Zendesk announced the addition of Instagram messaging to its customer support offering. This means businesses can now provide customer service on Instagram from directly within Zendesk. As a leader in messaging for customer service, this aligns with the company’s continued investment in new social messaging channels and a new, modern workspace for businesses to connect, engage and transact with customers.
The Messenger API for Instagram offers support for businesses to efficiently manage customer service inquiries that come over Instagram messaging. With this API, companies can have rich, seamless conversations with customers who respond to stories, start DMs, and more. For example:
- A retail company that receives a direct message from a customer about the status of their order can reply to the customer quickly with accurate information about the shipment directly from Zendesk.
- A customer who is scrolling through Instagram and watches a brand’s Story promoting a holiday sale can immediately message them for more information. The customer could then receive a personalized response from an agent, whether it be a promo code, website link or shipping information that will remain in the conversation history for when a purchase is made. This eliminates the need to switch to another support channel such as phone or email.
Zendesk makes it even easier for businesses to get up and running on Instagram quickly by integrating this API directly into the Zendesk platform. At launch*, customers will be able to access these capabilities from right inside the agent workspace, and also be able to turn on Instagram for other software built with Zendesk.
From February to August of this year, customer service inquiries through channels such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Twitter DMs, and SMS rose nearly 50 percent. Also, according to Zendesk’s yearly Benchmark report, messaging apps have the highest customer satisfaction rating of any channel, with a CSAT of 98%. With over one billion active monthly users, Instagram is an important channel for businesses to add to the mix.
“At Zendesk, we work to make it easy for brands to communicate with customers across any channel, and social media is quickly becoming the preference. All social messaging conversations can easily flow into one place inside Zendesk,” said Mike Gozzo, VP of Product, Zendesk. “With its tremendous popularity, Instagram is a key addition so businesses can serve customers who reach out on Instagram in a more timely, consistent and personal manner.”
“We are thrilled Zendesk is launching support for Instagram messaging. Businesses and people are messaging with each other more than ever, and Instagram is a critical platform to connect with customers and build relationships,” said Konstantinos Papamiltiadis, VP of Platform Partnerships at Messenger. “Messenger API support for Instagram means businesses and developers can now manage their customer communications on Instagram at scale.”
*This capability is currently available to a limited number of customers in early access, more details on broader availability to come in 2021.
