[Amex offer] new (perhaps easier) way to grab Amex offer from FB messenger

Yesterday I received an email from Amex about the possibility to grab Amex offers (among other things) using their new Facebook bots. I tried it out a bit and figure I'll share my experience with you.

Here is the Q&A from Amex website

Set up:

set up is actually pretty straight forward, I just click on the link, sign on to messenger, which asked me to agree to T&C and then log into my account to link the card. But if you didn't get the email, here is the instruction from Amex

1. Download the Messenger app on your mobile device and type “AmericanExpressUS” into the Messenger search bar to locate the Amex bot.

2. Select the Amex bot and click the “Get Started” button beneath the greeting message in the Amex bot conversation to initiate the Card connection process. 

3. Tap “Log in” and enter your American Express online account User ID and Password. Please know that your American Express User ID and Password are not visible to or shared with Facebook. If you have more than one eligible Card, your primary Card will be the default selection. You can always change the Card by clicking "Change" at the top of the screen. Please know that during this step, you may be presented the option to add your Card and billing information to Facebook so you can make purchases while on Facebook. To learn how to “Add your Card” to Facebook see FAQ, “I want to add my Card to my Facebook account to make purchases on Facebook. How can I do that?”

4. Review the Terms and then tap “Agree” to agree to the Terms and connect your Card to the Amex bot and start receiving messages.

 

Use:

Using Facebook to load Amex offer is nothing new, in fact, it was introduced soon after the twitter sync rolls out and even before syncing with tripadvisor. It's just unfortunate that it just doesn't produce as many great offers as twitter. This time around, as it turns out, it appears to be a much better designed interface which actually has a lot of potential such as customer service or concierge. After playing with it for a while, I believe this bot does has some potential.

Offers:

After a quick look, perhaps it's just me, but the offers seems to be identical to the ones I can find on the account service web page, which kind of defeats the main purpose I use the feature. After all, I can already load offers from the Amex app on my phone; and as of the customer service aspect, it can already be done via twitter. That being said, I do recognize the potential here so hopefully there will be unique offers in the future and opens up the possibility of managing/loading offers to multiple cards.

Conclusion

It's great that Amex shows they are not completely abandoning the Amex offers on Facebook platform and they did roll out a decent upgrade to match existing capability in twitter. However, to get mass popularity, eventually Amex needs to provide unique offers like what they did on twitter.