DM Automation: How to Do It Right (And Not Just on Instagram)
After reading this, you’ll know what DM automation is, how it can help you grow, and how to do it on your favorite social media platforms. Plus, we cover tips to get the most from your automated DM campaigns and one weird trick to always stay on top of your social media messages.
Want a quick intro? Here’s a video primer on how to set up Instagram direct messaging automation — but we’ll also cover other networks in this post.
Key Takeaways
* DM automation refers to automatically sent, pre-set responses on social media.
* The most popular types of DM automation include saved responses, Boolean operator-triggered replies, and AI-powered chatbots that provide personalized, context-aware responses.
* Automating direct messages saves time and resources by handling straightforward inquiries. It also allows for 24/7 customer support and automates FAQs, freeing up human customer service for more complex issues.
What is DM automation on social media?
An automated DM is a pre-set response that is automatically sent as a reply to people who send you a direct message on social media.
Common types of messages to automate include answers to frequently asked questions, delivering a digital file or link, or answering straightforward questions like requests for delivery tracking updates.
Most DM automation is done with chatbots, but not all. There are three types of DM automations out there:
* Autoreply saved responses: Also known as “canned responses,” these are pre-written statements that can automatically reply to specific, pre-defined keywords.
* Boolean operator responses: Boolean operators are words “and,” “or,” and “not.” Autoresponders that use booleans are triggered when a certain set of conditions is met. For example, you can set up a response about holiday shipping times to automatically go out when a DM that uses phrases like “shipping” AND (“holidays” OR “Christmas”) is detected.
* AI chatbots: These chatbots use conversational AI models to interpret what someone is asking for and create a custom response unique to that specific scenario. They can also carry on a conversation, remembering details from earlier messages in the same thread.
5 reasons why DM automation is a good thing
1. Save time and resources
Is using DM automation faster than having human beings respond to all your messages? Yes.
But it doesn’t have to be one or the other. Let DM automation handle the easy stuff, like someone asking for your street address or payment options. Save the tough, more nuanced messages for your human customer service team, like a customer who’s unhappy about product quality.
1-800-Flowers balances automation with quick customer service by providing a clickable option to connect with a human representative.
Source: 1-800-Flowers on Facebook
Automated DMs aren’t meant to completely replace human customer service. Instead, they enhance it by automating the repetitive stuff, so your team can focus on where they’ll have the biggest impact.
Hootsuite Inbox’s built-in chatbot reduces your customer service team’s messages by 80% while improving their productivity by 25%, all inside a dashboard where you can see and answer DMs and comments across multiple platforms together.
2. Personalize the customer service experience
Conversational AI chatbots are able to understand the context of DMs using natural language processing. That means your customers can type normal messages they’d send to a human and get back the answers they need, without having to wait for a live customer service rep.
Customer service chatbots allow you to provide personalized service at scale.
For example, let chatbots handle questions about shipment tracking or order issues. Someone may start a chat with, “I haven’t received my order.” The AI chatbot can then ask follow up questions, like the order number or customer’s address, to look up the order info and relay the tracking information.
The key is that the chatbot remembers the entire conversation, so it’s a much more natural experience for the customer —like chatting with a human—and it delivers a seamless experience.
This way, your customers get the personalized information they need quickly which also frees up your customer service team to handle more complex inquiries faster.
However, some situations are too complex for a chatbot to solve, like whether to offer a replacement to a customer to keep their loyalty even though it’s technically against company policy. There are always exceptions in customer service, a nuance that a machine just can’t suss out.
For this reason, it’s important to have an option for customers interacting with a social media chatbot to connect with a customer service rep. It could be a button in the chat window (like WestJet’s, shown previously) or a phrase, such as, “Call customer service.”
3. Respond around the clock
Before social media, businesses had business hours and that was it. You either left a message or email, or waited until the next day to reach someone. Now with social media, customers expect answers sooner and the lines between “open” and “closed” continue to blur.
Meliá Hotels, the third largest hotel group in Europe, manages over 500 social media accounts across their global network and handles an average 3,100 conversations per week.
When we started to report on how many people wanted to book hotel rooms through social media, we realized we hadn’t capitalized on the business potential coming through direct and public messaging.
– Santiago Garcia Solimei, Global Head of Social Media & Brands PR, Meliá Hotels International
Meliá started using Hootsuite Inbox with a dedicated social customer care team. Their representatives work a traditional Monday-Friday schedule and they have an auto-responder set up to handle off hours requests. It states when the customer can expect to hear back from them, and offers alternative contact information for more urgent requests.
After implementing DM automation across Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter within Hootsuite Inbox, Meliá reduced their average (human) response time from 24 hours to 12.4 hours and receives over 330 booking requests per week via social media.
Reduce response time (and your workload)
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