Messenger Integration

Integrating Facebook Messenger with Chat Data empowers your custom chatbot to communicate directly with customers through your Facebook pages. This powerful combination not only automates responses but also allows you to seamlessly take over conversations whenever needed, providing a perfect balance of efficiency and personal touch.

By connecting Messenger to Chat Data, you'll create a versatile system that handles inquiries automatically while giving you the flexibility to engage with customers directly at any time. Additionally, you can leverage our provided Make workflow template to send messages in batches, further enhancing your ability to reach out to multiple customers efficiently.

This guide will walk you through the step-by-step process of linking your chatbot to Messenger for your Facebook pages, ensuring smooth, effective, and personalized customer interactions. It will also cover how to use the Make workflow template for batch messaging.

Connect Messenger with Chat Data

1. Go to Dashboard > [Chatbot] > Integrations.
2. Select the Messenger integration card.
3. Click the Connect button in the pop-up window.
4. If this is the first time, you will be asked for permission to allow Chat Data to use your information. Note: if you have integrated some pages and would like to modify your selection, pick the Edit Previous Settings option.
5. Select the Facebook Page you want to connect to your chatbot.
6. Review and grant the necessary permissions for the integration.
7. Confirm everything and click got it to close the pop-up window. The integration may take a few moments to finish.
8. Once completed, you'll see a success message and your connected Facebook Page.

With the integration now active, your chatbot is ready to respond to all messages received through Facebook Messenger.

For testing purposes, you can scan the QR code provided in step 8 using your smartphone camera to message your Messenger bot. Additionally, you can access the INBOX link to navigate to your Facebook Business Suite inbox, allowing you to directly respond to customers as part of a human takeover.

Troubleshooting: The AI writes a reply but the customer never receives it

You are affected if all of the following are true:

• The customer's Messenger message appears in your Chat Data chat logs.
• The AI generates a reply and you can read it in the chat logs or live chat panel.
• The customer never receives that reply in Messenger.
• Meta Business Suite still shows the conversation as unanswered, so you end up replying by hand.

When this happens, Meta rejects the delivery with this error:

(#100) The action is invalid since it's not the thread owner.

Why this happens

Messenger allows only one app at a time to reply to a given conversation. That app is called the thread owner. If your Meta Business Suite Inbox, or another connected app such as a different chatbot vendor, currently owns a conversation, Meta blocks Chat Data from sending on that thread.

Chat Data still receives the incoming message and still writes a reply, which is why the response is visible in your chat logs. Only the delivery is refused.

This is a setting on Meta's side. Chat Data cannot override it.

Fix: check who controls your conversations

1. Open https://www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=advanced_messaging.
2. Use the account switcher in the top-right corner to switch to your Facebook Page. This setting belongs to the Page, not to your personal profile, so you will not see the right options until you have switched.
3. Find Chat Data under Connected Apps and click Edit.
4. Under Messenger Permissions, make sure Access standby channel is enabled, and enable Take control of conversations.
5. Click Save.

On the same Advanced Messaging page, review any handover or conversation control configuration and make sure Chat Data is the app designated to handle conversations. If another messaging app is designated there, it will keep ownership and Chat Data's replies will continue to be refused until you change it or disconnect that app.

Releasing conversations that are already stuck

A conversation returns to Chat Data once the current owner releases it, or once the thread goes idle — meaning the customer has not sent a message for 24 hours. To hand a conversation back straight away, open it in Meta Business Suite Inbox and mark it as Done.

Verifying the fix

Send a message to your Page from a different personal Facebook account, and do not open the conversation in Meta Business Suite. The AI reply should arrive within a few seconds.

If the problem persists, contact us at [email protected] with your chatbot name and your Facebook Page name. We can query Meta directly to see which app currently owns your conversations.

Delayed Message Sending

If you want the AI chatbot to delay sending messages to users, you can set a random delay time for the AI chatbot to postpone its responses to customers. You can configure this in the Messenger integration modal as shown below:

The AI chatbot will randomly delay its response within the range you set, making it harder to detect as an AI bot.

AI Re-engagement

Timely follow-ups are crucial for ensuring customer satisfaction. If you want the AI chatbot to follow up with customers after their last interaction, you can customize three key aspects of the AI follow-up:

1. The time window for follow-up after the last message
2. The specific conditions that trigger a follow-up
3. The style and content of the re-engagement message

When the specified time arrives, the AI evaluates whether the conversation meets your defined re-engagement criteria. If the conditions are met, it sends a contextually appropriate follow-up message based on the previous conversation.

Live Chat Handover

You can chat with the customer by clicking the INBOX link above or in the Chat logs Dashboard as shown below to chat with the customer.

If you have access to our live chat feature, you can also click the Live Chat dashboard tab and select the corresponding Messenger conversation thread to chat with the customer. Alternatively, you can use the checklist filter to filter the Messenger conversations only.

You should turn off the AI chatbot for the corresponding conversation so that the chatbot won't respond to the message when you are chatting with the customer. Otherwise, the AI chatbot will respond to the same query again even if you have typed your response in the admin live chat panel.

After you send the human response, we will send the Messenger message to the customer's Messenger account directly. When the customer responds back and if the AI bot is turned off and you are offline, we will send an email along with the chat portal link to your email address registered in the live chat setting, which is similar to how the offline live message works in New Message To the Agent.

You can switch the AI bot on at any time after you have finished the live chat with the customer.

Automatic AI chatbot pause

To improve user experience, you can configure an automatic pause duration for the AI chatbot during Messenger integration setup. During this pause (up to 1 week), customer messages bypass the AI and go directly to you with email notifications. The chatbot automatically resumes after the configured time period. Note that this feature only works with Chat Data's native live chat interface, not Facebook's Business Platform interface, since Facebook doesn't relay Business Platform messages to Chat Data, preventing us from detecting human agent takeovers.

Sending Messenger Messages in Batch

Utilize our Make workflow template to send Messenger messages using the page access token from your integrated Messenger account. Note that messages can only be sent to users who have previously interacted with your Messenger pages, as the PSID is page-specific. Below is a step-by-step guide on sending a Messenger template message using the Make workflow template.

1. Create a scenario based on the Make workflow template for Messenger.
2. Configure the Chat Data's Get the Leads module with your API key from Chat Data.
3. Select the chatbot from which you want to fetch leads and set the source to Messenger to retrieve leads specifically from Messenger.
4. Run the first module once to populate the fields and verify the data. The operations should return a list of users with the psid field.
5. Use the Iterator module to iterate over the users with the Array "psid".
6. Create your Messenger connection in the third module. Enter the page access token provided.
7. Configure the parameters in the third module with the Page Scoped User ID (PSID) as the key "psid". Set the Message Type to Message Tag and the Message Tag to Human Agent. This allows the chatbot to send messages beyond the automatic message window. Add the message you wish to send in the text field. Click OK to save the changes.
8. Click the Run Once button to trigger the workflow. Messenger messages should be sent to the list of users. Note that some users may fail to receive messages if their page has been deleted or if their PSID is associated with a different page. You can just ignore those failures as long as some of the users were successfully sent messages.
9. Review the operations of the third module to confirm successful message delivery to PSIDs.
10. Set the schedule in the first module to trigger the workflow at your desired frequency, such as daily at 20:00 PDT.
11. Save and activate the workflow.