Connected Accounts
Connecting social accounts
The social tab in Connected accounts is where you link the platforms your customers message you on, so those conversations arrive in one place instead of four separate apps.
Open your Profile at the bottom left, go to Settings, then Connected accounts, then the social tab.
Availability
Social connections are coming soon. Facebook, Instagram, Google Chat and TikTok are all planned, and this article covers how they will work so you can decide now whether they fit how you handle enquiries.
What connecting does
Once a platform is connected, messages customers send you there arrive in your conversations area alongside your emails and texts. You reply from the same place, and your reply is delivered back on the platform the customer used.
The customer sees a normal reply in the app they messaged you from. They do not know or care which system you answered from, which is the point.
How you will connect
Each platform connects through its own sign in, so you authorise access rather than handing over a password.
You click to add the account, sign in with the platform, approve the permissions being requested, and the connection is made. The permissions screen belongs to the platform rather than to us, and the access requested covers receiving your messages and replying to them.
You will be able to connect more than one account, so businesses running several pages or several brands can bring all of them in.
Connect a Facebook page and messages sent to that page arrive in your conversations.
If you manage more than one page, you choose which to connect. Enquiries through a page are often the first contact someone has with you, so this is usually the connection worth setting up first.
Connect Instagram and direct messages arrive in your conversations.
Instagram messaging runs through Meta and normally requires a professional account linked to a Facebook page, so it is worth having that in place before you try to connect.
Google Chat
Connect Google Chat and messages arrive in your conversations the same way.
TikTok
Connect TikTok and messages arrive in your conversations the same way.
Why this is worth setting up
Enquiries that arrive on social get slower replies than emails, and it is rarely because anyone is ignoring them. It is because nobody watches four inboxes as closely as they watch one.
Reply speed on a first enquiry has more effect on whether you get the booking than almost anything else you do afterwards. Bringing every channel into one place is the cheapest way to improve it.
Having the conversation in the same system as the booking also means it stays with the customer record instead of being lost in an app on somebody's phone.
What these connections do not do
They are for messaging rather than posting. Connecting your social accounts here brings conversations in, and does not publish content, schedule posts or manage your pages.
Platform rules to be aware of
Each platform sets its own rules on business messaging, and those rules apply to everybody using them rather than being something we impose.
The common ones are time limits on how long you have to reply before a conversation closes, requirements that customers have opted in before you message them first, and restrictions on what an automated message can contain. Meta platforms in particular apply a window that resets each time the customer messages you.
The practical effect is that replying quickly is not just good service, it is what keeps a conversation open at all.