Chatbots are also operational 24/7, so youâve got someone covering you even when youâre off working hours or busy with meetings/complex tasks.
Optimize Your Workflow with Chatbots for Facebook Messenger!
Chatbots have changed the game for customer engagement and interactions and they’re almost a necessity for any business, big or small. It streamlines both your workflow and response times, leaving you space to deal with more complex problems and queries.
Unfortunately, not everyone has embraced or is aware of chatbots, so today, we’re featuring the 5 Best Free Chatbots for Facebook Messenger! We’ll tell you all you need to know about using a Facebook Messenger bot and the best ways to utilize the tool.
Before that, let’s take a moment to go over what a chatbot is, how they work, and some great tips to get you started.
What is a Facebook Messenger Bot?
A Facebook Messenger Bot is essentially an extra pair of hands that help manage your online engagement. Typically, there are two types of chatbots that can help your business; rule-based chatbots and AI chatbots.
Both have their pros and cons which we’ll dive deeper into down below.
Their purpose though is the same; to handle customer messages/queries, answer FAQs, send alerts and reminders, lead generation, follow up on potential customers, and much more.
Facebook Messenger chatbots will eventually handle the bulk of your daily messages, be it asking a question or following up on an order, leaving you more time to deal with more urgent tasks.
In short, think of a chatbot as an assistant who’s available 24/7 to respond to your customers.
How do Facebook Messenger Bots Work?
Facebook Messenger Bots are of two kinds – rule-based chatbots or AI chatbots.
Rule-based chatbots work using a decision tree, a set of predefined responses provided by you. The chatbot recognizes certain keywords you’ve trained it with to list appropriate responses.
These are typically simple questions/messages, like checking order statuses, making reservations, hotel bookings, etc. This also serves as a frontline to your customers, after which they can be transferred over to a human service representative to handle the request.
AI chatbots, on the other hand, are far more complex utilizing natural language processing (NLP) models and deep machine learning to understand human context and questions.
Customers type as they would to a human agent, and the AI chatbot emulates human speech and responds accordingly.
AI chatbots are far more capable and versatile than rule-based chatbots that typically only handle simple tasks and queries. You don’t need human assistance when using an AI chatbot, so long as they have relevant training data for the request.
Best Practices to Use Messenger Bots for Your Business
Keep it Short & Simple
The first thing to keep in mind is to keep it short and sweet. Don’t overcrowd your bot’s responses with more than 3 – 4 options per response, and keep sentences short and to the point. Add relevant emojis/images to keep responses engaging.
This lets the chatbot’s conversation flow smoothly, without overwhelming customers who need a simple answer to their queries. It’s also a good idea to make sure the words you use are simple enough for anyone to understand.
Avoid jargon/abbreviations your customer may not know.
Plan Ahead
Eventually, you’ll notice a pattern of FAQs from customers. Your messenger bot’s first goal should be to address these questions, saving both you and your customer’s time.
Build easy-to-understand pathways that splinter off into more informative responses for specific questions. Make sure to think carefully when deciding these pathways, as customers can feel thrown off if the chatbot responds with something irrelevant.
Structure a simple greeting with the top 3 – 4 FAQs, splintering off into more specific issues/questions a customer may ask. Not only does this save you time, but by answering customer questions promptly, they’re more likely to purchase/hire your services.
More than Just Customer Service
Besides customer service, messenger chatbots can do a lot more to grow your business.
Facebook Messenger has plenty of built-in tools to take advantage of, like the welcome screen when they try to message your business. Here, you can leave a brief explanation about your business/services and a custom banner to increase brand awareness.
You’ll also have a “Get Started” call-to-action button that directs to your chatbot. This is a simple, yet effective way for potential customers to learn about your business and engage with your services.
Additionally, you can use your chatbot to send messages with deals/sales they might be interested in. This should be an opt-in option for tagged customers interested in certain products.
The Top 5 Free Chatbots for Facebook Messenger
1ManyChat
ManyChat is one of the most popular chatbot builders around, and they’re well connected with over 2000+ integrations to connect to platforms like PayPal, Stripe, Google Sheets, Zapier, and more.
It also has a great visual drag-and-drop interface which makes it simple to create complex chatbots. Plus, there’s a great variety of templates to get you started quickly and can customize to your needs.
ManyChat has three plans to choose from; Free, Pro, and Premium.
The Free plan can deploy to Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp with up to 1000 contacts. The free plan is pretty comprehensive and includes growth tools for customer outreach as well as 10 customer tags to segment your audience.
Not to mention ManyChat allows unlimited chatbot flows which is vital to create a complex & versatile chatbot. Considering that these features are typically locked behind paid plans, including them gets ManyChat the top spot on our list.
2Tidio
Tidio is another great option if you need to build a no-code visual chatbot builder with a drag-and-drop interface. There are over 40 templates to help you get started, including templates for generating leads and reducing cart abandonment.
It’s not short on integrations either, and supports most of the popular platforms like Shopify, WordPress, Zapier, Wix, Google Analytics, and more.
Tidio has three plans to choose from; Free, Starter, and Communicator.
The free plan includes 50 AI conversations, 50 chatbot conversations, and 100 chatbot triggers. It’s a pretty limited plan considering ManyChat’s generous offerings, but its simplified visual builder and plentiful template selection are great resources for beginners.
3Chatfuel
Chatfuel is a simple-to-use chatbot builder with a robust drag-and-drop builder. There are over 60 templates to get you started, with templates ranging from eCommerce, restaurants, sales, travel, real estate, etc.
Chatfuel also has built-in ChatGPT integration, which you can use to answer customer prompts, tell stories, contests, and more. It’s an added bonus that can help build engagement with your audience.
However, it has limited integration support, officially supporting Calendly, ChatGPT, Stripe, and Zapier.
Chatfuel has 7 plans to choose from: Trial, Entrepreneur, Startup, Small Business, Growing Business, and Enterprise. The pricing scheme is based solely on conversations in a month, with the Trial plan allowing 50 conversations per month.
This isn’t much to begin with, but the Entrepreneur and Startup plans are pretty affordable if you need more.
4Flow XO
Flow XO is a well-equipped chat bot messenger builder that supports channels like Telegram, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, web, SMS, Slack, and more. Similar to Tidio and Chatfuel, Flow XO uses a no-code visual builder to easily create versatile chatbots.
Flow XO also supports over 100 native integrations to popular CRMs, payment channels, Google Suite, email, and more. Once you’ve created a chatbot, you can deploy it to any of the supported platforms for a seamless brand voice.
It also supports seamless transitions across platforms. If your customer started a conversation on Facebook Messenger, it can transfer the chat to the web bot on your main site, retaining the entire conversation.
Flow XO is available for free and includes the Flow XO for Chat, Flow XO for Workflow, 500 interactions, 2 weeks log retention, and 5 active bots & workflows. If you need extra, you can subscribe to the Standard Plan for $19 a month.
5Freshchat
Freshchat is another solid option if you want a fully fledged ecosystem for a chatbot builder. It supports a great roster of channels including Facebook Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, email, SMS, Line, Google Business Messages, Telegram, web, and LINE.
It’s got a solid selection of integrations too, like Slack, Stripe, CALENDLY, Shopify, WordPress, and more. It’s not as plentiful as ManyChat, but it’s good enough for most businesses.
Plus, Freshchat also has AI powered chatbots to automate resolutions and speed up handle times.
The best part is, it’s included in the free version too. Freshchat has 4 plans: Free, Growth, Pro, and Enterprise. The Free plan includes 100 campaign contacts, chatbot analytics, group segmentation, and AI chatbots.
The Limitations of Messenger Bots
While messenger bots are a great value-add to your business, it has its limits. Here are some potential problems you might run into –
Potential Security Risk
No system or software is 100% protected against threats by people with malicious intent. If a hacker finds a vulnerability in your system, they could use the chatbot to spread malware to your customers.
Additionally, if your data isn’t properly protected with end-to-end encryption, for example, customer/company data could be stolen.
Chatbots aren’t Perfect
While AI is now coming up in the chatbot industry, it isn’t widely applicable yet. For the most part, businesses still use rule-based chatbots for simpler tasks and if AI is available, it isn’t as fleshed out.
This can lead to customer dissatisfaction if the chatbot doesn’t resolve a situation amicably. Humans are complex, and unfortunately, chatbots still aren’t at the level where they understand that complexity.
The Missing Human Element
Probably the biggest problem with chatbots, especially when it comes to customer support services is the missing human element.
Chatbots are useful and can provide simple solutions to simple problems, but they lack the ability to critically analyse customer queries and creatively solve the problem. Plus, customers may find it cumbersome to use a chatbot and prefer speaking to a human agent.
These aren’t problems we can solve just yet, but eventually, we see a bigger and brighter future for chatbots.
The Future of Messenger Bots
While there are glaring problems that still exist, as a whole, we think there’s a lot to expect from chatbots and how they fit in with your business. In a few short years, we’ve started moving from simple rule-based chatbots, to fully-fledged AI that understands contextual cues.
It isn’t perfect just yet, but as time goes on, eventually, we see chatbots as a necessity for every business. It will completely take over mundane, repetitive tasks while keeping both your customers and staff satisfied.
Chatbots already save you a lot of time and money, while streamlining your daily operations.
Eventually, we predict chatbots will be capable enough to handle an entire department’s worth of work, leaving time for people to ideate even better products and services and solve complex problems.
The good news is, we’re not too far off from that future. AI chatbots like ChatInsight processing are getting better by the day. If there were any time to start building out a chatbot, it’s now.
FAQs
You can also customize the prebuilt templates that chatbot builders provide.
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