Facebook plans to introduce service chatbots and live chat APIs and officially debut these features next week at its F8 conference. It aims to use its standalone chat app Messenger to connect users with businesses.
Chatbots can replace hotline 1-800 and Facebook wants them on Messenger. While companies do not have the technical skills or resources to build their own chatbots, Facebook likes to provide them to business clients. It is planning to give toolkits to developers for live chat APIs and customer service chatbots.
The features will connect businesses with chatbot developers approved by Facebook. Hence, companies can focus on their businesses instead of trying to build a complex automated responses system. They can leave that to the social media company.
As per the presentation for chatbot developers containing description of some functionalities, the feature will reportedly go beyond just text chatbots to respond to structured messages. It will have a title, description, image, link and a call to action, such as, to make a restaurant reservation, visit a site or view an e-commerce order, TechCrunch reported.
Messenger wil also be made universal with plug-ins that can be installed on a site's Contact page. Eventually, instead of contacting a website's Contact Us by a call or an email, people can just prefer to use Messenger.com on the Web, or Messenger on iOS where they can also live chat with company representatives.
The social network firm will provide the means while businesses will find the resources to implement the feature. The feature will carry with it, a user-targeting advert in Messenger. With a fee, advertisers would be able to send ads to users whom they have already chatted with. This is Facebook's way of making money with the upcoming feature, according to MacRumors.
On April 7, Thursday, Messenger was seen to have a small update with truncated Messenger codes and links, providing businesses with easy-to-remember usernames. The social network also launched last week, an airline bot that centers on KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, giving users threaded ticket, check-in information and boarding time in Messenger.
The video to follow is CNET's report about chatbots coming to Facebook.