Wednesday, 3 May 2017
We all know just how important the sheer usefulness of social media can be for businesses all over the world, however a surprising fact that you may not know is the uprise of Facebook messenger particularly for businesses based in Australia.
Stan Chudnovsky the head of product for messaging at Facebook, says that Australian companies are the biggest users of Messenger globally. So the question I have to ask myself is why?
Mr Chudnovsky, who is based in San Francisco is currently visiting Australia with a team to discuss Messenger with local businesses, users and developers.
“We’re trying to figure out what we’re doing right, what we’re doing wrong and what we can do better,” he said during a visit to Sydney on Friday. “There’s a very high penetration of Messenger in Australia. From a mind set perspective, you guys seem to be living in the future.”
This could also be linked to the fact that Australians are also big users of smartphones, local smartphone ownership jumped about 38 per cent to 15.3 million in mid-2015 from 11.1 million in 2013, according to research done by IAB Australia a trade association for online advertising in Australia.
National broadcaster ABC and Australia’s biggest airline Qantas are two examples of local businesses using Messenger to reach consumers directly.
ABC started using Messenger to deliver news during last year’s federal election to offer a morning news summary message, with options for users to subscribe to different news categories. Since then about 3.4 million people have now “liked” the service.
Qantas launched Qantas Concierge, a Messenger “bot” or automated software that gives customers personalised travel information, in February. Qantas said Concierge would become another support channel for customers, complementing call centres and social media teams.
On a global scale about 1.2 billion people use Facebook Messenger each month, plus there are around 60 million business pages on Facebook of which 20 million are active on Messenger. So what could these capabilities and features bring to businesses?
As with most digital tools, I opt for trying as many as possible and getting a feel for what possibilities there are for it benefiting my business. Whether it’s from the perspective of customer services, online exposure or even sales there’s always room to grow and connect more effortlessly to your customers. Anatole
