Facebook Opens New Tools, 50m SMEs Connect Customers via “Pages”

Facebook has announced that over 50 million businesses are now using Facebook Pages to connect with their customers all over the world.

Facebook said, “People are also communicating with Pages more than ever, with 2.5 billion comments on Pages every month. In Nigeria, 54% of people on Facebook are connected to an SMB.

Facebook said, it is introducing new features to make it easier for businesses to manage communications with customers from their Page.

What's New:
More communication controls for Page owners: Pages can set the average time it takes for them to reply to messages: either “within minutes,” “within an hour,” “within hours” or “within a day.”

Redesigned inbox tells businesses more about their customers to better serve them: More context on the people businesses messaging them helps Page admins keep up with messages faster and manage conversations more easily.

An easier way to respond to and keep track of comments: A tool under the new Activity tab that helps admins monitor and respond to comments on their Page.

Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer, Facebook, “The number one challenge for small and medium businesses is reaching customers. Facebook Pages are the mobile solution for millions of businesses around the world because they make it easy for business owners to reach new customers and communicate with current ones where they are – on mobile.”

Also, Michael Sharon, Product Manager, Pages, "People can contact businesses anytime and from any device, so we're offering new tools for Pages to better manage their customer interactions. Now it's easier than ever for Pages to address both the public comments and private messages that people send them, in order to build and maintain strong relationships and grow their business."

In addition, two case studies from Nigeria and Kenya respectively, Facbook disclosed, that Thando's is the brainchild of entrepreneurial couple, and NYU Alums, J.G. and Taffi Ayodele, who designed the Africa’s first foldable ballerina flat shoe.

Their company aims to create a platform for creative talent on the African continent by crowdsourcing designs from African men and women who would otherwise have limited opportunities to design for a global audience.

Each purchase results in shared profits for the designers who were crowd sourced or selected as brand ambassadors.

Thandos are a new company but love the traction they're seeing from Instagram and Facebook.

Also, Mikul Shah, founded EatOut, an online restaurant guide, booking system and magazine.

Founded in 2010 by Shah who, after living in London for over a decade, returned to Kenya and found there was no single place to find, review and book restaurants.

EatOut has since grown from a blog with 1 employee to a full-fledged company with an amazing team of 13 and growing.

They have won numerous awards including Kenya Tourism Award for Best Digital Media. 

Earlier this year, Facebook introduced new features for Pages to make it easier for businesses to be where their customers are and communicate with them anytime, anywhere.

As more customers interact with businesses on the go, Pages are the mobile solution for businesses.

Now there are over 50 million active business Pages and many of them are using their Page to communicate with customers. In fact, the number of messages sent to businesses on Facebook has doubled in the past year, and people now leave 2.5 billion comments on Pages every month.

More communication controls for Page owners
“This summer we rolled out a new feature that helps people identify Pages that are very responsive to messages.

“Because a business's response time is central to the quality of their customer service, we set a high standard for the feature by adding the “Very responsive to messages” indicator only to Pages where 90% of messages were responded to within five minutes. Now we're offering new controls and more responsiveness levels, so a wider range of businesses can encourage people to reach out to them through private messages.

“Starting this month all Pages can set the average time it takes for them to reply to messages. Admins can choose to show that they respond either “within minutes,” “within an hour,” “within hours” or “within a day.” Average response times for Pages are calculated for each Page automatically and the response time shown on the Page defaults to their average response time, but admins can now control what response time shows publicly on their Page. So even if a Page typically responds to messages within an hour, they can can set their visible response time to within a day and set customer expectations accordingly. This updated feature gives Page admins more control and flexibility to use their Page as a communication channel,” Facebook said in an email to Nigeria CommunicationsWeek.

Availability
The tech giant said that all of the new Page communications features are starting to roll out globally now and will be available to every Page in the coming months.

As mobile device usage continues to push people to communicate with businesses in real time, businesses need tools to manage communication efficiently.

These new features help admins build and a manage a convenient, personal and scalable communication channel for customers, so businesses can connect with people easily and focus on growing their business.