Facebook announced Messenger Platform 2.0 in April this year and now the social network has rolled out a new update which includes new and improved features that allow businesses to develop ways to connect with their customers.
The Messenger Platform 2.1 update gets a built-in natural language processing (NLP) that automatically detects the context of a message before passing it along to a bot. It can detect common phrases like hello, bye, thanks, date & time, location, amount of money, phone number, email and a URL. Up next, the update adds a handover protocol that can transfer a conversation from an automated bot to a human is available as an open beta worldwide. Handovers allow a bot to handle things like customer onboarding, audience segmentation, or answering mundane FAQs.
Messenger Platform is also getting a new SDK designed to make the Messenger webview payment process easier as customers can pay using a one step process through Messenger webview. Payments on Messenger is still in beta and available in the US only. Businesses will also be able to add new call-to-action buttons to their page in an effort to drive people to Messenger.