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Facebook Messenger: 24 Hour Response Policy Change

Khoros Alumni (Retired)

Facebook Messenger is changing their policy to reflect people's expectations of faster responses.

Beginning March 4, 2020, businesses will have up to 24 hours to respond to a customer on Facebook Messenger. The +1 message that allowed businesses to send 1 additional message after the 24 hour window will no longer be available starting March 4th, 2020. This article explains what you need to do now, and, how to keep things in order going forward.

What Changed?

Facebook has implemented a response-time-limit: it impact both agent (human) and automated (bot) responses to Facebook private conversations. As a Khoros customer your human agents will be able to respond up to 7 days after the last customer engagement in a given conversation: for bots, it's 24 hours.

Here are the details of timelines permitted by Facebook for Khoros customers:

  • Within 24 hours of the last customer engagement - Human agents or bots can respond to customers and/or send promotional marketing messages.
  • After 24 hours but before 7 days - Human agents only can respond (but no bots or promotional messages). 
  • After 7 days - Any message attempt will fail. 

Following are some easy actions you can take now to ensure a consistently great experience for your customers. For more information, please review Facebook Messenger's new policy.

First, does this change affect you?

If you're already answering 100% of Facebook PMs in 15 minutes...this is a non-event. (But do read the next sections to keep it that way!) So check your current response times first: Using Khoros Analytics, create a Response Times widget using a Smart View to isolate Facebook Private Messages. Set the time frame for the prior year, and look at the results. It shows you how many times in the past 12 months you have exceeded the new timing window. If the result is "zero" that's great: keep doing what you're doing. But if the answer is "regularly...." then a workflow review is in order. Our Services, Success, and Coaching teams are all available if you have questions on what to do. 

Second, keep things running smoothly

Once you've affirmed that you're responses all fall within the new response window requirements you'll want to ensure that things stay that way.  And it's easy to do using Khoros Analytics. Using the real-time Conversations Awaiting Reply widget you can spot problems well in advance: create the widget using the same Smart View as you used above and then set the SLA for this widget to something like 8 hours. This widget, placed on a shared dashboard, will give your entire team visibility into conversations that are well-past your normal response SLA and therefore in need of attention but still well before the new response timing window closes.

Third, ensure zero failures.

Want to ensure zero failed replies? Create an alert when out-of-range conditions develop. Build a "Responses Meeting SLA" widget and place it on a shared dashboard, or if you're the analyst or team supervisor with an Analytics role drop this widget on your personal dashboard. Filter the widget to Facebook PM only (using your Smart View), set the SLA to "100% within 8 hours" (or whatever you chose above) and add an alert. Now, if a conversation response ages well past your normal SLA and enters the danger zone...you'll be the first to know.

Check out these helpful resources in the Khoros Atlas community. And as always your Customer Success Manager, Professional Services contact, or Khoros Coaching team are available to help you. 

Additional Resources:

8 Comments
Khoros Alumni (Retired)

Do we have an indication the error message in Khoros Care users will receive if a message fails to send due to exceeding the 7 day threshold? 

 

Mentor

So we can no longer Snooze messages for >7 days?

Khoros Alumni (Retired)

@jbrons - you can, but you won't be able to respond when it comes out of snooze. You might want an operational change to both let the customer know you won't be able to respond after 7 days unless they message you back - or maybe you want to snooze for 6 days and then let the customer know you are still thinking of them and won't be able to respond again until they message you back.

@EricFe - In the immediate future when FB enforces this rule, the way error will display after the agent attempts to send a message. The error will display in the usual place at the bottom of the response area and is self-explanatory.

In the future, we expect to make this  similar to the error message we current provide for WhatsApp - WhatsApp has a 24hr period. This message is displayed proactively to the agent - they see if before they begin entering a message:

AdamCo_0-1583297944829.png

 

Also, it is pretty straight-forward to monitor for conversations that are approaching this 7 day threshold. You want to use the "Conversations Waiting Response" widget filtered with a SmartView for( Facebook AND Private) with the SLA threshold set at 168 hours (7 days).

Anything in the yellow/orange before the right-hand side is approaching the 7 day window. From there you can drill-down and decide what to do - response, close, etc.

AdamCo_1-1583298599995.png

Note, based on how we calculate TAR - from the *first* unanswered message, there might be some false positives (ie, conversations that you have a little more time to respond than the chart indicates). If a customer messages you one day - and you don't response - and they message you again the next day, the conversation will show up in this chart based on the first message to you (not the second).

Khoros Staff

As a build on the Conversations Awaiting Reply widget described above, here are the steps to add the Responses Times widget.

1) The TAR widget answers the question "Do I need to re-architect my workflow to get ahead of this policy change. Think of this as "Step 1." Simply, it shows how many times in the recent past (in the example I used the prior year) have we exceeded the timing window now allowed? If the answer is "zero" that's great: keep doing what you're doing. But if the answer is "regularly...." then a workflow review is in order.

2) The CAR widget is "Step 2" -- assuming the team has decent performance the CAR widget will show you in real-time if posts are in danger of exceeding the reply window: with that information, a decision can be made to reply "now" or simply close the post.  

Following are four screens that show the setup of the Smartview and widgets for the TAR (Step 1) widget view. Setting up the CAR widget is identical, except of course you choose the "Conversations Awaiting Response" widget rather than the "Response Times" widget.

Screen 1: Build the SmartView to isolate FB PMs:

0-FBSmartView.png

Screen 2: Build the FB PM Widget

0-FBWdgetBuilder.png

Step 3: View the FB PM Widget, and review past performance.

0-FDBMDashboard.png

Step 4: If problem responses exist, drill-in to review and determine corrective steps needed, if any.

0-FBDrilldownToTAR.png

Khoros Alumni (Retired)

@EricFe With the policy now in effect, you will indeed see an error message if the message is attempted to be sent outside (beyond) the 7-day window:

FB Messenger Error

We are working on improving the user experience around this, and as @AdamCo noted earlier, we will update the UI to provide the messaging pre-emptively (as is done with WhatsApp's 24-hour window), instead of a post-action error.

Mentor

For FB Messenger conversations that are over 7 days AND our agents closed as resolved. (Resolved will trigger a csat survey to be shipped in our instance).

 

Will the customer see that survey or will the survey also fail?

Khoros Alumni (Retired)

@Louiz_Q the new policy allows no messages after the 7-day window has passed. So, the survey timeframe will need to within the 7 days, otherwise the survey will fail to send.

We have found that most customers generally have a shorter timeframe for closing a conversation (usually 24-48 hours) if the user hasn't responded to the last message from the agent. Does your current process have a long (> 7 days) wait before a conversation is closed?

Mentor

Thanks, @SheetalK. We have a low number of conversations that we might need to circle back later (i.e. bugs that take more than a few days to fix). But with this change we're changing our process since we won't be able to reply and will also affect if we wait so long to send a survey.