This product assessment is based on a synthesis of 9 recent reviews analyzing Intercom across multiple dimensions, including its use cases, ROI, and integrations. Intercom is primarily used as a centralized customer support hub, facilitating communication via live chat and email. A significant portion of users, 7 out of 9 reviewers, highlight this core function. Intercom's value proposition centers around streamlining customer interactions and improving support efficiency, with 4 reviewers specifically mentioning the use of automation features like Fin AI to triage inquiries and resolve repetitive issues. The reported ROI is strong, with 3 of 9 reviewers explicitly stating cost reductions and increased ROI, often attributed to the reduced need for large support teams. Another 3 reviewers praised the improvements to customer support, particularly noting Fin AI's ability to handle queries outside business hours and decrease response times. However, the integration with other tools receives mixed feedback. While 5 reviewers discussed integrations, experiences varied from simple integrations with tools like Stripe to more complex setups with HubSpot and Linear. Some reviewers expressed a desire for stronger, more direct integrations, particularly with HubSpot. While Fin AI is used for self-service and training by some, its integration with other tools appears limited in some cases.
Pros
Centralized customer support hub for managing inquiries via live chat and email.
Automation features (Fin AI) streamline responses and triage inquiries.
Reduces costs and increases ROI by decreasing the need for large support teams.
Improves customer support with AI handling queries during non-business hours and decreasing response times.
Cons
Integration with other platforms, particularly HubSpot, could be stronger and more direct.
Limited integration of Fin AI with other tools in some use cases.
Customer Support
7 mentions
Positive reviews by 100% of reviewers
Why it matters:
A majority of reviewers, 7 of 9, use Intercom for customer support, citing its ability to manage conversations in one place and improve team follow-up. It serves as the primary point of contact for customers, housing help articles and facilitating interactions with the support team. Intercom allows organizations to manage customer queries and requests, ensuring a high-quality service.
“Its used for customer service and onboarding with existing and new customers, as well as to communicate new features or share tutorials.”
Integrations with other tools
5 mentions
Why it matters:
More than half of the reviewers (5 of 9) mentioned integrating Intercom with other tools. While some found integrations, such as with Stripe and Linear, to be fairly simple and useful, others expressed a desire for stronger, more direct integrations, particularly with HubSpot. One reviewer indicated they do not use integrations with their current package.
“We use Intercom alongside several other tools, including HubSpot, our CRM. While we do integrate the two, the data sync relies on a paid HubSpot service rather than a native or way better Intercom integration. It would be great to have a stronger, more direct integration between the two platforms.”
Automation Features
4 mentions
Positive reviews by 100% of reviewers
Why it matters:
Intercom's automation features, particularly Fin AI, are used by 4 of 9 reviewers to streamline responses and triage inquiries. These tools help resolve repetitive issues and provide quick answers, reducing wait times for users. Additionally, Intercom's automation capabilities extend to sending messages through various channels like WhatsApp, SMS, and phone notifications.
“We use FIN bot to help us resolve repetitive matters.”
Intercom is designed to easily integrate with other tools in your tech stack. How does your organization use Intercom alongside other tools, if at all?
From 9 reviews
Summary
This report synthesizes 9 recent reviews to understand how organizations integrate Intercom with other tools. Integrations with other tools were discussed by 5 reviewers, with experiences ranging from simple integrations with tools like Stripe to more complex integrations with platforms like HubSpot and Linear. Three reviewers specifically mentioned using Fin, Intercom's AI chatbot, for customer self-service and training, with one noting that they have not yet integrated Fin with other tools. Some reviewers expressed a desire for stronger, more direct integrations between Intercom and other platforms, particularly HubSpot.
“We use Intercom alongside several other tools, including HubSpot, our CRM. While we do integrate the two, the data sync relies on a paid HubSpot service rather than a native or way better Intercom integration. It would be great to have a stronger, more direct integration between the two platforms.”
Using Fin
“We do not use the Helpdesk. We are piloting Fin right now, and are trying to train it so that it can respond to clients.”
What positive or negative impact (i.e. Return on Investment or ROI) has Intercom had on your overall business objectives?
From 9 reviews
Summary
This report analyzes 9 recent reviews to assess the return on investment (ROI) that Intercom has delivered for businesses. A significant portion of reviewers (3 of 9) highlighted Intercom's impact on reducing costs and increasing ROI, often by reducing the need for a large support team. Echoing this, another 3 of 9 reviewers praised Intercom for improving customer support, particularly citing the Fin AI agent's ability to handle queries during non-business hours and decrease response times. These improvements in customer support appear to directly contribute to the cost savings and ROI improvements reported by other reviewers, as efficient AI-driven support allows for reallocation of resources.
“Since we implemented Fin AI in February, we have been able to support customer queries during non-business hours.”
Reduced costs, increased ROI
“ROI increased due to FIN AI, enables the company to save one human agent's salary”
Describe how you use Intercom in your organization. What are the business problems the product addresses and what is the scope of your use case?
From 9 reviews
Summary
This report synthesizes 9 recent reviews to understand how organizations use Intercom and the business problems it addresses. A primary use case is customer support, with 7 of 9 reviewers mentioning it. Intercom serves as a centralized hub for managing customer inquiries, facilitating communication through live chat and email. Reviewers also highlight the use of Intercom's automation features, including Fin AI, to streamline responses and triage inquiries, mentioned by 4 of 9 reviewers. These features help resolve repetitive issues and provide quick answers to users.
We're using Fin to answer some generic questions users have on 1 specific topic, so that it can handle at least a part of the inquiries that come our way about it and so users can receive an answer asap, rather than have to wait for an agent to message them back. We've configured it so it will only answer questions related to this specific topic, while referring users with different questions directly to the support team.
Pros
Checks through all content and provides the most accurate answer to the question.
Provides the source, so users can further read on the topic if they want to.
Can be configured based on our needs and preferences.
Cons
Fin AI should be using the custom answers first, before checking any other content.
Fin AI should learn from the testing based on the Notes/ Feedback provider by the reviewer.
Fin AI is sometimes not answering questions even though the answer is in a snippet.
Likelihood to Recommend
Fin is well suited to answer questions that can also be answered by checking the Help Page - e.g. generic questions. Might also be good for suggesting troubleshooting steps, etc. However, it is definitely not ideal for when a case needs to be escalated - it's best a human checks and determines whether the issue needs to be further escalated or not.
We use Intercom to support customers of our B2B SAAS platform. It houses our help articles and is the primary (only) place customers interact with our support team. We have integrated Intercom into our platform and public website to handle queries. We also use Intercom's Fin AI and automated workflows to streamline our responses further.
Pros
Keeps everything in one place making our remote team in sync.
Continuously innovating. Bringing AI was a game changer.
Good support team. Knows the product and follows through.
Cons
Better ways to close the pop-up chat window. A few of our customers keep complaining that it irritates them, and they are not able to intuitively close it.
Hand off between human and AI. I would love to hand over to AI to follow up after a certain point in the conversation. Right now, only AI can hand over to humans.
Ability to fill in qualification fields based on rules in workflows. When a customer enters a response, I want that to be filled into the qualification fields automatically. Not possible currently.
Likelihood to Recommend
We started using Intercom five years ago, and it is probably the best decision we made. It is without a doubt the best investment in our startup journey. It is rock solid, with constant innovation and product improvements. We are a fully remote team, and it helps keep all the customer conversations and interactions in one place. So, we can seamlessly collaborate and ensure that nothing drops.
Our Customer Support team uses Intercom as our CRM. It also hosts our customer facing articles and macros, and we use the phone support as well. We also use Intercom Fin to triage our queue.
Pros
Intercom Fin is so good -> as long as you train and have a great KB
Love the look of the articles
Intercom is easy to use
Love the look of Intercom
Cons
Hmm maybe more ease of emailing directly from a convo -> instead of having to open a new tab go to business email (pretty small potatoes) but I love the short cuts and they are always a win
Likelihood to Recommend
I suppose it would depend on the team and their needs, though for our purposes intercom is #1 compared to zendesk. The articles are amazing and nice to layout. Plus Intercom Fin is like another teammate.
In my organization we use Intercom to manage the Customer Support service. It's through Intercom that customers reach out to us with queries and requests, and through Intercom we reply and manage those queries and requests, ensuring a top quality service. Intercom helps us to provide a smooth and trustful customer service.
Pros
Automations and Workflows
FIN AI (the AI agent)
Reports
Integrations
Cons
More flexibility of pricing/service plans
HelpCenter content management could be easier and more dynamic
Likelihood to Recommend
Intercom is a formidable tool to do customer support services. It is super well suited and designed to ensure a top quality service to customers. It's packed with great features to boost our efficiency. In the whole product the only feature I've found that needs much improvement it's the Help Center. The content management is a bit clunky and sometimes difficult to manage because, for example, there is no dynamic features like drag and drop elements and such.
Its used for customer service and onboarding with existing and new customers, as well as to communicate new features or share tutorials. It's very useful for collecting user usage data if there's any type of connection to your system, for example, the date of the last connection, and whether they logged in via the web or Android.
Pros
Fin Agent
Workflows
Help desk
SDK tools
Cons
Carrousels mobile
News
More sdk functions
Likelihood to Recommend
It's super good for any business that requires post-sale follow-up or to close the sale. I think it's even good for educational platforms or when launching a mobile app that requires some type of agent-to-customer communication. I think it's just as appropriate when it's not a product or service that requires post-sale communication.
We are a high volume support team. Our clients are in the medical field and need assistance using our software in as quickly as possible. Intercom has the tools and features available to help us route new inquiries quickly. We average 20 conversations a day per support analyst. Intercom's reporting features also help us see our volume and responsiveness overtime.
Pros
User Interface/Experience
Reporting
Custom Attributes
Platform Integration
Cons
Allow users to change the ticket type after it is created
Conversation Export. We have trouble sharing the content of conversations within our organization unless the user has a license
Likelihood to Recommend
I've been in software for about a decade and in support for 7 years. I've used a lot of ticketing platforms. Intercom is my favorite. Others are clunky, require a lot of steps to assign and maintain tickets, and rely on outdated email integrations that make responding to your clients slow and clunky. The instant messaging platform operates like an IM for your client, but you have all the sophisticated tracking and metrics built in on the back end. All the client has to do is write back and they are confident that they will receive a response quickly.
Intercom is currently our main ticketing system. It's our centralized location to start and receive customer inquiries. We use Intercom for sales & general and or technical support, but also for marketing emails/campaigns. In Intercom, we classify the various outreaches in different inboxes, so we can assign them to the right team.
Pros
Structure, centralizing inquiries
Analytics
Internal Communication
Cons
Searchibility of previous conversations with customers
Adding the possibility to comment on Internal notes with an emoji
Adding a "Bump" solution, since "Bump by Userfeed" is no longer available.
Likelihood to Recommend
Intercom works really well for support. There are a lot of integrations, and it's possible to build an entire workflow. Communication is extremely well centralized.
VU
Verified User
Representative in Customer Service (11-50 employees)
We use Intercom mainly for customer support, both live chat and email. It helps us manage conversations in one place and gives our team a better way to follow up with users. We also use the knowledge base so customers can find answers independently. Besides that, we rely on Intercom’s automation to send important messages through different channels like WhatsApp, SMS, and even phone notifications.
Pros
The Fin AI agent is great for handling the first level of support
The interface is clean and intuitive.
The way chat and email work together is smooth
Cons
Setting up WhatsApp can be a bit tricky and time-consuming
The SEO settings for knowledge base articles are limited
Fin is powerful, but it could benefit from more customization options and easier integration with third-party tools or internal systems
Likelihood to Recommend
I would rate Intercom a 10 because it’s been a reliable, all-in-one solution for customer support and engagement. It works really well for managing live chat and email conversations in one place, and tools like Fin help us automate the first level of support, which saves our team time and improves response times. It’s also great for building a help center and pushing important messages through multiple channels like WhatsApp, email, or SMS.
We use Intercom to provide live chat support to our users (B2B, B2C), as well as sending automatic emails (e.g. onboarding sequence) or ocassional emails. We also use posts to provide our users with product updates, and surveys when, for example, they downgrade or delete their account. We use FIN bot to help us resolve repetitive matters.
Pros
Great UI - everyone has their own inbox but can still see all incoming messages.
Fin AI - we love the AI functionality, it saves tons of time of the team.
Automated emails - we configured Intercom in a way that it uses a lot of information we have about our users (e.g. their subscription, date of upgrade, etc.) so that we can use it to automate communication.
Cons
Intercom support - sometimes they take a long time to answer a question.
Filtering - I would like to upload e.g. domains with which I want to filter out our audience. Unfortunately, right now I need to add those one by one when trying to filter and there's no bulk upload.
I would love to see a "quick call" feature
Likelihood to Recommend
Intercom is an excellent tool for client communication. It’s intuitive and supports various formats such as emails, posts, and banners, which are especially useful for sharing important updates like maintenance notices. Having all communication channels in one place makes it efficient and reliable for keeping clients informed and engaged. I gave 9 because I never used any other tool.
VU
Verified User
Account Manager in Customer Service (11-50 employees)
We use chat, WhatsApp, knowledge base and bots for user support. We have an average monthly chat volume of 1,000 chats. Currently, Intercom is our only support platform, and our support is highly praised by the company's customers, we have an average CSAT of 97%.
Utilizamos para suporte ao usuário, principalmente chat, whatsapp, base de conhecimento e bots. Temos um volume de chats mensais de 1.000 chats em média. Atualmente o Intercom é nossa única plataforma de suporte, e nosso suporte é muito elogiada pelos clientes da empresa, temos um CSAT médio de 97%
Pros
Detailed reports for chat, other support tools focus too much on tickets, it doesn't work for us
Snoozed, being able to postpone some conversations without necessarily having to turn them into a ticket, Intercom's focus on chat (real-time service) is the biggest reason we don't want to change tools
The range of apps helps a lot, today there are 2 apps that particularly help us a lot, which are the video recording app and the one with wootric.
Relatórios detalhados para chat, outras ferramentas de suporte focam muito em ticket, para nós não funciona
Snoozed, poder adiar algumas conversas sem precisar necessariamente transformar em ticket, o foco em chat (atendimento em tempo real) do Intercom é o maior motivo de não querermos trocar de ferramenta
A amplitude de apps ajudam muito, hoje tem 2 apps que particularmente nos ajudam muito que é o de gravação de vídeos e o com o wootric
Cons
There was a report of active chats per hour that helped us a lot to organize the team schedule, understand hours of greatest flow, nowadays there is only this report for new chats, but if we have chats that started at other times but were not closed, it ends up giving a false impression that the service was empty at a certain time.
Not being able to group users by platform, only by API, we have a small team and having to send a developer to do this all the time is unthinkable.
Unable to determine what is a lead and a user based on our criteria, today Intercom assumes that just because a user exists on our platform then they are a customer, but this is not true for us, as our platform allows free trials, so this function of separating leads and users is completely useless for us.
When we create a user manually, I either have to provide an email or manually provide an ID, since nowadays you have integration with WhatsApp, so I often register a user with just a name and phone number. So the tool should allow me to consider the phone number as an ID as well, or at least generate an ID automatically for me, as it does when we receive a conversation via WhatsApp started by a customer who was not previously registered in the tool.
The attendant can record audio directly through the Intercom, it has been integrated with WhatsApp for some time, and until today we need to use other platforms to record a simple audio that is so common when using WhatsApp.
Sometimes the attendant is busy and the customer sends an audio message on WhatsApp. It would be nice to be able to transcribe the customer's audio message as an internal note to help the attendant be more agile.
The AI marks many calls as resolved even though the agent has taken over the conversation, just because the customer hasn't clicked on anything, but that doesn't make sense, most customers don't bother to respond to the AI, sometimes they don't even remember to respond to us, I understand that if there are more than 2 messages sent by our agent after the AI's response, it should already be considered that the AI didn't resolve the service.
In cases of users with many companies, it should be possible to send via API the information about which company the customer is logged into at the time of the conversation. Nowadays, we have to ask the customer which company they are talking to because all of them appear on the Intercom and we cannot know which one they want support from.
Being able to place hierarchy in tags, today we use tags to categorize conversations and there is a hierarchical level in this classification, for example: Usability > Fiscal > Rejection, but as there is no way to define hierarchy, we cannot do analysis by tags through the platform, we have to do the part in Excel
Being able to make calls to other countries like Brazil
Report of customers and users who call the most by period, today I can even get a list of customers who haven't called for a long time, but customers who call support a lot is also very relevant information and I don't have it on the platform.
Tinha um relatório de chats ativos por hora que nos ajudava muito a organizar escala de time, entender horas de maior fluxo, hoje em dia só tem esse relatório para novos chats, mas se temos chats que começaram em outros horários mas não foram encerrados, acaba dando uma falsa impressaão que o atendimento estava vazio em determinado momento
Não poder agrupar usuários pela plataforma, somente por API, temos uma equipe pequena e ter que toda hora passar um desenvolvedor pra fazer isso é impensável
Não poder determinar o que é lead e usuário mediante nossos critérios, hoje o Intercom assume que só porque um usuário existe na nossa plataforma então é um cliente, mas isso não é verdade pra nós, pois nossa plataforma permite testes gratuitos, sendo assim essa função de separação de lead e usuário pra gente é completamente inútil
Quando criamos um usuário manualmente ou tenho que informar e-mail ou informar manualmente um ID, sendo que hoje em dia vocês tem integração com o whatsapp então muitas vezes vou cadastrar um usuário só com nome e número de telefone, então a ferramenta deveria me permitir considerar o telefone como ID também ou no mínimo gerar um ID automaticamente pra mim como faz quando recebemos uma conversa pelo whatsapp começada por um cliente que não estava previamente cadastrado na ferramenta
O atendente poder gravar áudio diretamente pelo Intercom, já tem integração com o whatsapp a tempos, e até hoje precisamos usar outras plataformas pra gravar um simples áudio que é tão corriqueiro no uso do whatsapp
As vezes o atendente está ocupado e o cliente manda um áudio no whatsapp seria bacana poder transcrever o audio do cliente como uma nota interna pra ajudar o atendente a ter mais agilidade
A IA marca muitos chamados como resolvidos mesmo o atendente tendo assumido a conversa, só pelo cliente não ter clicado em nada, só que isso não faz sentido, a maior parte dos clientes não se preocupa em responder a IA, as vezes não lembra nem de responder a gente, entendo que se tiver mais de 2 mensagens enviadas pelo nosso agente após o atendimento da IA, já deveria contar que a mesma não resolveu o atendimento.
Em casos de usuários com muitas empresas, deveria ser possível enviarmos por API a informação de em qual empresa o cliente está logado na hora da conversa, hoje em dia temos que perguntar para o cliente de qual empresa ele está falando pois no Intercom aparecem todas e não conseguimos saber pra qual ele quer atendimento
Ter como colocar hierarquia nas tags, hoje usamos tegs para categorizar conversas e tem um nivel hierarquico nessa classificação, exemplo: Usabilidade > Fiscal > Rejeição, mas como não tem como definir hierarquia, não temos como fazer analises por tags pela plataforma, temos que fazer a parte no excel
Ter como fazer ligações por outros países como o Brasil
Relatório de clientes e usuários que mais chamam por período, hoje até consigo pegar uyma lista de clientes que não chamam a muito tempo, mas clientes que acionam demais o suporte também é uma informação muito relevante e não tenho pela plataforma
Likelihood to Recommend
As you can see from the previous answers, there are many things that I believe the platform can improve, but that doesn't change the fact that it is the one that best serves us considering our main values as a company: Agility and Quality. With Intercom's real-time service functions, we were able to maintain an average response time of less than 2 minutes and a CSAT of 97%, something that we couldn't achieve with other platforms due to the lack of real-time service tools and also reports that help us improve.
Como dá pra ver pelas respostas anteriores tem muitas coisas que acredito que a plataforma pode melhorar, mas isso não muda o fato de que ela é a que melhor nos atende tendo em vista nossos principais valores como empresa: Agilidade e Qualidade. Com as funções de atendimento em tempo real do Intercom conseguimos manter um tempo médio de resposta de menos de 2 minutos e um CSAT de 97%, algo que não conseguimos em outras plataformas pela falta de ferramentas para atendimento em tempo real e também de relatórios que nos ajudem a melhorar
This review was originally written in Portuguese and has been translated into English using a third-party translation tool. While we strive for accuracy, some nuances or meanings may not be perfectly captured.
