“Hey T-Pain, did you get my DM? It’s Rihanna.” How Customers.ai is Solving T-Pain’s Instagram DM Problems

T-Pain had a problem on Instagram that needed solving. So, using his celebrity, T-Pain got in touch with the one person who could lend the largest helping hand to his Instagram DM problems, Mark Zuckerberg.

The reason why T-Pain contacted Mark Zuckerberg? Someone important was trying to get a message through to him, but couldn’t. 

That “important” person was Rihanna.

Yes, the singer, actress, fashion designer, and businesswoman – that Rihanna.

What Instagram DM problems was T-Pain having? Well, there were two main issues:

1. Rihanna was trying to get through to T-Pain via Instagram DM (direct message), but those messages weren’t seen and went unanswered.
2. T-Pain wants more functionality to come to the Instagram DM inbox, so he can filter through and find his most important conversations.

The full interaction takes place in the following video: Skip to 25 min 30 sec in the video to see how Mark Zuckerberg explained to T-Pain that Customers.ai can help him with his DM troubles:

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A post shared by T-Pain (@tpain)

As you’ll see in the video, T-Pain is finding it difficult, “Keeping everybody in mind” when he gets so many DMs every day. And since Instagram DMs are the way that, “Any celebrity gets in contact with any other celebrity that doesn’t have their phone number”, according to T-Pain, the lack of functionality in the Instagram DM inbox has become an issue for him.

He then goes on to add, he’s asking in regards to people that he doesn’t follow that are trying to get in contact with him, and that he wishes there were more filter options in the Instagram DM inbox, and that it’s impossible to reply to everyone important who messages him.

What T-Pain is really getting at here, is he wants to make sure he’s not missing important messages, and he wishes there was a way to at least get a response to every important message that lands in his Instagram DM inbox.

Since he didn’t follow Rihanna, the messages sent to his DM inbox were getting lost in his folders.

As you’ll see in the video, Mark Zuckerberg says that he agrees, any time someone like Rihanna is sending you a DM or even mentioning you on Instagram, that message should go straight to the top of your DM inbox. 

The other issue T-Pain alludes to is the lack of ability to filter through your DMs and find the most important messages. This makes a lot of sense, especially for those with thousands or even millions of messages coming in every week.

So, what’s the solution to T-Pain’s Instagram DM problems? Mark Zuckerberg had answers, which we’re about to cover.

In this article, we’re going to show you how Customers.ai is solving T-Pain’s Instgaram DM problems with the following solutions:

• How to effectively reply to every message sent to your Instagram DM inbox.
• How to filter your Instagram DMs and find your most important messages.

How to Reply to Every Message Sent to Your Instagram DM Inbox

What if T-Pain could have automatically replied to Rihanna, even though he didn’t follower her on Instagram? Well, he could have. As Mark Zuckerberg explains…

One of the most important Instagram DMs is called a Welcome or Greeting Message. Welcome Messages are used to respond to Instagram users who send a direct message to your page’s inbox.

To set up an automatic greeting message, use Customers.ai’s Instagram Page Welcomer tool.

Here’s an example of a welcome message one client is using on their Instagram page:

At the bottom of the welcome message, there’s a menu of options for the user to choose from. Each option leads the user down a different path in order to direct the user to the best possible landing page.

Using a chat menu is great because Instagram users who send your page a DM can ‘choose their own journey’ by selecting from multiple topics that pique their interest. Then, at the end of each chat menu option, add a link to send Instagram traffic to your website.

The next image is a good example of the dialogue that could follow when the user chooses the “? Personal Training” option:

As you can see, the choice triggers a response with a link to sign-up for a free training webinar.

In T-Pain’s case, he could have added an option, such as “Contact Me”, in order to provide an alternative method to get in touch with him faster.

With the Instagram Page Welcomer from Customers.ai, it’s incredibly easy to nurture people down your funnel, capture email addresses, phone numbers, and other important contact information. Test it out for yourself on the Customers.ai Instagram page by clicking the Message button, then say ”Hello”.

✅ Get early access to Instagram automated messages by Customers.ai.

How To Filter Your Instagram DMs And Find Your Most Important Messages

T-Pain claims he checks his Instagram DMs every day, but doesn’t have enough time to find all the most important messages. So, what did he ask Mark Zuckerberg for? More filters for the Instagram DM inbox.

What T-Pain didn’t know, is that these filters already exist!

The Customers.ai inbox is your central hub for all your Instagram communications. 

From the inbox, you have many tools at your disposal: 

• See everyone that has interacted with your Instagram bot over time.
• Review all chatbot dialogues and live agent conversations.
• Build rich-data customer profiles over time to provide great support and offer the right deals at the right time.  

And for those with super high message volume, Customers.ai makes sorting through your conversations and data easy with multiple custom filters.

For example, let’s say you’re using Customers.ai to qualify leads and one of the questions you ask is budget related.

Use the Customers.ai inbox filters to identify all of the budgets within a certain range, or even trigger live agents to jump-in and take over a chatbot conversation with real-time alerts, lead routing, and notification tools.

Add Multiple Users to Your Instagram Inbox

For the influencers, creators, and brands out there with a large volume of incoming messages per day, you’ve likely had your fair share of frustrations with Instagram’s inbox management options.

Even if you hire multiple VAs (virtual assistants) to manage your inbox, they end up tripping over one another, logging each other out, and are only able to reply to so many messages each day. 

Here comes Customers.ai to the rescue! 

Take full control over the Instagram inbox with multi-user inbox management solutions.

Customers.ai allows you to scale message volume and even increase your send limits per day. Yes, you read that correctly. 

With Customers.ai, you can transform the Instagram DM inbox into a suite of customer support chat tools, which you can use to:

• Answer complicated questions
• Build data-rich user profiles, and
• Alert live chat agents with notifications of hot leads.

It’s simple to add multiple users to your Instagram inbox to handle even the largest message volumes.

How to filter conversations and find opportunities to sell in the Customers.ai Inbox

And for those with super high message volume, who wish to conduct customer support via the Instagram DM inbox, you can even filter conversations by status or live agent assignments.

Here’s an example of how to filter conversations by status, such as:

• Follow Up
• Pending
• Resolved

And here’s an example of how to assign a conversation to another live agent.

People turn to Instagram to stay in touch with people, products, and service providers they love. 

Don’t run into the same Instagram DM problems T-Pain had. And don’t miss DMs from people like Rihanna.

Be there for your audience 24/7 and launch an answering service to sell, support, and engage your fans with max efficiency and authenticity!

Solving Instagram DM Problems: Important Next Steps

Instagram accounts that use MoibileMonkey’s Instagram marketing tools, will generate automated activity and interactions which are perceived as entirely organic. And because you’re able to generate organic engagement at scale, this translates into a huge increase in genuine followers.

Best of all, with Customers.ai, you’ll be working with 100% Instagram-approved engagement tools.

The proof is in the numbers. 75% of consumers also prefer to engage with brands using private messaging channels vs traditional channels.

✅ Get early access to Instagram messaging tools.