Sparkcentral today announced Instagram support for its social messaging customer service platform, which allows companies to respond and engage customers in real time over the online photo-sharing app and social network.
Sparkcentral's Instagram support empowers companies to centralize social media engagement across sales, marketing, and service, and provide a unified view of all digital channels, such as WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, SMS, or web chat.
Sparkcentral's platform lets users view customer comments or questions in the context of the entire conversation history and assign them to the appropriate agent or marketing staff member. Agents can respond to photo comments, view persistently threaded conversation history, and send content or attachments through a conversation pane with clear visual cues.
"Instagram's popularity has exploded. Eighty percent of social media influencers prefer Instagram as opposed to others," said Tobias Goebel, vice president of marketing at Sparkcentral, in a statement. "Our support of Instagram fosters better customer engagement and will help turn loyal fans into loyal customers. We offer ample opportunity for brands to be creative and use Instagram as an extension of their brands' personality."
Other Instagram integration features of the Sparkcentral platform allow support teams to pull in brand mentions anywhere on Instagram; pull in relevant media at the beginning of every new conversation; allow agents to hide offensive comments on the page; have a consistent user interface with other mediums; respond to relevant messages in real time; and send attachments and emojis.