Facebook Messenger served as the notification hub for customers of online retailer Everlane for a while, but as of Wednesday, that deal is officially over. Before using Facebook Messenger, Everlane used to email customers with order confirmations and shipping status notifications, and an email that recently went out to customers confirmed that they will be going back to that approach. However, when Everlane made the jump to Facebook Messenger, they didn’t just bring notifications with them as they also started doing customer service and support through Facebook Messenger. While the company will now send notifications via email, customer service interactions via Facebook Messenger will continue to be available for the foreseeable future, Everlane revealed.
Everlane’s Chief Executive Officer Michael Preysman initially had high hopes for Facebook Messenger, stating that he thought using the service would increase user engagement, improve customer service, and even help create more demand and drive sales. While Facebook Messenger supported eCommerce solutions for a while, affairs between Facebook and Everlane stayed strictly in the realm of customer service, messages, and notifications. With today’s change bringing notifications for Everlane back to email, customers will only chat to Everlane on Facebook Messenger when they have a customer service inquiry. It’s currently unclear whether Everlane is also planning to transition its customer support team back to email.
This move comes as Facebook continues its global push for Messenger to transition from being a simple messaging solution to a versatile platform and a service. A number of interactive, highly functional chatbots have been making their way to the service in recent months, and advanced functions like fund transfers between users and business have also been added to the app, making Facebook Messenger more versatile than ever. Regardless, some entities like Everlane are now choosing not to embrace the trend leaning towards integration and consolidation that has been sweeping the tech and mobile spaces lately. Instead, those companies decided to either launch their own similar services, stick with the old ways, or take a different, more novel approach to advancing their services. Overall, it seems that Facebook still has a lot of hurdles to overcome if it wants to turn Messenger into an ecosystem that retailers want to be a part of.