Facebook and [24]7 jointly offer a new service that makes it possible for enterprise chat agents (both live and automated) to join a Facebook Messenger-based conversation while carrying out digital commerce. The service is called Facebook Messenger for the Enterprise and was demonstrated in a Webinar held on October 20 by [24]7 in conjunction with the social networking giant. The Webinar included a demo which starts with an individual completing a purchase on an retailer’s e-commerce Web site. As soon as the order is completed, the merchant initiates a chat with the customer via Facebook Messenger to confirm completion of the order and provide the requisite details, like invoice total, expected ship date and a tracking number.

The outbound ‘alert’ is the first post in what Bryan Hurren, strategic partnerships manager for Facebook Messenger, referred to as a “canonical thread” that, over time will include the complete transaction history and two-way chat. The company and its chat agents, in effect, join the customer’s community of Facebook friends, who can exchange text messages through the Messenger app. Because each customer’s “real identity” is authenticated through Facebook, the enterprise is able to originate personalized messages relating to the transaction that has taken place. If the customer replies or initiates a query, in the same thread, the company has the “canonical thread” to use to provide context for an informed response.

During the Q&A that followed the meat of the Webcast, many viewers asked about the validity of using the Facebook log-in to authenticate a customer, especially in the context of financial transactions or healthcare. My own question was, “at what point in the interaction does the merchant learn the customer’s name on Facebook?” Deepak Kumar, vice president of business development at [24]7 assured me that the customer does not have to use the Facebook log-in while on the merchant site, noting “that there is an active session going on in the browser,” and that, “if the customer has logged into Facebook using the browser, the connection is made.”

At any rate, they showed a button on the e-tailers Web site where a customer can opt-out of using Facebook Messenger for receiving messages from the merchant. Barring that, they are officially engaged in an ongoing conversation spanning alerts, virtual chat and live chat.

Onboarding for merchants is almost as simple. “All it takes is a single line of JavaScript,” [24]7’s Kumar explained. That computer code establishes a new communication path with Facebook users. The initial communications is one way and asynchronous but, once established becomes two-way and instantaneous. [24]7 provides the virtual and live chat assistance as a service.

In this article in Wired Magazine, David Rowan explains how former PayPal executive David Marcus is taking “baby steps” toward making the Facebook Messenger mobile app into “the company’s next great global platform.” Marcus joined the company in August 2014. At that time Messenger had about 400 million active users (meaning people that used it more than once a month. Today there are more than 700 million actives and the app has been downloaded more than with more than a billion times to Android devices alone.

Part and parcel of Marcus’ strategy is to provide mobile users with new, convenient ways to carry on conversations with the businesses of their choice, and to ensure they do it “within the Facebook ecosystem.” In August 2014, we noted how Facebook M enabled mobile users to use their own words to seek advice from a network of live individuals with domain expertise. The chat-like conversational user interface provides a natural way for people to ask questions in their own words to get intelligent assistance. As they receive successful responses they are simultaneously training the platform and being trained to trust the technology and use the service more frequently.

Hurren calls Facebook, overall , as a highly entertaining, “lean back” medium. Facebook Messenger, by contrast, is an engaging  platform that brings “the intimacy of retail” to the world mobile digital commerce. In this endeavor his team has a role model overseas. As Rowan points out in the Wired article, Chinese social media giant Tencent offers a messaging app that enables 600 million people to book taxis, check in for flights, play games, buy cinema tickets, manage banking, reserve doctors’ appointments, donate to charity and video-conference all without leaving Weixin, the Chinese version of its WeChat app.

More importantly, Facebook Messenger for the Enterprise, moves Facebook Messenger more than a baby step closer to David Marcus and ultimately Mark Zuckerberg’s vision for Messenger: to be the preferred (perhaps default) communications platform between people and the companies with which they want to carry out business.

Categories: Conversational Intelligence, Intelligent Assistants, Articles

Tags: Facebook, Intelligent Assistance, digital commerce, Messenger