EPISODE 24 - The Seb Rusk Show - Facebook Developer Conference F8 - Messenger 2.0 Updates

SPEAKER_01 0:28

What is happening, everybody? Hey, welcome back to the show. I am your host, Sebastian Rusk, and as always, welcome to the show. So I don't know if you got the memo or not. Facebook had their annual developer conference, F8, yesterday. I believe it was in San Jose. Yeah, it was the San Jose Convention Center. And had some big announcements, big announcements pertaining to artificial intelligence and social media. Imagine that. And how it all works together within their messenger platform. You see, this messenger platform is so much more than just a texting platform. Yes, it's great to be able to communicate, to reach out, to talk to people, to have conversations. But when it comes to branding, when it comes to your business, there is so much more happening and going to be taking place with Facebook Messenger and for your business. Let me preface things real quick by helping you understand that Facebook Messenger currently has artificial intelligence, AI for short, capabilities, auto responses, if you will, which means yes, you can set up a robot to respond to your customers, but that doesn't mean it's end-all set it and forget it. Let me back up a little bit. A few episodes ago, we briefly talked about Facebook Messenger, how vital it was, chat bots, that's essentially a robot that will chat on your behalf, not for you, not permanently, but on your behalf. For instance, I go to your page, Joe's Dry Cleaner, and I send a message. Hi, Joe, looking for a new dry cleaner. Wanted to know if you can be competitive with my existing one. They always break my buttons, um, steal my collar stays, and stain my shirts. Thanks in advance for your help. I hit send. Maybe Joe is not sitting there waiting for that message to come in, as most business owners aren't. But Joe and his digital team at Social Buzz TV have helped him set up an actual chat bot for Facebook Messenger for his Facebook business page, right? So Joe's not getting back to me right away, but I'm getting a response that says, hey Sebastian, first of all, it's really great to hear from you. Sorry about your experience with your existing dry cleaner. We would love to be of service for you. So what does that mean? That means that me, as a prospective customer, is getting instant gratification by Joe's dry cleaner. Why? Because they've given me a personal touch to respond to me almost immediately. Not like one of those support tickets you'd fill out to say, we've received your request and we'll be in touch. Well, thanks, Captain Obvious. I'm looking for a solution. Now, let's say that it is a local restaurant and someone's inquiring on whether or not you have Sunday brunch. So we say we got uh Mary's Cafe around the corner, and I call or send a message on their Facebook page. Do you guys have a Saturday brunch? I know you have a Sunday brunch, but do you have a Saturday brunch? And I get an instant response back from Mary's Cafe that says, Hey Sebastian, it's really great to hear from you. Thanks a ton for reaching out. Not only do we have a Saturday brunch, in addition to our Sunday brunch, but we'd love to have you. So here's a coupon for a free uh mimosa when you come in for brunch on Saturday. They've given this to me based on an automatic response that I've received from them. I went, sent them a message, their chatbot got back to me, responded like a human, I don't care if it was or not, made me feel like a human and incentivized me to do what I was already going to do. Does that make sense? So, the reason I'm bringing this up is if you have a Facebook, let me be very clear about this. If you have a Facebook business page, you must make sure that you have some sort of reply-response solution in place. Why? Well, Facebook will penalize you by not being able to have a reply or based on your response time, is how they penalize you. So if you go to a page that says, this brand typically replies within three days. This brand typically replies within 24 hours. This brand usually instantly replies. And they know exactly how you're responding, when message you're coming in, if you listen to the or if you read the message, if you respond right away, they know more than we do. They always will. So they can penalize you accordingly. That is why your Facebook Messenger within your Facebook business page is absolutely vital to the ongoing success and customer service success of your business. And most important, allows you to be one step ahead of your competition. If you're a small or local business, if you're a traditional business like a law firm or a dentist or an insurance agent, I can guarantee your competition is not thinking about chat bots right now and how they can make sure that their Facebook Messenger game is on point for their Facebook business page. So let this episode sink in because I'm gonna dive in to what Facebook announced yesterday at their developer conference, and I'm gonna blow your noodle on what's about to take place here with Facebook Messenger. So it's vital to get a grip. Today, go to your Facebook page, go to Facebook Messenger, the Messenger where you would read your replies, go into the settings and start to explore what you can do to come up with a solution to make sure you are communicating with customers instantly. Not tomorrow, not when you get around to it, instantly. All right. This link, or this document rather, will be, or link to this document will be provided in the show notes. So I just suggest taking notes and then you can go back and skim through. This is a five-page document, and uh I don't want to be reading the entire thing until lunchtime, so which is in about oh, I don't know, an hour. No, we got about 15 minutes left of the show here to skim through this five-page document that has a lot of content. So I'm just gonna skim through, give you my two cents, read what I feel is important, and then of course you can go back and read what you see fit. Hey, if you're just joining us, maybe just tuning in, maybe you're listening to this episode, I don't know, a couple months down the road from now. We appreciate you. If you're listening right now, if you're tuning in on Facebook Live as we record the show, we appreciate each and every one of you. Appreciate your comments, your feedback. I see some comments coming through here. I don't want to ADD out, so I'm not trying to respond to comments uh on Facebook Live and record the show at the same time. So send me a tweet, drop me an email, srusk at socialbuzztv.com. All right, let's get right down to it. Platform 2.0 announcements as of yesterday, April 18th, um, at the Facebook Developer F8 conference in San Jose, California. What's new with Messenger? The Messenger platform is evolving to meet the growing needs of people and businesses. At Facebook Developers Conference F8, they announce updates that are helping people and businesses interact in new ways. Some of these changes call for immediate action by businesses and other paint a picture and others paint a picture of how people and businesses will communicate. So, some of these announcements mean this stuff needs to be implemented immediately, i.e., your Facebook Messenger strategy for your business, right? There's no delay on this, there's no waiting for this. Technology doesn't slow down for any of us. In fact, it only gets faster, and it's not gonna definitely not gonna go backwards. So the time is now. One of my favorite quotes how soon not now becomes never from the great Martin Luther. Improving the discovery of businesses and bots to help people discover new experiences from bots, businesses, and more. Facebook created a new discovery surface in Messenger. Discover makes it easier for your customers to find you and proactively communicate on their terms. Remember, it's not about you as a brand, it's about them. Discover will launch to a small number of people in the United States on April 18th and will continue rolling out gradually to all users. We recommend that businesses set the right expectations for people by making sure their information is up to date. Follow the instructions below to update your page categorization and set up a welcome greeting. All right, so here's step by step. Let's just dive into these steps real quick. And of course, you're gonna want to be able to reference this document so you can go back and say, okay, uh, I did all the steps Sebastian read uh on the Facebook white papers. Facebook's telling you exactly what you need to do, okay? So again, follow the instructions below, update your page categorization, and set up a welcome greeting. If you already have a bot for Messenger, that means you've gone to your Facebook page and you've set up a chat bot of some sort. If that doesn't make sense and it sounds like Chinese, you have not set it up yet. If you need help, hit me up. My team is really good at it. If you already have a bot for Messenger, choose the category that best describes your bot by having a page admin find the messenger platform section in your page settings. This is what I was telling you to do earlier. This will help the right people discover your business on Messenger. Even if you have not built on the Messenger platform, that means you don't have a bot. All Facebook pages automatically have a profile in Messenger. So make sure to set up your messenger greeting by having your page admin. That's your tech guy. Um, go to the page settings, find the messaging section, and choose show a messenger greeting. Otherwise, Facebook will auto-populate messenger preference and uh with the brief about description that happens to be on your page. So if you don't go in and do this, when people find your business, they're just gonna grab the about us that's already on your existing Facebook page. If you don't have an existing about us on your Facebook page, shame on you. You should. Now, if you don't want Messenger to help drive discovery of your business, that means you don't want people to utilize and leverage Messenger to find you as a business, which I don't know why they you would not want that to happen. Um, if you don't want Messenger to help you do drive discovery of your business, page admins have the option to opt out, which will never make sense to me. Opt out of discover completely by going to page settings, finding the messenger platform section and choosing hide under discover visibility. So, yeah, go and hide on a Facebook platform with billions of people that may want to find your business and do business with you makes absolute complete sense. Insert sarcasm here. Uh making artificial intelligence more accessible for businesses. On Messenger, every month there are over two billion messages sent between people and businesses, including both automated and people initiated. And a growing number of people expect businesses to be responsive. That's right. We're living in a convenience world. We want it yesterday. We want it right now. And if you can't give it to me right now as a brand, I will just go to the next person in line, which FYI is your competition. Over two million messages sent in between people and businesses, including both automated and people initiated. A growing number of people expect businesses to be responsive. In fact, nearly 20 million businesses are actively messaging people every month. Twenty million businesses are actively messaging with people every month. 20 million is not a small number. If you're not actively utilizing Facebook Messenger to communicate, leverage it for sales, customer service, and communication with your network, you are being grossly negligent to capitalizing on a platform that could help grow your business, grow your platform, and increase your social proof because you're the real deal responding back to people via text message and meeting them where they're at. Facebook's found through analysis that a large percentage of questions received by restaurants can be answered through the AI assisted automation. That's artificial intelligence assisted automation, i.e., a chat bot. Starting with 10% of restaurant pages in the United States, businesses will now be able to set up seven preset questions and answers, and then messengers AI tools will help respond to inbound messages. I'm going to read that one more time because it's huge. Starting with 10% of restaurant pages in the United States, businesses will be able to now set up seven preset questions and answers, and then messengers, AI tools will help the business respond to inbound messages from customers, prospects, and people interacting with their brand. When there are no smart replies available, the business can just respond as usual. In the future, smart replies, air quotes, will learn from these responses to improve quality over time. So basically, you're setting up seven preset questions that you know about your business and answers. And then Facebook's AI assisted automation takes that data and is able to spit out an answer based on the information you've given. Now, based on the conversation, how that grows, and how you tweak the questions and the answers, and how AI responds and the requests from customers, all of that's going to constantly be tweaked and changed. But as it stands right now, those that data that you're putting in really helps the customer, the prospect, whoever's talking to you, and also Facebook's AI automated system really digest the conversation of what is taking place. Now, for most businesses, there is no action time at this time relative to smart replies. So if you'd like to improve your business's responsiveness in Messenger, learn more about the best practices for messaging from your page by completing a brief blueprint e-learning course available at facebook.com forward slash blueprint. Write that down. So inviting bots to join the conversation. Sometimes people want to experience a bot interaction with a friend. Imagine how much easier it would be to coordinate a shopping list with your roommates by inviting a grocery list bot into the conversation. For this reason and so many more, we're launching tools, we meaning Facebook, launching tools for developers to build experiences that multiply, excuse me, that multiple people can interact with at the same time. Chat extensions expand the capabilities of a bot, augmenting existing conversations people have one-to-one or in a group. So as if we weren't not personal as it is and digitally addicted, um, the situation is only going to get worse or better. Depends how you look at it. For businesses, we know that the group decision making happens all the time. Group decision making in business happens all the time. And it happens through messaging apps. So you may want to consider different use cases where your business can add value to a conversation between two or more people. This would allow friends and family to interact with your business at the same time. This is crazy. This is deep. I know. This is like, whoa. Welcome to the future, kids. Experience yourself what developers like Spotify, Food Network, Open Table have utilized to build chat extensions by opening the drawer and Messenger's redesign composer. You select a chat bot like Spotify, you search for a song, and you share it in an existing conversation with one tap. That's right. Have you heard that new song from Kendrick Lamar? One tap, boom, your friend is listening to it within the chat box. We hope these early adopters will inspire you to consider future opportunities for your own business. Assisting people with time-saving shortcuts is also another component they talked about on a what's new with Messenger. M, you may have seen it when you're in typing a reply to a friend. It's a very attractive looking M on the bottom left-hand side of your screen, right above the text conversation in Instant Messenger, or in Facebook Messenger, rather. It's called M. M is your helpful assistant in Messenger powered by Facebook's artificial intelligence. M offers helpful suggestions by popping into an open conversation to suggest relevant content and capabilities to enrich the way people communicate and get things done. Now, you may have seen an example of this when you put in a date and time, and Facebook automatically says, Would you like to set a reminder for this date and time? And would you like to label this conversation for that meeting? You may have said, I'll just take an Uber there, and an option pops up for you to click and actually order Uber in real time. Computers think for us, friends, as long as we allow them to. Suggestions from M began rolling out to people in the U.S. on April 6th, just a couple short weeks ago, and are just the start of what a proactive, helpful, and useful assistant can offer. So M within M Messenger is your Surrey, if you will, for Facebook Messenger. It is your virtual assistant, artificial intelligent virtual assistant. Say that fast five times. As M suggestions become smarter, and they will because computers will always be smarter than we are. We plan to connect consumer content. Excuse me. We plan Facebook as as in we Facebook plan to connect consumer intent with relevant business offering. This will take time to get right, so we're working with a few select partners like Lyft, Uber, and Delivery.com to build high value experiences for people. I hadn't read that paragraph, but I gave the example, so I was right on time. For example, food ordering triggered by M will be a shared experience. So all participants in a conversation can add food to one order, then use native payments for frictionless experience end-to-end. So it's poker night at the house. All your buddies are over. There's a couple friends that just say they're gonna chip in, they say they're gonna pay you back, but they never do. That solves that issue because everybody just hops on Messenger, says, I'd like Chinese, I'd like Pad Thai, I'd like some sushi, let's throw some wonton soup into the mix there. Everyone throws into this group conversation some food ideas. M comes back with restaurant and venue business uh recommendations. Everybody picks one and then has the unique ability to go and pay for their individual meal within the group conversation. Crazy. Crazy, I tell you. So, for example, food ordering triggered by M will be a shared experience so all participants in a conversation can add food to one order and then use native payments for frictionless experience end-to-end. Now, there's no immediate action for businesses at this time. The messenger team is focused on building a useful experience for the 1.2 billion people who use Messenger every month. Yes, I did just say 1.2 billion people who use Messenger every month. Future opportunities for businesses to integrate into the Messenger Composer will be shared when they are ready. Expanding tools to continue the conversation when people interact with business in Messenger, it could be the start of conversation that lasts a few minutes or a few days. Whether they want to learn about a new product or they're trying to resolve customer service issues, your customer has a variety of reasons for communicating with you. We recognize that certain scenarios may not be resolved immediately, and more than one conversation between business and consumer may need to take place. Example, customer service issues, changes to a reservation at a hotel or a restaurant, shipping updates, et cetera, et cetera. As a result, uh Facebook recently introduced updates to the messenger policy that will allow you to proactively send certain types of messages as notifications to customers. So if your business is focused on customer support, consider using our new tools to continue messenger conversations about shipping updates, reservation updates, and issue resolution. So soon and very soon, all of our reservation logistics details, bookings, shipping, et cetera, will with a click of a mouse or click of a thumb give us all the information we're looking for. Passing the baton between automation and live chat, as you consider the right presence for your business and messenger, you may find that customers want to be able to get quick answers to common questions through automation, as well as receive more personalized customer support from live agents. Due to technical constraints, some businesses have created two separate pages to provide service and to host their bots for Messenger. But this is not the best practice. Stop setting up multiple pages for multiple features. The new handover protocol enables two applications on the Facebook Messenger platform to collaborate and power the same bot. This will make it possible for a bot to simultaneously use one application for automated responses and another application for customer service with live agents. To enable this new solution, you'll need to work with one of Facebook's selected alpha partners. Please reach out to your Facebook representative for more information. Connecting customer experience from your apps and messenger. Many businesses today own an app that leverages Facebook. Login may want to engage with the same audience in Messenger. Um, it has been difficult for businesses to tailor their experiences across two channels because they currently have two different types of IDs for the same user. With the launch of ID matching API, businesses can now serve the right experience to the right person in a privacy-safe way, regardless of whether or not you want to interact with the app or the bot. Overall, Facebook Messenger is improving interaction from the physical world. Messenger codes are a great tool to drive offline to online traffic to Messenger, right? So each business, this is key, each when you're setting up your options, so you go into your page settings, messenger options, there's a thing called a messenger code. If you're familiar with Snapchat, you've seen Snapchat codes almost identical. This allows people to take it. You can print these things off, you can put them in your marketing material, you can put them on the back of your business card, you can create bumper stickers, flyers, whatever you would do to traditionally market yourself offline, you would do through this messenger code. Because people scan that code through Messenger, and guess what? They are instantly connected to you. They take a picture of your messenger code and are instantly connected to you. Messenger codes are a great tool to drive offline to online traffic to Messenger. Anybody out there interested in taking their business or their customers offline to online? I'm raising two hands here. To increase discoverability and utility of your messenger experience in the physical world, Facebook needed to improve the scanning of messenger codes for people. Now you can simply use our native camera, not an option behind several menus, to start a conversation with your business from places like point of purchase signage, product packaging, and more. Facebook has also launched the ability for businesses to create multiple codes that can deep link into a specific capability for your body. For example, you may want to send people directly into a reservation booking service or to a curated shopping carousel. In addition, you could generate multiple messenger codes to track which ones are getting scanned most often. Different products, different codes, scanning, tracking, which ones do people scan, which ones do people not scan allows you to optimize your marketing. Within here, there's a link. You can learn more about what messenger codes can do for your business. The conclusion here of Facebook's Developer Conference, F8, is getting started with Messenger. The connections that businesses are building with customers on Messenger are just starting to improve their worth. We hope that we, meeting Facebook, hopes that you consider how your next campaign may come to life in this medium that continues to grow in importance for the way people behave on mobile. For more information about how to get started, contact your Facebook representative or use the resources below. Again, this document will be provided in the show notes. So I'll put the link in the Facebook Live comment section. I'll include it on YouTube when I upload the replay of the Facebook Live. But as you can see, Facebook Messenger is continuing to grow exponentially, making life easier for your customers and you as a business. Don't wait until this is the absolute staple for how people communicate. Don't wait until everything else that you're currently doing is phased out because people would much rather open Messenger, never talk to a human being, get their solution or problem resolved instantaneously. Well, we know what that sound means. I am out of breath and out of time after going through that six-page uh document that Facebook produced almost instantaneously after their Facebook uh developer conference F8 in San Jose, California yesterday. Hey, I appreciate each and every one of you tuning in. Hey, without you guys, this show does not happen. If you like the show and you're listening to this and you're thinking, hey, you know what, I have a brand, or I'm an entrepreneur, a solarpreneur, I run marketing for a brand. I think my brand needs a podcast. Well, you're in the right place to be able to do that. We recently launched the podcast launch lab. Go to podcastlaunchlab.com, send your information to us, and um we're looking for, we've got about six spots left. We had we open it up to 10 spots for our initial rollout of the podcast launch lab. But this is a 30-day program. You get to work with myself and my team once a week to produce the first four episodes. We send you the equipment you need, a professional intro, um, put together a logo, and again, we're spending an hour a week for the first 30 days, and then we have an ongoing program where we do group coaching. You have access to a private Facebook group, and we do all the done for you editing of all of your podcast episodes. So podcasts are a great way. If you're petrified of the camera, I'm clearly not, but I've got a great face for radio, so that's why I choose to launch a podcast. But it is the new radio. We can go to the podcast store and download whatever podcasts interest us and listen to them at our leisure while we work out, before we go to bed, when we wake up in the morning, when we go for a walk, when we're on an airplane, when we're traveling, when we're in the car. The ease of use is there, the content's there, and it allows you as a brand to really tell the story of your of your brand and of your business and what you do. So, more information at podcastlaunchlab.com. Like I said, we got six spots available. Um we've filled like four already, which is incredible. I'm really excited about it. But uh send me your info. We'll schedule a call. I'll walk you through the park. There's no direct link I'm sending you to just show you what it's all about. That's my job uh to help you understand what you don't know that you don't know about the podcast, launch lab, the world of podcasting, and really the why of why your brand needs it. Okay, seriously, we are out of time. So uh until next time, I'm Sebastian Rusk signing off from our studio here at Social Buzz TV Inside Business. We'll talk to you next time.