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Announcement
BY: Instagram Business Team
San Francisco, CA
Instagram is a place where people come to discover and connect with brands. People get inspired by stories and posts, ask about products and services, and express their love for the brand or sometimes ask for help.
Messaging plays an important role in helping people connect with businesses in personal ways through story replies, direct messages, and mentions. When a business can quickly respond and communicate in a personal way, it builds trust and loyalty, turns people into customers, and customers into long-term advocates.
Messenger API for Instagram, launched at F8 Refresh on June 2nd, supports the growing needs of businesses to manage Instagram messaging at scale. With our API, businesses can streamline the workflow for customer communication by using the same engagement platform they use for other channels to respond to people on Instagram. Businesses can also connect Instagram messaging to existing tools and systems, such as CRM, inventory management, or Analytics.
Below are 3 examples of how brands who have participated in our beta program to date are currently using Messenger API for Instagram to increase efficiency, sales, and customer satisfaction.
Turn product inquiries into sales
Instagram Stories and posts from businesses often lead to product inquiries from interested customers. We have seen effective and timely engagement with product inquiries resulting in an increase in sales. Kiehl's in Malaysia was receiving a large volume of pre-purchase inquiry messages on Instagram. They saw the opportunity to turn these leads into customers and incorporated automated conversational commerce flow to recommend products and efficiently route complex consultations to the correct support team. Kiehl’s Malaysia is now driving 30% more qualified leads on Instagram messaging compared to other channels, and converting ~20% of consultations into sales.
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“Instagram is a perfect avenue for us to connect with our customers especially since many people use Instagram to discover new beauty products. However, it was difficult to follow-up with people or respond to potential sales leads because we did not have the right tools. By implementing Messenger API for Instagram, we have not only scaled our conversations through different entry points such as Instagram Feed, Instagram Stories, mentions, and direct messages, but have also improved our response time to customer inquiries.” - Eda Lim, Head Of Digital, Luxury & Professional Division, Kiehl’s Malaysia
Increase customer satisfaction and efficiency
90% of IG users are already following a business and they often reach out to businesses on Instagram to resolve issues with existing or previous sales. However, managing support inquiries can be challenging especially with increasing customer expectations across multiple channels. Every day, H&M receives large volumes of messages from customers on Instagram in multiple languages. H&M partnered with Sprinklr to detect languages to automatically organize and route messages to the correct support team. By streamlining inquiries and agent workflow, H&M increased customer satisfaction by over 9 points while increasing agent efficiency by 31%.
Extend in-person services online
In 2020, European Wax Center, leading hair removal services, temporarily closed its stores nationwide to comply with government guidelines during COVID. They received more than 4X its usual volume of messages via Instagram due to customers asking about closures and requesting personal care tips and educational content. Using Messenger API for Instagram, they could manage the volume of messages from both Instagram and Messenger via a centralized and organized customer care platform, Khoros. With advanced workflows and automation features to route, label, and prioritize messages, they were able to provide educational and consultation services via Instagram during the store closure.
BY: Instagram Business Team
San Francisco, CA