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Customer Chat issues due to Facebook Graph API update

On November 2, 2020, Facebook rolled out an update for their Graph API creating a new Customer Chat behavior. On the same day, we've identified a bug in that update that affects the Customer Chat Growth Tool. We've immediately reported the issue to Facebook and released the fix to minimize the impact, but our users may still experience some issues with Customer Chat.


Here is a list of issues caused by that change:

Tags, Custom User Field updates, and Other Actions

  • Issue: Tags, Custom User Field Updates, and other Actions will not be processing if placed at the very start of the Opt-In Message. As a result, the following messages will not be fired off as well.
  • Solution: Remove all Actions from the start of the Opt-In Message, make it only consist of a Text message.

User Input Blocks

  • Issue: User Input won't be sent to a contact through Customer Chat if this contact didn't initially reply to the opt-in message.
  • Solution: make sure that whatever text-type message you have at the start of the Opt-In Message is not a User Input Block. Only text-type messages that support buttons and/or Quick Replies will work.

The 'Opted-in Through' parameter set to 'Direct'

  • Issue: 'Opted In through' isn't recognized for contacts who opted-in through Customer Chat. You will see it as 'Direct'.
  • Solution: If you still need to differentiate people coming in through Customer Chat from everyone else – consider adding a Tag Action after the initial text-type message's button press. As a result, whenever a contact clicks on your opt-in message's button they would be tagged immediately after that, allowing you to keep track of people who had gone through the chat widget.

Pass Value from widget to Custom Field

  • Issue: 'Pass value from widget to Custom Field' feature won't work for contacts who didn't reply to Customer Chat's opt-in message.
  • Solution: Make sure that the initial text-type message of your Customer Chat has a button that Messenger contacts can interact with! That way, whenever he/she does that – the value will be passed to their Custom Field as expected.

Delay Blocks

  • Issue: Time Delay blocks placed in front of the text of the initial Opt-In Message will prevent the message from appearing and firing off.
  • Solution: As a result, we have updated Customer Chat's logic to skip the Time Delay block so that it goes straight to the message itself. No further actions are needed from our users.

The 24-hour window does not re-open when sending the opt-in message

  • Issue: Whenever an FB contact interacts with your page's Customer Chat widget – the opt-in message sent does not re-open the 24-hour window, making it impossible for that person to receive messages marked with the "Other" content-type.
  • Solution: As we've learned from Facebook recently, this is intentional behavior. It is partially related to the other changes, particularly the change of the opt-in parameter to 'Direct' and not firing off Actions placed in the Starting Step section. You do not have to make any changes to your Customer Chat though, it will keep behaving as usual!

To summarize, you need to make sure your contacts interact with Customer Chat's Opt-in message right away. We recommend to re-build your Flows connected to Customer Chat and focus them on early interaction, such as buttons in the opt-in message. If potential contact clicks a button, the problem will be resolved and all future Customer Chat interactions with them will go smoothly.

Here is the example Flow for a setup like that feel free to copy and rework it for your bot. 

We really hope this is resolved soon!