In March 2020, Facebook made a change to its API that impacts responding to private messages sent to Facebook business pages. As a user, you will have 7 days to respond to private messages in Engage. This has been increased from the previous 24 hours.
This change is industry-wide and affects all third-party engagement tools.
At the heart of this change is consumers expect businesses to respond quickly, and businesses who respond to users messages faster see better business outcomes. The API change is designed to encourage businesses and developers to:
Respond to customers in a timely fashion when they reach out
Share important updates that are personally relevant to their customers
How this change affects Engage
Moving forward in Engage Conversations, if you try to respond to a private Facebook message 7 days after it was sent, you will receive a failed error message. We will be adding more detailed error messaging within the app, and preventing replies on any PM older than 7 days in the center pane of Conversations. Users can still view these or mark as read, but not respond.
How to Quickly Find Facebook Private Messages
To help you respond quickly to Facebook private messages, we recommend using the “Message Type filter” to ensure you don’t miss a message within its available 7 day response time.
Click on the “Message Type” filter
Clear all message types and select “Facebook Private Messages”
Click “Apply Filters”
Messages include the time stamp on both the left and right panes of inbox.
If you have any further questions, feel free to reach out to us via Live Chat!
Team Meltwater