It took nearly 70 years for TV to reach an audience of 1 billion people. The smartphone however, did it in just 5 years. In today’s increasingly digital landscape, there are more mobile phones in the world than there are people. Facebook acknowledges this trend and continually updates its existing products, and creates new products to help businesses satisfy the increasingly demanding needs of consumers.
Mobile usage is increasing the amount of information that consumers are seeking on the go. They are demanding real time information at their fingertips and Facebook’s Pages is the preferred way to satisfy this. There are over 50 million active business Pages on Facebook, which companies are using increasingly as a tool to communicate with their target audience. Consumers are equally accepting of Pages as a communication platform, as over 2.5 billion comments are left on Pages every month.
In early December 2015, Facebook announced some changes to Pages:
- Admins will have more control over their Page’s responsiveness badge. Companies were originally given automatic classifications, for instance, when 90% of messages were replied to within 5 minutes; the page was classified as “very responsive”. However now, Facebook are allowing admins to select whether they show that they respond either “within minutes,” “within an hour,” “within hours” or “within a day”. This is designed to manage customer expectations, as a company who typically respond within the hour, might set it to “within a day” to avoid disappointment.
- New features will make it easier for Page admins to manage both public and private interactions. A new messaging status called “away” will appear on the Page so that consumers know when the admins are offline, or unable to reply. Also, when this “away” status is used, admins can choose to automatically send ‘Away Messages’ or ‘Instant Replies’ to the consumer.
- Pages’ inbox has also been redesigned to give admins more information about the consumers who are messaging them. Next to the message box will appear key information which the consumer shares about themselves on their personal profile (for example, age, location, job history etc). Moreover, admins can add tags to categorise conversations and also add notes about the consumer (past orders, preferences, past customer service etc) This will help the admins respond quicker – as they don’t have to search for information; but also, it will enable them to deliver more personal responses to the consumers.
- An easier way to track comments on Pages. Under the ‘activity’ tab is a new feature that will help admins to monitor and respond to comments on their page. Similar to a typical email inbox functionality, admins can now see all the page comments in one place, and are able to mark them for follow up, mark them as done or reply privately to them.
With the aim of being the platform that offers the best customer service and the most mobile convenience for all its users (consumers and businesses alike), Facebook’s recent changes and updates to Pages are designed to better equip businesses to respond to the increasing consumer demands that are bought about by mobile technology.
In the future, Facebook are hoping to implement more updates and enhancements to Pages, such as check-ins, mentions and reviews. Keep an eye on the Think Management Blog for all the latest updates.
