How's Your Facebook Response Time?

How quickly do you respond to customer questions via the phone or email - the same day, within 24 hours, within an hour? Well, hold onto your marketing hats. Facebook thinks you should answer 90% of your messages received through your business page within 5 minutes in order to earn a "Very Responsive To Messages" badge. 

A five minute response time may not be realistic for your small business unless you are glued to your computer, have dedicated staff or offsite administrator who can monitor activity. So, what can you do to make sure your business isn't negatively affected?  

First, you must have Messages turned on in your settings so that customers can contact you directly. Make sure that you turn on notifications for messages in your settings. There are settings which can help set some expectations from consumers and not draw the wrath of Facebook.

​1. Set an away message if your business is closed. You must list your business hours for this setting to work. 

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2.  Add an instant reply to buy you time. If you're open for business, but not immediately available to answer a message, you can set up an instant reply that looks like this:

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3. Change your response time display to more accurately reflect your response time. The recommended setting here is "automatically show your response time" but you can change this to meet your needs. Note that anything over a day will negatively affect your page.

This is just one of many changes Facebook has made recently that can impact your marketing.  If you need help with your business page, I'm here to help. Call 413-539-7950 or email me.