Recently, Facebook Messenger announced that it’s retiring the website chat plugin on May 9, 2024. If your insurance agency was using this feature in guest mode, you’ve likely already noticed that the guest chat feature is no longer available.
First introduced in November 2017, the website chat plugin allows business owners to chat with their website visitors and answer questions, book appointments, or provide customer support. It also stored any website conversations in Messenger and Meta Business Suite for easy access and future reference.
How Does This News Affect Insurance Agents?
Facebook Messenger’s retirement of its website chat plugin requires immediate attention from insurance agency owners. They must remove the feature from their agency websites or change to another live chat service in order to chat with website visitors in real time.
Consider Your Options for Live Chat on Agency Websites
If your agency is currently using Facebook Messenger’s website chat plugin or you would like to add live chat to your website, there are several alternative solutions available that your agency can use as a replacement. Two website integrations BrightFire currently leverages for our insurance agency customers include Chatra and Zendesk Chat.
However, BrightFire is thrilled to announce that we will release our own website chat in May 2024! This new feature will be included in our Insurance Agency Website service at no additional cost. Stay tuned to see what’s possible when we launch our new webchat soon.
