Facebook spruces up Bot Messengers with quick replies, the ability to rate them, and much more
Facebook today detailed changes to their Messenger Bots. Messenger Bots are AI-driven chat bots that can help you interact with a company. For instance, you could chat with a 1-800-Flowers bot to help manage one of your orders with natural language chat messages.
Anyway, those bots are getting a ton of new features today. One of the biggest additions is the ability to choose from a number of quick reply options, up to 10 in some cases. Not only does this help save time, but it also gives you a way to learn the types of commands you should be using for each bot.
Here’s a full list of the changes on tap, per Facebook:
- Ratings: People can now provide a star rating and open text feedback for bot developers. Ratings and reviews are currently shared with only the bot developer through a dashboard in developers.facebook.com and via email.
- Quick replies: Quick replies offer a more guided experience for people as they interact with your bot, which helps set expectations on what the bot can do. They include up to ten dynamic buttons that directly align with the most recent message sent by the business – making it easier to have an automated conversation with people. They allow for simple state management for developers — no need to manage button taps from ten messages ago — and make chat history cleaner, by only showing the selected responses.
- Persistent menu: The navigation for your bot with support for up to five actions. This eliminates the need for people to remember text commands and provides a great way to restart the flow or invoke settings. This will help with bot re-engagement and consistency.
- Account linking: We’re launching a secure protocol for businesses to connect their customers’ accounts with Messenger accounts, enabling a deeper and more personal experience. People will have to opt in to this experience.
- More content types: GIFs, Audio, Video, and Files Get your brand’s personality across by sending a variety of content types. You can now send GIFs, audio, video, and other files to people using your bot in Messenger. Videos and audio clips play natively in Messenger.
- More Control: Manage / Mute / Ratings Now, people have even more ways to optimize their experiences with bots in Messenger. People can choose to mute a bot just like they can mute a conversation with their friends and they can also provide a star rating and feedback for bot developers. Ratings and reviews are currently shared with only the bot developer through a dashboard in developers.facebook.com (http://developers.facebook.com/) and via email.
All of this should be rolling out to the web and mobile apps right now, so stay on the lookout for it if it’s something you’re looking forward to.