Facebook to roll out chatbot features in Messenger

Facebook’s most notable announcement at its annual F8 conference shows that the platform is going all in on Messenger.

The company announced its intention to connect more small businesses to customers through enhanced chatbot features. This will enable consumers to order goods and services, get answers to easy customer-service questions and more.

Facebook’s vice president of Messenger, David Marcus, told Fast Company:

We’ve created an ecosystem of developers that are now enabling large companies to do different types of things, whether they want to do brand stuff or whether they want to plug into their huge call centers with thousands of people and allow them to answer Messenger messages instead of phone calls.

The feature called “Smart Replies” will automatically answer common queries, but requires a human response when questions fall outside of commonly asked questions. The tool will launch with restaurants in the United States first, then expand to additional organizations on Facebook, both in and outside of the U.S.

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Facebook is helping businesses inform their customers about their chatbot features through a system called Messenger Codes, which are QR-style codes that organizations can display.

Facebook is also beefing up its digital assistant tool, called “M.”

With M, you text commands and queries instead of speaking them (unlike Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri). The tool contains artificial intelligence that enables it to chime in during conversations with friends to make suggestions. Facebook is partnering with services like Open Table and Delivery.com to introduce restaurant and food suggestions.

Though Facebook has been working on new tools to further entice its users and woo marketing pros, its response to inappropriate content can be improved.

During its conference, the platform a shortcoming related to the livestreamed murder of a 74-year-old Cleveland man. It took Facebook more than two hours to take down the video.

"We have a lot of work, and we will keep doing all we can to prevent tragedies like this from happening," said the company’s co-founder and chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg. “Our hearts go out to the family and friends of Robert Godwin Sr.”

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