Instagram rolls out new messaging features for business profiles, expands action buttons to more third-party apps

Instagram is rolling out new ways for businesses to interact with their followers and is expanding the booking and payments feature it began testing last week.

Now, messages to a business will show up in the business profile’s main Direct inbox versus the pending folder, and businesses will be able to star and filter conversations to better manage their messages.

Instagram says it will also be testing quick replies in the coming weeks, giving businesses the ability to craft messages that can be sent in response to commonly asked questions.

Instagram is also expanding the booking and payment feature for business profiles that it began testing last week. Now a number of third-party apps have access to “action buttons” that let users make reservations, purchase tickets, start a restaurant order or book a service without leaving Instagram.

“Take HomeState for example, a popular restaurant in Texas, they’ve partnered with ChowNow to use the ‘Start Order’ button — letting their customers order their signature tacos right from their Instagram business profile,” writes Instagram on its Business Blog.

Currently, the action buttons are available to the following third-party apps:

• Acuity.
• Atom Tickets.
• Booksy.
• ChowNow.
• Eatstreet.
• Eventbrite.
• Fandango.
• GrubHub.
• MyTime.
• OpenTable.
• Reserve.
• Restorando.
• Resy.
• SevenRooms.
• StyleSeat.
• Tock.
• Yelp Reservations.

Instagram says it will be bringing the action buttons to more apps soon, including Appointy, Genbook, LaFourchette, Mindbody, Schedulicity, SetMore, Shedul and Vagaro.

Eventbrite, the online event management and ticketing platform, released an announcement about the new action buttons, confirming Instagram’s “Get Tickets” button is now available to the hundreds of thousands of creators that use Eventbrite.