Get Started with Customer Chat

Now in open beta

Earlier this month, we launched the Messenger customer chat plugin in closed beta as a simple way to allow people to chat with businesses on their websites and in Messenger. With this plugin, customers can transition back and forth seamlessly without losing the conversation’s history and context. We’ve received a lot of positive responses from our dev community, which is why we are excited to announce today that the customer chat plugin is available globally in open beta!

We would love to hear your feedback in our Messenger Platform Developer Group, so we can continue to make customer chat plugin even more awesome when it comes out of beta.

Details on how to get started and quick tips below!

How to install customer chat

Getting started is really easy:

1. Install the Facebook SDK on your website.
2. Whitelist your domain to connect your Facebook Page to your website via the Facebook tool . Page Settings > Messenger Platform > Whitelisted Domains
3. Add the plugin on your webpage by including a div with the following attribute in your HTML:

<div class="fb-customerchat"
page_id="<PAGE_ID>"
ref="<OPTIONAL_WEBHOOK_PARAM>"
theme_color="<HEX_COLOR_CODE>"
logged_in_greeting="<GREETING_MESSAGE_FOR_LOGGED_IN_USERS>"
logged_out_greeting="<GREETING_MESSAGE_FOR_LOGGED_OUT_USERS>">
</div>

Detailed setup and docs here.

Available Attributes

The following attributes will help you capture important information about your customers to deliver a more personalized experience or customize the behavior of the “Need Help” greeting bubble.

• Theref attribute: to pass any custom string to your webhook in messaging_postbacks and messaging_referrals events.
• The minimized attribute: specifies whether the plugin greeting text should be minimized or shown. Defaults to false on desktop and true on mobile browsers. False shows the Messenger logo and a “Need Help” greeting bubble while true will show only the Messenger logo.

Quick Tip #1: Add a welcome message with first name

Including your customer’s first name in the greeting message of both new and existing threads is a nice way to drive customer engagement. Here’s how to implement a personalized welcome message:

1. Handling NEW conversations: when a new conversation is started via the plugin and your bot has set up the Get Started button, we will send a messaging_postbacks webhook event to your webhook when the person enters the thread
2. Handling EXISTING conversations: whenever an existing thread is continued via the plugin, a messaging_referrals webhook event will be sent to your webhook.

Quick Tip #2: Provide customers with context

Having a conversation begin on your website and continue it on Messenger is a new experience for many customers. Including text to remind people that the conversation can continue even if they leave the website is helpful context for navigating this new experience.

Examples:

“If you ever need to return to this conversation, look for us in your Messenger inbox.”

(Out of Office): We’re currently out of the office but will reply as soon as we’re available. Look for a reply from us in your Messenger notifications.

Customer chat is already being used in production

If you want to see the customer plugin in action, you can check out the websites for businesses like: Adore Me, Air France, Argos, Aviva (Eurofil), Bodeaz, Elves, Goibibo, Keto Mojo, KLM, Mermaid Pillow, Spoqa, Total Activation, Volaris and Zalando.

Some of these brands are already working with third party customer care providers like Conversocial, Servicefriend and Gorgias, who are enabling businesses to configure page visibility settings, welcome messages and more. ShopMessage has developed a free app for businesses using Shopify to install customer chat in seconds.

In addition, if you use services like ChatFuel or ManyChat to manage your bot, you can get setup with the plugin via these platforms’ growth tools.

These providers’ input has been invaluable toward helping us test customer chat quickly so we could bring it to everyone faster. As always, you can use Page’s inbox to reply to messages from customers.

We’re excited to see how you start using this new feature and getting your feedback in our developer group!

Happy chatting!