Intercom Review: The Customer Communication Platform We Love

With the deluge of information people are subjected to on a daily basis, brands must go to great lengths to differentiate themselves. Once, a good price point and a solid advertising campaign were all you needed. Today, you must go beyond simple marketing tactics if you want to stand out – you need to reach your customers on a personal level.

68% of buyers who see personal value in a product or service will pay a higher price for it. Whether you’re a B2B or a B2C business, your best way to attract and retain customers is to show them that you’re there, you’re listening, and you’re dedicated to providing them with a great customer experience.

But even with a full suite of digital tools in your arsenal, customer communication can be challenging. There always seems to be a wall of separation between you and your customer, regardless of where they are in their journey.

Intercom is a solution designed to eliminate that wall.

This customer communication platform goes way beyond your standard outreach campaign, and it’s so much more than a simple chatbot.

Intercom provides you with an entire suite of messaging products that help you acquire, engage, and support your customers.

Here’s how some of Intercom’s best features work (and why we love them).

Intercom Has a Super Slick Chat Window

Chat windows are a familiar sight on websites these days. There are a handful of companies that provide them as website plugins, for example.

Most chat windows connect you with a chatbot, a knowledge base, or the opportunity to speak to an actual human. But intercom’s slick chat window blows all of them out of the water.

The best part of Intercom’s chat window is its familiarity. Your customers are already used to communicating with friends, family, and coworkers via SMS, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and other chat services. Shouldn’t the chat service they use to talk to you have the same features?

Intercom’s chat window contains options to embed video, images, and articles. Users on both ends of the chat can attach files in chat and can even send GIFs and emojis.

(Source: Intercom)

Known as “Business Messenger,” it also has all the features you’d expect from a chat window. You can let bots qualify leads for you and you can embed easy-to-access tools to help your website visitors accomplish the task they set out to do on your site.

Whether they want to serve themselves or talk to you personally, all they must do is select an option from the window and start typing. According to Intercom, you can achieve an 82% higher conversion rate by letting visitors chat on your website.

You Can Track and Trigger Chats Based on Custom Events

The Intercom app also acts as a rules-based communication tool. You can trigger automated chats based on custom events and user behavior.

For example, if a visitor looks at a specific number of pages on your website, you can trigger Intercom chat automatically and engage with them immediately:

(Source: CODE Magazine)

If the conversation warrants it, one of your administrators can immediately assign a conversation to a representative. But if you can’t respond in real time, you can use these triggers to send an automated response. You can even write responses beforehand to answer the most frequently asked questions.

You Can Send Product Release Updates Directly to Users

If you sell an app or a SaaS product, Intercom has plenty of useful features that help you send product release updates directly to your users. You can also use these tools to push users to use your app if they haven’t logged in in a while:

(Source: Intercom)

Intercom also grants you the ability to send in-app messages. You can encourage users to take an action while they’re using your product or provide them with tools to improve their experience.

You get full control over how these messages are delivered. There are three types of in-app messages to choose from:

• Posts: for longer stories
• Notes: for smaller, less disruptive updates
• Chats: for starting one-on-one conversations

Each type of message contains Intercom’s great messaging features and formatting options. You can still share videos, images, and buttons, for example.

At Ladder, we integrate our Intercom installation with Headway to give users an easy-to-find log of new release notes for Spotlight:

You Can Manage Multi-Platform Communications in One Place

As we mentioned before, Intercom doesn’t just work on your website. It also contains components for email messages and in-app messages. And remember those behavioral trigger messages we mentioned before? Yep, those work in in-app messages, too.

To break down silos and keep your team from cycling through a ton of different interfaces, Intercom lets you manage all your communications from one location:

(Source: Intercom)

The Team Inbox helps you collaborate between departments (like sales and support), save time, and respond to customers and leads faster. It even helps you measure and improve your team’s performance with helpful analytics.

*The ability to manage Facebook Page messages or even Twitter DMs all from one place is super convenient.

It Has Sophisticated Targeting Options

Of course, no customer communication tool would be complete without substantial personalization tools.

Intercom has myriad tools to help you tailor-fit messages to a user’s context. The messaging suite comes with a free customer data platform to help you view and leverage lead intelligence. It also integrates with popular CRM software like Salesforce and HubSpot.

(Source: Intercom)

You can specify the exact moment your customers will receive communications – down to the second – and create a dynamic series of personalized messages that maximize engagement. Altogether, Intercom’s suite of tools helps you boost revenue through the optimization of all your customer interactions.

To learn more about Intercom and other tools you can add to your marketing technology stack, get in touch with a growth strategist at Ladder.io.