How to answer Facebook and Instagram DMs as a team

The short answer: give each person their own access through Meta's tools, with only the messages permission turned on. They sign in as themselves, reply as your business, and you can take the access away in a minute without changing a password.

Which steps you follow depends on one thing: whether your Facebook Page is in a business portfolio (what Meta used to call Business Manager). If you have ever set up ads or added your Page in Meta Business Suite settings, it probably is. If you only ever managed the Page from Facebook itself, it may not be.

Why not just share the password

Plenty of small businesses start by handing out the Instagram login, or keeping one phone behind the counter. It works until it doesn't.

• Anyone with the password has everything. They can change the password, the email and the recovery phone. Meta's own advice is to never give your password to someone you don't know and trust, because it gives them complete access to the account (Instagram Help).
• You cannot take one person's access away. When someone leaves, everyone gets a new password.
• Two people answer the same customer. With one shared login there is no way to see who is on which conversation.

Meta built the options below so you do not have to share the password.

If your Page is not in a business portfolio

Pages managed straight from Facebook have two kinds of access. Facebook access lets someone switch into the Page on Facebook. Task access lets them manage the Page only from tools like Meta Business Suite, without switching into it (Facebook Help).

For someone who only answers messages, task access with one task turned on is the tidy choice:

1. Switch into your Page on Facebook.
2. Go to Settings & privacy, then Settings.
3. Under Audience and Visibility, open Page setup, then Page access.
4. Next to People with task access, click Add New, then Next.
5. Type their name or email address and pick them.
6. Turn on Messages and Community Activity and leave the rest off, then click Give Access.

They get an email to accept. Only someone with full control of the Page can do this (Facebook Help). Messages and Community Activity covers replying to direct messages and comments, so it is the one task a front-desk person needs.

If your Page is in a business portfolio

In a portfolio there are three levels of Page access: partial access (business tools only), partial access (business tools and Facebook), and full control (Meta Business Help). For answering messages, partial access (business tools only) with the Messages and calls task is enough. People at that level cannot switch into the Page on Facebook.

It takes two steps, both in Meta Business Suite on a computer.

First, add the person to your portfolio.

1. Open Settings, then People in the left menu.
2. Click Invite people.
3. Enter their email address. Meta says it must match the email on their Facebook account (Meta Business Help).
4. Leave their portfolio permissions at basic access, which is the default, and send the invite.

They need a Facebook account, an Instagram account or a managed Meta account to accept, and can create one while accepting (Meta Business Help).

Then give them the Page.

1. In Settings, under Profiles, click Pages and select your Page.
2. Click Assign people and pick the person.
3. Choose partial access (business tools only) and tick Messages and calls (Meta Business Help).

Instagram messages

There are two ways to let someone into your Instagram DMs without the password.

Through the business portfolio. This is the better route if you already use Meta Business Suite, because Facebook and Instagram messages end up in one inbox.

1. In Meta Business Suite Settings, under Accounts, click Instagram accounts, then Add, and log in to Instagram. Only professional accounts can be added, and each one can belong to one portfolio (Meta Business Help).
2. Assign people to the Instagram account the same way as a Page. The partial access task you want is Messages, which Meta describes as "Send and respond to direct messages as the Instagram account" (Meta Business Help).

One thing to know: people who help manage your Facebook Page may be able to see and answer Instagram messages too, once Instagram messages are allowed in the inbox. You can change that in Instagram settings or your portfolio settings (Meta Business Help). If Instagram messages do not show up in the inbox at all, see why messages go missing from Meta Business Suite.

Through Instagram's shared access. Inside the Instagram app, go to your profile, tap the Menu, then Shared access, then Invite people. The invite lasts 7 days. Inbox access is a separate switch: under Manage, tap Inbox access and turn it on for the person (Instagram Help). People you invite cannot change your username, password or contact details, or give access to anyone else. Two caveats from Meta: it is only available to eligible accounts, and anyone can see on your profile's About this account section that the account is shared (Instagram Help).

Working as a team once everyone is in

Access is the easy part. The hard part is two or three people working one inbox without answering the same customer twice or each assuming someone else did it.

Meta Business Suite's inbox gives you some tools for this. You can assign a conversation to a person and see everything assigned to each of them (Meta Business Help). You can add notes about a customer that only people managing the Page can see, add labels, and move a conversation to Done (Meta Business Help).

The tools only work if the team agrees how to use them. Three habits cover most of it:

• Decide who holds the inbox, and when. "Whoever sees it first" means nobody on a busy day. A name per shift or per day works better.
• Only mark Done when the customer has what they need. Done is the team's signal that nobody else has to look. If you are waiting on stock or a quote, leave it open or mark it to follow up.
• Hand over in a note, not in the thread. A short note ("quoted $240, waiting on her date") saves the next person from reading the whole conversation.

Where Stonechat fits

Stonechat is a shared inbox for Facebook Page and Instagram DMs that does the "who still needs an answer" part for the team. It reads each conversation and keeps one list of the people still owed a reply, with the unhappy ones and the longest waits on top, so nobody has to remember to mark anything. It also drafts replies from your knowledge base and from how your business has answered similar questions before, with the sources shown, so the answer is often half written when you open the conversation.

Everyone who answers can be invited at no extra cost. You can hand a conversation to a teammate, leave each other notes, see who answered each message, and see when someone else is already typing a reply. It connects through Meta's official tools, so nobody shares a password, and it opens to small groups from a waitlist.