Sprout Social Unveils Bot Builder Offering for Facebook Messenger to Personalize Human Conversations

By Sudipto Ghosh On Aug 17, 2017

The New Bot-Builder Platform From Sprout Social Enables Brands To Create Customized Automated Conversational Workflows For Improved Customer Service On Facebook

Marketers are seeking chatbots–in fact, 80% of high-level marketers plan to implement bots by 2020. Sprout Social has cateredto this need, launching Bot Builder for Facebook Messenger. The tool enables brands to create, preview and deploy custom chatbots in a matter of minutes, without extensive developer knowledge or external resources.

There are currently 100,000 active bots on Facebook Messenger, and tools like Sprout’s Bot Builder, would mean that this number will only continue to rise. Implementing chatbots and embracing their potential enables brands to better serve their customers via Messenger and streamline customer support on that channel.

Bot Builder for Facebook Messenger A Personalized Customer Service Agent

Andrew Caravella, Vice President, Strategy & Brand Engagement at Sprout Social said, “Turning to chatbots is well worth the investment in today’s e-commerce and social selling environment. Social media is consumers’ top choice for seeking customer service support and as a result, customer service teams are fielding an ever-increasing volume of requests.”

We asked Andrew if bots justify MarTech investments, especially for B2B engagement. He replied, “Chatbots alleviate that struggle by efficiently gathering all necessary details of each customer issue, then handing over a fully-formed case to a human customer service agent to offer support. It’s a perfect example of what happens when man and machine tag team in the right way.”

Bot Builder Opens New Avenues for Consumer Acceptance of Automation

Aaron Rankin, CTO of Sprout Social, said, “At Sprout, we believe truly great technology simply enhances and facilitates human conversations, and that is what we set out to do with our Bot Builder. Our tool makes it easy for businesses to provide the instant response people are looking for while ensuring customer service agents can seamlessly pick up queries that require more nuanced assistance. The strong foundation that Facebook Messenger has built for chatbots has also made inroads in consumer acceptance of automation, so offering an accessible Bot Builder was a natural next step.”

Sprout’s Bot Builder for Facebook setup wizard enables brands to take only a few short steps to customize and set up their bots, greatly reducing internal friction and the need for outside resources and support. Sprout debuted this tool for Twitter Direct Messages in July, after allowing early access to select customers, including Evernote, Monarch and Bloomsbury. In fact, since implementing Bot Builder, Evernote has served 80 percent more customers on Twitter per week while reducing the number of replies in each conversation by 18 percent.

As with Sprout’s Bot Builder for Twitter, the Messenger version enables brands to turn to simple, rule-based logic to support customers and automate the delivery of personalized marketing experiences.

In a customer service scenario, upon entering the Messenger chat, the user is greeted with a preset opening reply with options for where to head next, depending on their query. By the time the case is handed over to the human agent, he or she has all the details needed and can efficiently assistresolving the query.

Andrew said that SproutSocial would most likely bring out the Bot Builder version 2.0 later this year. He said, “We plan to release a version 2.0 that will support more complex interactions and enable the brand to configure multiple pathways for the bot conversation that go several layers deep, all built with rules-based logic.”

Currently, Sprout Social offers social media management, analytics and advocacy solutions for leading agencies and brands, including Hyatt, GrubHub, Microsoft, Uber, and Zendesk. Available in the web browser, and as iOS, and Android apps, Sprout’s engagement platform enables brands to more effectively communicate on social channels, collaborate across teams and provide an exceptional customer experience.

Bambu by Sprout Social, a platform for advocacy, empowers employees to share curated content across their social networks to further amplify a brand’s reach and engagement. Headquartered in Chicago, Sprout is a Twitter Official Partner, Facebook Marketing Partner, Instagram Partner Program Member, LinkedIn Company Page Partner and Google+ Pages API Partner.

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