Want to do more with Facebook messenger?

Tired of responding to Frequently Asked Questions on your Facebook Business page?

Well, it’s time you build your very own Facebook Messenger Chat Bot. In this article, I am going to teach you to create a Facebook Messenger Chat Bot by using free tools.

What are Chat Bots and Why is It Crucial for Your Facebook Business Page

Chat bots allow your audience to interact with auto responders. It solves your biggest problem of being instantly active when someone messages you. It allows you to build conversations with people when they click on the message feature on your Facebook Business page. Here is an example of one of my clients Wink Salon – A very popular luxurious salon in Chennai located in Alwarpet. We used Chatfuel, to create an interesting chatbot for them.

5 reasons why your page needs a chat bot:

1. For Instant Replies:- Your audience don’t have to wait anymore + you can relax on the weekends.

2. For FAQs:- Tired of answering the same old questions? Chat bots will reply them for you.

3. For Helping the Lost Audience: Chatbots build conversations on first go and asks questions to people with options to lead them to a required destination.

4. For Automating Pings and Broadcasts: People who interact with your chatbot, you can send them regular broadcasts on messenger.

5. For Increasing Subscriptions: You have options to connect your chatbot to various plugin. For example: I have connected my chatbot to RSS feeds of my blog. When people ping they can read and subscribe to my blogs on messenger.

There are two types of chatbots: 

1. One that waits for the audience to message, in order to get started (Here you use answer message as a default message)
2. One that immediately starts as audience clicks ‘Get Started’ (Here you use welcome message as a default message)

For Wink Salon, we created a 3 – step chat bot experience.

A. It starts with Default Welcome message as soon as the audience clicks get started. 

B. On clicking any of the given options in default the audience receives further options to explore. 

C. As soon as the audience clicks any of the above- given options under “Hair”, they receive other pre-defined messages which result in the immediate call or builds further questions from the client under this topic. 

This makes the first level interaction with the customer lot easier. In short, it gives an experience. An experience of professionalism and spontaneity.

All this was built in 15 minutes for free without any experience of coding by using Chatfuel.com  There are many other tools like Botsify and OnSequel which will help you build chatbots with ease. In this article, we discover this process using Chatfuel.

As per Techcrunch, Chatfuel was founded by Russian entrepreneurs Dmitrii Dumik and Artem Ptashnik last year. The company has 12 staff across offices in Moscow and San Francisco, and it earned the backing of Russian Internet Yandex — ‘The Google Of Russia’ — which led its most recent funding round.

Step By Step Process to Create Your Very Own Facebook Messenger Chat Bot:

Step 1: Log on to www.Chatfuel.com and create your account using your Facebook account.

Step 2: After you log in, you will see this screen. Click on CREATE A BLANK CHATBOT. This is where you get started.

Before you proceed. You should learn the key Lingos you will encounter further.

• Block: A block contains messages (could be one or many). You can deliver many cards at the same time within a block. These cards could be Buttons.
• Buttons: These are the options that you give at the bottom of the card, you can give users a phone number to call, give options to pick and add few more cards to it to continue the conversation.

In nutshell, the block is a beginner, a button is an extension and the cards are the options.

Step 3: Build your first block. Choose a default welcome message and an answer message. The welcome message is the first message someone would see as soon as they click on the message box on Facebook, whereas answer box appears when someone starts a conversation.

There are various types of cards available:

• Gallery Card: Can include multiple images in a carousel, each with a heading, subtitle, URL, buttons, or a quick reply. A quick reply is an extra card that can act as a prompt with further instructions from your page  if the user doesn’t know what to do next in your sequence of automated messages.
• Text Card: Includes a place for text, buttons, or a quick reply.
• Image Card: Includes an image or a quick reply.
• Plugin Card: Includes integration options such as letting people read or subscribe to your blog via RSS, send a post from your Instagram, Twitter, or YouTube accounts with IFTTT or Zapier, and much more options like Google Sheets or Google Calendar.

Step 4: Add Quick Reply Buttons As Options to your Default Answer Block.

Now, what happens when a person clicks Yes or No buttons? You need to build that connect and create a user attribute.

Step 5: Add further cards to options. As you add options, each option becomes a block. When a user clicks Yes or No, there should be some action and you need to build that action by adding further cards to these options.

Remember, don’t add Yes or No as a reply. Currently, Chatfuel connects Yes or No to the same user attribute. Hence you would want to give different options or different name to the blocks.

Step 6: Build Further Blocks To Quick Replies and Complete the Story.

After you have completed all the user attribute, you can test the chat bot before you launch.

Step 7: Test Your Chat Bot.

Step 8: Interact with Your Chat Bot

As you click on test your chat bot, your messenger pops up a message from Chatfuel, you can interact with your very own chatbot to check out if everything is in place as per your plan.

Step 9: Launch your chatbot by connecting to your Facebook Page. Remember, to launch your chatbot. You need to allow people to message you on your Facebook Business page. It’s a mandate.

How to Add Your Blog’s RSS Feed on Facebook Messenger Chat Bots? 

Step 1: Click on welcome message on your Chatbot. Add a text card first.

Step 2: Pick the Plugin you want to add. Remember, there are various integrations possible with Chatfuel Facebook Messenger Chat Bot. Example: IFTTT integration, Zapier integration, social media channel connects and more.

Step 3: Add Your RSS Feed URL and allow people to subscribe to the same.

Would you like to experience a Chatbot end to end? How about sending me a message on my Facebook Business Page? Click here: ‘Sorav Jain’ to gain a wholesome Chatbot experience!

Here is a video guide on step by step process to create your very own chatbot using chatfuel.com.