Add the Messenger Channel to Help Scout to Manage Facebook Conversations

NEW Make meeting your customer where they are easier to manage — connect the new Messenger channel and bring the conversations customers start from your Facebook Page(s) into Help Scout. Your team can respond right along with your other conversations without having to switch to another app.

The Messenger channel is available for all current plans. Only Account Owners and Administrators can access Inbox settings to add or manage the channel. See User Roles and Permissions for more on that.

Note: You will need to upgrade to a current plan to add the Messenger channel if your account is on a legacy plan. More information about legacy plans is here: Legacy Plan Changes

How the Messenger Channel Works

Connect the Messenger channel to Help Scout, and when someone sends a new message to your connected Facebook Page, that message will create a conversation in Help Scout.

The conversation subject will always start as New message from FirstName LastName on Messenger and every conversation will start with the messenger tag.

Click into the conversation and reply, just like any other conversation. The customer will see your reply in Messenger. Further replies from the customer will appear right back in this conversation in Help Scout.

Note: Only answer Messenger conversations from Help Scout after you've connected the channel to make sure you can see all replies in one place — if you reply to your customers directly in Messenger those replies do not sync back to Help Scout.

Differences in Conversation Handling

Help Scout

There are some differences with Messenger conversations when compared to other Help Scout conversations that you want to make sure your team is aware of before getting started.

Conversations will not include an email address.
Facebook does not share a user's email address in a Messenger conversation. You may choose add an email address to the Messenger customer profile and merge it with another customer profile in Help Scout to keep conversation history together if you know the customer's email address. See Merge Duplicate Customer Profiles for more help on that feature.
No outbound email will be sent with replies to Messenger conversations.
Replies only go through Messenger, even if you have merged the customer profile with one that has an email address, and you cannot CC or BCC other parties or forward the Messenger conversation out of Help Scout, even if using Workflows.
You cannot use the Change Customer feature on any Messenger based conversation.
Replies to Messenger conversations will only go to the customer that initiated the conversation via Messenger.
Formatting is not available when responding to Messenger conversations.
Messenger does not support text formatting like italic or bold. The reply editor does not include the formatting toolbar for these conversations in Help Scout. Note that while you cannot format text as a link, Messenger will automatically recognize URLs in the text (for example, https://www.helpscout.com) and these will appear as links for your customers.
Further replies to and from a Messenger customer will continue within a single Help Scout conversation.
A new conversation starts in Help Scout if the previous one reaches 100 threads (each reply from a Help Scout user or the customer is a thread), or the conversation has expired at Messenger. Messenger considers a conversation expired if 7 days have passed with no customer reply. You cannot reply to an expired Messenger conversation. You cannot split out threads from Messenger conversations to create new conversations manually.

Messenger

There are also a few differences with Help Scout conversations compared to handling them directly in Messenger that are worth noting as your team makes the switch.

Media your customers send in Messenger will come to Help Scout as attachments to the conversation.
Voice memos, photos, videos, avatars, stickers, or thumbs up reactions sent by your customer via Messenger will all show as attachments in Help Scout.
You won't see reaction emojis in Help Scout.
Also known as tapbacks, these are emojis that Messenger users can apply to a single message as a reaction. These will not show in Help Scout.
You cannot send attachments or media back to the customer through Help Scout.
You cannot send voice memos, photos, videos, avatars, stickers, or thumbs up reactions from Help Scout.
Read receipts will not appear in Help Scout. You will need to pop back into Messenger if you need to confirm your customer has read your reply. Just remember if you send a reply back directly in Messenger while you're there, it will not sync back to Help Scout.

Connect the Messenger Channel

You must be a Help Scout Administrator or Account Owner and an Admin for the Facebook Page you want to connect to complete this setup. Any Help Scout user with access to the Inbox can view and interact with the conversations according to their permissions after connection.

For more help on Help Scout permissions see User Roles and Permissions. For more Help on Facebook Page permissions see Manage roles for your Facebook Page in Facebook's Help Center.

1

Head to Manage > Inbox(es) > [Choose Your Inbox] in Help Scout. Scroll to find the Channels section and click Connect next to Messenger from Facebook.

You'll head to Manage > Mailbox(es) > [Choose Your Mailbox] if you're not yet using the new Inbox. More about that here: What's New With the Inbox.

2

Click Continue with Facebook, making sure that you're logging in as the Admin for the Facebook page you wish to connect.

3

Choose the Page(s) you want to connect and click Connect Page.

Note: You can only connect one Facebook account to any one Help Scout account, but you can choose multiple Pages owned by that Facebook account.

You're all set — now you'll see Messenger conversations going forward in this Help Scout Inbox! 🎉

Change Settings or Remove the Messenger Channel

You can add or remove Pages owned by the connected Facebook account at any time by clicking Manage next to the Connected Facebook Pages header on the Inbox settings page.

Click Disconnect to remove the channel.