Every customer support interaction now starts and ends in Intercom. This playbook is the operational reference for Support Engineers working in that model: the conversations you receive, the calls you take, the tickets you raise, the escalations you send to Product and Engineering, and the service levels attached.
The playbook covers four areas:
Inbound support: conversations, phone calls, and emails that reach you through Intercom.
Outbound support: conversations and calls you start with a customer.
Ticket management: creating, updating, and escalating Customer and Tracker tickets.
The customer journey: what your customer sees while you work on their query.
Every process here is grounded in Intercom's current configuration for Access support. Where a step depends on your licence, region, or permissions, the article says so.
How to use this playbook
Collections group articles by task, in the order you are most likely to need them during a shift. Read a collection end to end when you are new to an area, and use single articles as a reference once you are working confidently.
Where to get help
Contact the Digital Support team when something in this playbook does not match what you see in Intercom, or when a process is missing.
Terms used in this playbook
Check an unfamiliar term before you use it with a customer.
Some of these terms are internal only. Where a term has a customer-facing equivalent, the table gives you the wording to use instead.
Term | What it means | Use with customers |
Access Digital Assistant | The artificial intelligence agent in the Intercom messenger, which handles conversations before they reach a teammate, also referred to as Fin. | Access Digital Assistant |
Azure DevOps | The development system holding bugs and user stories. Shown as ADO in Intercom fields. | Our Product and Engineering team |
CSP | The customer support plan for a user, for example Premier, Standard, Essential, or Classic. | Your support plan |
CX Score | The customer experience quality rating applied to a conversation. | Not used with customers |
DSE | Digital Support Engineer | Not used with customers |
Lead | A contact record created from a phone number Intercom does not recognise | Not used with customers |
Message Launcher | The in-app support panel in the customer account | Message Launcher |
P&E | The Product and Engineering team. | Our Product and Engineering team |
SLA | Service level agreement: the reply and resolution targets on a conversation or ticket. | Our response times |
SME | Subject Matter Expert | Not used with customers |
Tracker ticket | The parent ticket used to manage one issue across multiple customers. | Not visible to customers |
TTC | Time To Close: the resolution clock on a conversation | Our response times |