Facebook is the most popular social media platform on the planet. Statistics indicate that the website had close to three billion active monthly users as of December 2023.
With so many active users, Facebook support can be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of queries and requests. That’s why the company introduced several channels through which users can contact and interact with its customer care representatives.
Facebook live support is one of the various ways to contact social media’s customer care reps and possibly address your concerns. The live support option provides several benefits over other contact channels. Most notably, you can get immediate replies to your queries if you pose them within certain hours.
This article shall delve into Facebook live support and how it has revolutionized how the social media company interacts with its clients. The post shall also spell out the difference between the live support and live broadcast functions, which are often subject to confusion.
What Is Facebook Live Support?
Facebook live support, also known as Facebook support chat, is a live chat function that lets you shoot a message to Facebook’s customer support and interact with the agents in real-time.
The feature launched in 2021 is available to specific Facebook Business accounts that advertise with active campaigns. It’s also restricted to specific countries and subject to some eligibility criteria.
What Are The Benefits Of Facebook Live Support?
Speedy response is the most outstanding benefit of Facebook’s live chat support. As already hinted, this communication channel allows Facebook users to engage customer care representatives in real-time. It’s the most efficient way to get prompt replies on pressing issues.
Facebook support chat also guarantees realistic and personalized interactions. That’s for the simple reason that you’re almost always chatting with a human customer care agent, not a bot. As such, you can pose technical or personal queries that you wouldn’t normally get accurate answers to if you contacted Facebook via other avenues.
Is Facebook Live Chat the Same As Facebook Live Broadcast?
Despite the common confusion, Facebook live chat and live broadcasts are two distinct functionalities.
Live broadcast, as the name implies, is a live streaming feature that lets you broadcast content in real-time. It was introduced primarily to allow Facebook users to boost engagement with their followers and build meaningful relationships on the platform.
Perhaps the only similarity between Facebook live chat and Facebook live broadcast is that you can use the chat function to seek answers to queries related to livestreaming, such as how to livestream with widgets. Facebook customer care reps will be happy to point you to resourceful materials that might help you set up a successful live broadcast session.
What’s The Procedure for Using Facebook Live Support?
The process of using Facebook live chat is rather straightforward.
For starters, you’ll need to sign up for a Facebook profile if you don’t already have one. Remember that this feature is only available to Facebook for Business accounts.
Now, follow the below procedure to contact Facebook customer service representatives using the live chat function;
- Sign in to your Facebook for Business account using your login credentials.
- Click “Get Help” on your account.
Alternatively, you can access the Facebook for Business Help page by signing in directly from this link.
- Scroll down the page to the “Still Need Help” section and click on the Chat avatar.
NOTE: The “Still Need Help?” section lets you confirm that you’ve been unable to get answers to your questions from any of Facebook’s resource pages. Only click the Chat button if your concerns haven’t been addressed yet.
- Choose a category for your queries from any of the below options;
- Policy and Account Security
- Ads
- Ad Management Tools
- Billing and Payments
- Measure and Improve Results
Evidently, Facebook expects you to make inquiries about your business’ advertising and billing. But since you’ll be engaging a real customer care agent, you can leverage the opportunity to pose questions that aren’t entirely relevant to the selected issue category.
However, if the above options do not appear when you activate the chat function, this provision may be unavailable in your country. It might also indicate the ineligibility of your Facebook Business account. In that case, your best bet would be to contact the social media company via other avenues.
- Send your message in the chat box and wait for Facebook’s support to reply.
The most popular way to send out messages is through text-based chats. However, you can also share your screen with an ad specialist. Your conversations will pop up in Messenger.
Who Can Use Facebook Live Support?
Not every Facebook user can access the live support function. Due to resource limitations, the feature is only available to selected Facebook for Business accounts that run active ad campaigns. Non-advertisers can engage Facebook support by filling out a contact form.
Besides, only Facebook users in certain countries can access live chat, and the feature is available daily between 8:00 am and 10:00 pm.
But even if you meet the above criteria, Facebook may impose additional conditions before accessing the live support function. It’s also worth noting that you may lose live chat privileges even if you’ve used the service before. That’s part of Facebook’s strategy to make the feature available to other users who may need it.
Finally, like most companies, Facebook may suspend the chat function occasionally. This typically happens during routine maintenance procedures or pandemics, as with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Should I Call Facebook On the Phone Instead?
Facebook’s chat function provides an efficient way to contact customer care consultants. However, the stringent eligibility criteria make the service unavailable to millions of Facebook users. That may get you wondering – why not just call the company directly?
Unfortunately, Facebook doesn’t maintain a public phone number that you can call to talk to its support reps. The company has often clarified that it doesn’t offer telephone support.
When you search online for the phrase “Facebook phone contact,” the numbers 650-543-4800 and 650-308-7300 will pop up. However, dialing these numbers won’t get you to a Facebook customer care representative. Instead, it will prompt a pre-recording directing you to explore other ways to contact the company.
The saving grace is that the Facebook customer service chat function has several alternatives.
Alternative Ways to Contact Facebook Support
1. Facebook Help Center
The Facebook Help Center is a resourceful page with answers to frequently asked questions, including queries related to account management, community guidelines, and privacy policies.
To access the page, log into your account and click “Help Center” from the drop-down menu. Click on a topic of interest and wait for the system to redirect you to the solution page.
Unlike Facebook support chat, the Help Center page isn’t geo-restricted. The feature is accessible 24/7, even if you’ve lost your account through suspension or hacking.
2. Facebook Support Email
Facebook maintains several emails through which you can contact its customer care reps.
Below are Facebook support email addresses and the queries they typically handle;
- Support@fb.com – General support
- Press@fb.com – Press-related queries
- Records@fb.com – Legal issues
- Advertise@fb.com – General queries relating to Facebook Ads
- Appeals@fb.com – Appealing against restricted content
- Abuse@fb.com – Reporting potential policy violations
- Phish@fb.com – Reporting phishing content
- Datarequests@fb.com – Inquiries on the data Facebook has collected about you
- Ip@fb.com – Queries related to intellectual property
Note that most email queries are replied to by an autoresponder. It may take days to receive a response from an actual Facebook customer care representative.
3. Facebook Community
The Facebook Community is a resource page for queries about building a vibrant social media network.
It caters primarily to issues on Facebook groups, community chats, and online events.
4. Facebook ‘Report a Problem’ Feature
Users experiencing technical issues with their Facebook accounts can report such problems directly to the company using the ‘Report a Problem’ feature on the ‘Help’ drop-down menu in the upper right corner.
Like Facebook live support, you can only unlock the ‘Report a Problem’ feature if logged into your account. Some of the issues you can report include broken pages, offensive content, and payment glitches.
5. Facebook Official Resource Pages
Any self-respecting company with an online presence would maintain an official blog where users can quickly find answers to common queries.
Facebook has a resource page dedicated to specific concerns. They include;
- Facebook for Business for news and changes to Facebook for Business accounts
- Facebook Design for product and content designers
- Facebook Media to understand the rules of engagement between Facebook and other media outlets.
- Facebook for Developers for Facebook users interested in software development, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML)
- Facebook Engineering for deeper insights into Facebook’s engineering architecture
- Facebook Privacy for privacy-related information
6. Facebook Contact Forms
Like its official resource pages, Facebook provides contact forms for specific queries. They include;
- My Account Was Disabled for erroneously disabled accounts
- Report a Page Unavailable Error if you encounter the “Page Unavailable” error while using your Facebook account
- Payment support for payment-related issues
- Submit Feedback for Facebook Accessibility and Assistive Technology for assistive technology queries.
- Copyright Report Form for copyright-related issues
- Trademark Report Form for trademark queries
- Child Data Request for parents and legal guardians making data inquiries on their children’s Facebook accounts
Wrap Up
Facebook chat support is the most innovative way for business users to contact social media company support.
But if you’re ineligible for this service, it’s great to know you can still get Facebook support using several other channels.
