bots’ replacing call centres and this really interested me. The question was: Would you miss traditional call centres? At the time I took the poll, 67% had responded that they would not miss call centres, which I think is very telling about how people actually want to engage with companies.

For organisations, the growing popularity of instant messaging platforms, such as Facebook Messenger and WeChat, and chatbots offers new opportunities for communicating with customers. At Creative Virtual, we have announced the integration of our virtual agent technology, V-Person™, with Facebook Messenger for customer self-service.

With our technology, organisations can have chatbots with personalities that can engage users in chit chat and small talk, but they can also provide integrated, seamless and personalised self-service. By using the same knowledgebase that’s already being used for other channels, companies can easily add Facebook Messenger (and other messaging applications) as new support channels. This connects them with existing channels (self-service, live chat, contact centre) for a consistent customer experience, rather than having a siloed, stand-alone chatbot.

Like many other chatbot or virtual agent tools, V-Person has the ability to become more intelligent and adapt based on usage. However, this method of adaptive learning gives companies control over content and the learning process, so they don’t need to worry about their virtual agent becoming another Tay (if you aren’t familiar with Tay, you can read more in this article).

Check out our official Facebook Messenger announcement for more information about how V-Person integrates with this platform to provide a positive self-service experience.

Also be sure to download this guide for five important questions to ask when choosing a virtual agent solution for instant messaging platforms and SMS.