Intercom support playbook
Managing customer conversations, calls, tickets, and escalations in Intercom.
Set up your Intercom workspace
Your own settings decide how much work reaches you and how easily you can find it. Spend the first few minutes of every shift on the three articles in this chapter, and the rest of the day is quieter.
- Set your status and availabilityControl which inbound conversations and phone calls Intercom assigns to you.
- Review team workload in the Inbox DashboardSee who is available and how much each teammate is carrying before you reassign anything.
- Manage team inboxes as a conversation managerSteps to view, configure, and maintain your team inboxes in Intercom. As a conversation manager, you can manage team inboxes directly without needing full admin access.
- Organise your work with inboxes and viewsFind the conversations that belong to you, to your team, and to the filters you rely on.
Handle inbound conversations
Conversations are the main route into support. Every in-app conversation begins with the Access Digital Assistant, and reaches you when the Access Digital Assistant cannot resolve the query or the customer asks to speak to a person. This chapter covers what happens before a conversation lands with you, and what to do once it does.
- Conversation assignment and workload limitsUnderstand which inbox a conversation lands in and why new work stops arriving.
- Reply to a conversationBring macros, articles, images, and workflows into your replies without leaving the reply box.
- Draft a reply with CopilotGet a suggested answer built from your support content and past conversations.
- Remove a contact from the Intercom bounce listGet a blocked email address reinstated so your reply reaches the customer.
- Create a conversation with a customerStart an outbound chat or email on the channel that suits the recipient.
- Merge duplicate conversationsBring several threads about the same issue into one place.
- Change participants on a conversationSwap the contact on a thread when you are dealing with a different person.
- Review your open and snoozed backlogCheck that nothing in your queue has stalled, and that every ticket state matches its conversation.
- Close a conversationClose finished or open-ended conversations with customers in mind.
- tNPS (Wootric) and Intercom integrationAnswers to common questions about the tNPS (Wootric) integration with Intercom.
Handle phone and messenger calls
Customers on the appropriate customer support plan can call their regional Support team for advice and guidance. Every call creates a conversation, whether it is answered, missed, or outbound, so there is always a thread to follow up on and a record of what was agreed.
- Merge a lead into an existing userMatch an unrecognised caller to their user record and keep their phone number on file.
- Answer and decline inbound phone callsTake a call, pass one on, and know what happens to your status at each point.
- Transfer a call to another teammateHand a live call to the right person, with or without a briefing first.
- Make an outbound callCall a customer back from a conversation, or start a new call from the Inbox menu.
- Share a customer screen during a messenger callSee the issue first-hand while you talk the customer through it.
- Find call details and recordingsLocate the recording, transcript, and metadata behind any call or voicemail.
- Voice - FAQsAnswers to common questions and known issues for Voice in Intercom.
Create and manage tickets
Customers can no longer create their own tickets. They start a phone call or an in-app conversation, and you create the ticket on their behalf. This chapter covers which ticket to create, how to keep its state accurate, and how to update every customer affected by the same issue at once.
- Ticket types and when to use themPick the right ticket for the work in front of you, and know what the customer can see.
- Convert a conversation into a Support ticketMove a technical investigation into a record the customer can follow.
- Create a Tracker ticket for a widespread issueTrack one bug or incident across every customer reporting it.
- Create a ticket without a conversationRaise a Customer or Tracker ticket when no conversation exists yet.
- Collaborate with third parties using Side ConversationsBring an external party into a ticket without exposing the thread to the customer.
- Escalate a ticket to the Product and Engineering teamShare a customer issue with Product and Engineering and keep both records in step.
- Ticket states and what the customer seesMatch the state you set to the wording your customer reads.
- Update a Customer ticket stateChange where a ticket sits and what your customer reads next.
- Update a Tracker ticket state and its linked ticketsMove every linked Customer ticket forward in a single action.
- Send a bulk update to linked ticketsReply, note, or reassign across every ticket linked to a Tracker.
Meet your service levels
Service levels differ between conversations and tickets, and the timings depend on the customer support plan or the ticket priority. Knowing which clock is running tells you what to pick up next.
- Conversation service levels by customer support planKnow how long you have to reply and to resolve for each plan.
- Ticket service levels by prioritySee the response times attached to each priority, and how priority is set.
- Update a ticket priority and recalculate the service levelOverride a priority set at conversion, and realign the timings behind it.