The F8 is an event that grows year after year and that shows the diversity that the brand led by Mark Zuckerberg has, since it is not only about showing the potential that the brand has to become a business prop, but also a hotbed of applications that developers can use.
During its last presentation, the company presented some innovations focused on conversational commerce, one of the trends in e-commerce that has gained relevance, after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Now the Messenger API for Instagram is available to all developers, which will allow brands to offer messaging experiences on the social network. With these new features, companies can integrate messaging into their preferred applications and workflows. This can lead to more meaningful conversations that increase customer satisfaction and lead to increased sales, according to the brand.
“Today hundreds of millions of people message businesses on Messenger and Instagram every month. Developer partners were invaluable every step of the way, in fact messaging was enabled for more than 500 million businesses in the last year. worldwide, “Ankur Prassad, director of business messaging at Facebook, said during the presentation.
According to figures from the Mexican company Yalo, mobile phone users spend 84% of their time on instant messaging applications, and during the last year they have talked with companies to answer questions or rely on purchases they are making online.
For its part, Instagram indicates that 90% of the people who are on the platform follow at least one business and messaging is a key reason why they do so. Whether it’s responses to Stories, direct messages, or mentions, engaging with brands is becoming more attractive to consumers and important to business.
“Our vision is that messaging becomes the primary channel in communication between people and companies. We want to make it as convenient, discreet and personalized as possible, using the same applications and features that they use today to communicate with family and friends, ”said Konstantinos Papa Miltiadis, vice president of platform associations at Facebook.
In addition to the opening of the Messenger API, during F8 the progress made by the WhatsApp API for Business was also presented.
“Every day, more than 175 million people send messages to a WhatsApp for Business account to inquire about products and receive customer service,” said Papa Miltiadis.
By having this number of people interacting, the company presented some new features in the messaging service API, such as:
Faster onboarding – A feature that cuts the time it takes for businesses to get started with the WhatsApp Business API, reducing the onboarding process from weeks to just five minutes.
Receive more information from businesses: People are interested in receiving additional information on WhatsApp, such as updates on their purchases. So the company is looking to improve the way businesses communicate with their customers as more companies use WhatsApp. The idea of the company is to support more of these types of messages, allowing people to know when a product is in stock again, for example.
New Messaging Features: These features include list messages, so users can reply without typing, as well as reply buttons, so people can make a selection with a quick touch.
In addition to these couple of announcements, the company announced Login Connect with Messenger, a way for users to access business applications and websites, directly sending messages to companies.
“Among the test participants who enabled Login Connect, so far we have seen that more than 70% of users have opted for messaging. With this source of new conversations with the customer, companies can deepen their interactions with people through messaging, offering a more efficient and personalized service. This function is currently in beta version and will be available in the following months ”, specified the company.
