By
Company takes measures to help customers get better user-experience
By Ada Anioji
Blackberry, BBM, one of the world’s largest mobile messaging applications with over 100 million installs on Android, iOS, and Windows has unveiled a new set of applications to enable its users get better value for their money, a statement from the firm has disclosed.
Noting that since it was created in August 2005, BBM has evolved from a pure messaging application for communication (text and video) to a social eco-system unifying chat, social, commerce and services including games, the company says the new introductions are to help customers get a more satisfying experience.
One of the first changes is a new layout that ‘will make it easier to see new services as they launch, since they will get slotted into the list. Also, just for Android users, when you update your profile picture, it will show up as a full image in the feeds so people can view the image without clicking to expand.
The statement also added that the ‘latest release also includes the anxiously awaited chatbot application programming interface (API).’ As it explains, BBM channel owners now have the opportunity to bring their own, interactive software chatbots to BBM that can converse with customers.
This new capability builds on the channel chat feature where previously, you could chat with the channel owner but only via phone. Now, a human channel representative or a chatbot program can answer the questions received in chat.’
It hints also that ‘this is the first of a number of API initiatives that BBM plans to add’ and requests users to stay tuned for more news soon.’
Another significant add-on is that ‘BBM has also integrated better metrics via Google Analytics to provide partners with a view into expanded engagement metrics. Partners can now easily track their traffic, including the number of unique users, returning users, how long people are staying on their applications, and more.’
On spam reporting, ‘BBM now lets you report unwanted friend requests as “spam.” BBM has been hearing from users that they’ve been seeing unwanted friend requests in their BBM. Now there’s an easy way to report those.’
Equally notable is the new Add a Phone Number feature. According to the statement. ‘Last July, BBM added a phone number registration feature, making it possible to sign up for a new BBM account with a phone number, instead of an email address as the main contact. Now, existing users who originally set up their BBM account with an email address can add a phone number to their profiles. Adding a phone number provides additional security and speeds up the process for resetting forgotten passwords. It also makes it easier to find friends.’
Comments