What we shipped: 13 new features to drive conversions and enable better conversations
Main illustration: Laura Lannes
Intercom enables you to have better conversations with your potential customers and the best conversations of all lead to conversions. We’re focused on helping businesses increase the quality of their conversations and thus the quantity of conversions across marketing, sales and support teams.
The value in conversations can be seen in how they help sales teams develop relationships with their leads and push deals over the line, as well as how a conversation allows support teams to work through tough problems and find the best solutions possible for customers.
In the past month, we’ve shipped 13 new features to help our customers increase conversions on their websites and in their apps, and ensure they’re having the right conversations and collecting the right data.
Embed apps right inside your messages
Our Messages product has always been a great way to welcome, onboard and connect with people in your product and on your website. (In fact, we see that in-app messages get 3X the open rates compared to email!) Now with apps in your messages, you can do even more. Embed apps right inside a message to drive actions, engage your audience and grow your business.
Whether you need to schedule sales calls, survey your customers, or promote your latest content, apps make it easy for people to take action within the Intercom Messenger. And with the targeting capabilities of Intercom, you can make sure your message reaches the right person at the right time.
As a part of our launch, we’re introducing three brand new partner apps from Typeform, AskNicely and Wootric. These apps let you gather real-time feedback, conduct NPS surveys, measure customer happiness and more – all within the Intercom Messenger.
This is just the beginning. Our growing library of apps makes Messages even more versatile and powerful. Find the right app for your business in the Intercom App Store, or learn more in our help docs.
Boost in-app engagement with messages sent at the perfect moment
Now you can trigger in-app messages based on a person’s time on page to reduce interruptions and increase engagement. The time delay works for all in-app messages on web and can be customized down to the second. Simply set the time period that is right for your user experience when selecting the message channel.
Spot conversation trends faster and make informed decisions with improved tag reporting
Now you can filter Inbox reports by tag and analyze conversation trends on all of your tags to make data-backed decisions.
Specifically, the “New conversations” and “Performance” reports can now be filtered by conversation tags.
Additionally, we’ve expanded our tag reporting to display data for more than just your top 5 tags to give you a fuller picture of conversational trends.
Export your conversation metadata to analyze key support metrics and team performance
Now you can export conversation metadata like time to first response, conversation rating, conversation channel and more in CSV format.
This gives you the ability to analyze key support metrics in your preferred BI tool to guide decision-making and share data externally to stakeholders without access to Intercom.
To export your metadata into a CSV just go to the “Reports” page. The “Export CSV” button will open a modal to specify the date range you are looking for.
This feature is only available for Inbox Pro subscribers. For more information, you can read our docs.
Convert more leads by automatically sending conversations and data to Salesforce
Having your customer data across multiple tools can lead to lost sales opportunities. Using Intercom’s deep integration with Salesforce, you can be confident your sales team has all the context they need to convert more leads and increase revenue from more customers.
We’ve updated our Salesforce app to automatically send data between Intercom and Salesforce and make it even easier to keep your tools in sync. Now you can:
- Get a complete view of every lead or contact’s journey by automatically creating tasks in Salesforce from Intercom conversations.
- Continue a sale right where you left off by automatically relating conversations to open opportunities in Salesforce.
- Improve your advertising performance by mapping UTM parameters to Salesforce lead fields.
- Get leads to the right reps faster by auto-assigning leads to their account owners in Salesforce.
- Safely test the integration by installing it first on a Salesforce sandbox environment.
Review actions you and your teammates take with the Events Log
You can now see the actions you and your teammates take in your app like setting messages live, logging in and more. Already an Intercom customer? Head here to view the Events Log for your app.
Collect information at scale with the ‘Ask a Question’ app
Ask questions inside messages to learn more about leads and customers. Responses are automatically recorded as custom attributes. Capture information like use case, job title, company size, communication preferences and more to intelligently segment your audience, send custom content and deliver great experiences.
Save time and keep your inbox organized by closing conversations in bulk
Conversations can pile up, create clutter and become a distraction in the Inbox which can impact your team’s productivity.
Now your team can quickly select a group of conversations in bulk and close, reopen, or assign them at once to keep your team’s inbox organized.
Increase engagement by sending relevant help articles to users in outbound messages
Our Article Inserter app makes it easier to share single articles in outbound messages or in the Messenger home screen. Imagine triggering a help article if a user has been stuck in a tricky part of your app or website for a certain amount of time, or sending onboarding focused “how-to” articles to customers who recently signed up for your product.
Articles now look great when you share a link
You can now upload a custom social image so when links unfurl your article preview is more engaging for the person you’re sending it to.
To add your own custom social image go to your Articles settings.
Sync your data and convert more leads with the HubSpot and Marketo apps
Using multiple tools to communicate with and track your customers can mean time wasted switching between tabs or copying and pasting data. Now, you can seamlessly sync your data across all of your tools, so you always have the context you need to nurture and convert more leads.
With Intercom’s HubSpot and Marketo apps, you can:
- Keep track of every lead by automatically creating Intercom leads in HubSpot or Marketo
- Follow up with leads sooner by identifying anonymous leads in Marketo with contact information from Intercom
- Have all information at your fingertips by viewing HubSpot or Marketo data in your Intercom inbox
- Get a complete view of every lead’s journey by automatically logging Intercom conversations in HubSpot or Marketo
Enable mobile users to help themselves with the new mobile SDK for iOS and Android
The new Intercom mobile SDK brings the Messenger Home to your mobile applications. This means you can add Messenger apps that allow your users to self-serve instead of starting a conversation. Users can now quickly access relevant help articles, review pinned content and view product status in real time – all from the Messenger home screen.
Make sure people know you’re available to help
Let your visitors and users know that you’re there to help without disrupting their experience on your website. Now, when a visitor or user lands for the first time on any part of your website that has the standard Messenger launcher, a text bubble asking if they need help will slide out of the side of the launcher icon and disappear after a few seconds.
For people who are unfamiliar with the Messenger or unaware that it’s available, this text bubble guides them to your Messenger home screen where they can self-serve or start a conversation.
And here’s some of our favorite apps other people have been building on Intercom:
Typeform
Collect feedback by launching a typeform directly from the Messenger.
Quickly collect information by embedding any typeform into the Messenger, whether you’re running a survey or looking for feedback. Get notified as soon as a response is submitted so you can follow up with your customer.
Install from the Intercom App Store or find out more here.
Canny
Make better product decisions by keeping track of customer feedback in one organized place.
Let users suggest and vote on features directly on your Messenger Home, send them automatic updates when features are in progress and easily track and organize feedback from your customer conversations.
Install from the Intercom App Store, or find out more here.
AskNicely NPS Chat
Track and act on NPS in conversations.
Use AskNicely to collect customer feedback and measure Net Promoter Score at specific points in the customer journey – right from the Messenger. Trigger requests at specific points using with targeted messages and see NPS ratings and comments in Intercom, Salesforce and Slack.
Wootric Surveys
Collect Net Promoter Score (NPS), CSAT and CES from the Messenger.
Send high-response micro-surveys to customers based on where they are in their customer journey, then use survey scores and feedback to trigger followups – whether reaching out to a disgruntled customer or engaging with happy customers to turn them into advocates.
Install from the Intercom App Store, or find out more here.
Readme
Let customers search your ReadMe docs from Messenger
If you’re using ReadMe for your technical documentation, this app is great for helping cut down on support queries by letting your users search your ReadMe docs from the Messenger. Plus your support team will be able to seamlessly insert articles into chats.
Install from the Intercom App Store or find out more here.
To keep up to date with the latest updates and changes, you can see our full changelog here.
