Social networking giant Facebook is planning to allow retailers and other businesses to take advantage of its Messenger service to communicate with customers without having to use any third-party platform.

The aim of this is to make it easier for connections to be made between buyers and sellers, in turn driving sales via safe shopping online and also making it more likely that people will visit their nearest bricks and mortar outlets.

Facebook will not simply offer businesses a means of chatting directly with customers through Messenger using human support staff but will also afford them the option of harnessing AI-powered chatbots that can handle many queries automatically.

Integration with Facebook’s own ad service will also mean that companies can get people to click on promotional posts which then launch a Messenger discussion. This should help to generate leads, improve engagement rates and enhance customer satisfaction from the word go.

For retailers this will also mean having a lot more access to data about how customers respond to their marketing efforts, while furthermore giving them a means of dealing with questions and complaints more efficiently and effectively.

The hope is that businesses of all kinds will be able to benefit from this change, from retailers to design firms, manufacturers and service providers.

At the moment the announcement of these plans is purely a means for Facebook to get people talking about the potential of opening up Messenger to businesses; it will still be a few months before this feature goes live, at which point it will take a while for developers to get to grips with it. Even so, this is an exciting prospect and one which will not only benefit companies but also prove advantageous to their customers, so long as it is well implemented.