Facebook announced at F8 that it has begun the journey of turning Messenger into an ecosystem with the beta launch of its Messenger Platform for the development of AI-powered bots. Listening to the presentation, we could not help but get the feeling of being transported back in time to 2007 and the launch of the first Facebook Developer platform. Stuzo was there back then. We were hired by Facebook to help deliver digital product innovation and later named one of the first 5 PDCs.
To understand the opportunity of Messenger as a Platform, let’s contrast the first few months of Facebook Platform in 2007 to Messenger Platform today.
As we can see from the above table, the key metrics are very promising. The biggest point of difference, between Facbook 2007 and today, is scale and momentum. In 2007, there were 20 million people using Facebook; today, there are over 900 million monthly active Messenger users, and growing. By the numbers, Messenger Platform has the opportunity to dwarf Facebook Platform.
While there are countless use cases for business disruption leveraging the Messenger Platform, the statistics below will show why Facebook Messenger is a powerful customer service platform.
There are three reasons why Facebook Messenger has the opportunity to become a powerful customer service platform:
- Messenger has the potential to reach 900 million people around the world through messaging;
- Millennials prefer to communicate with businesses through messaging over phone conversations;
- Rapid advancements in AI will take messaging-based customer services from 20% programmatic / 80% human interaction to 80% programmatic / 20% human over the coming years.
The above factors signal a significant opportunity to deliver an improved customer service experience through Facebook Messenger. In our next post, we will come full circle on the value of Facebook Messenger as a customer service platform by providing a prototype of a Facebook Messenger customer service bot experience.
As noted above, there are countless opportunities to disrupt and accelerate business through digital product innovation on top of the newly launched Messenger Platform. Back in 2007, the first movers garnered significant business advantage. With the audience of Messenger today being 40 times as large as that of Facebook at the launch of Facebook Platform in 2007, we believe that speed will win again.
———
If you’re a forward-leaning enterprise looking for a digital product innovation partner to help you navigate the Messenger Platform, contact us today. We have the experience and expertise in Facebook Messenger bot development to help you accelerate your business.