Train Fin to support your customers—just like your best agent.
Fin Guidance lets you train Fin to speak in your brand’s voice, follow your policies, and handle conversations the way you want—using simple, natural-language instructions.
This means faster resolution times, more consistent support quality, and a better customer experience.
You can set clear rules for what Fin should say and do, from using the right terminology to escalating sensitive issues.
Built-in reporting shows how well Fin is following your guidance, with AI-powered suggestions to help you fine-tune responses over time.
Get started
To help get you started, we have created different categories of guidance:
Communication style: Ensure every response reflects your company’s tone and terminology. Define how Fin communicates so it speaks like your best-trained agents—delivering high-quality support that stays true to your brand
Context and clarification: Guide Fin to ask thoughtful follow-up questions, reducing miscommunication and helping it get to the right answer faster—so customers reach a resolution sooner.
Handover and escalation: Define rules so Fin recognizes when an issue is sensitive and escalates it promptly—ensuring customers get the right support at the right time and complex issues are handled with care. When Fin decides to follow your handover and escalation guidance, it will follow the triaging and routing flow that you've defined via Simple Setup or Workflows.
Everything else: Anything that does not fit into the above categories should be added here. This could be specific company or support policies that you’d like Fin to adhere to, such as never asking customers to contact you by phone.
You'll find guidance templates within each category to help you get started. You can modify the wording of a template to suit your needs.
Tip: Read our Fin Guidance best practices before you get started to learn the dos and don’ts of writing good guidance prompts.
Note:
To ensure guidance works effectively, make sure it is assigned to the correct category.
You can create up to 250 pieces of guidance. Each guidance can be up to 2500 characters in length.
Create new Fin Guidance
Set up the basics
Go to Fin AI Agent > Train > Guidance and select Basics to choose Fin's tone of voice and answer length.
Add guidance
Go to Fin AI Agent > Train > Guidance and click + New to add new guidance to the appropriate category.
Enter your guidance in the text field or choose from one of the templates to get started quickly.
Optimize Fin Guidance
After writing a piece of guidance, click Optimize to have it reviewed by our AI-powered writing assistant. This tool helps refine your guidance by checking for common issues and suggesting improvements.
The Fin Guidance writing assistant looks for:
Ambiguity – Guidance that could be interpreted in multiple ways or lacks clarity.
Redundancy – Guidance that repeats information already covered elsewhere.
Contradiction – Conflicting or opposing guidance that may cause inconsistencies.
Clarity and effectiveness – Guidance that could be reworded to be clearer, more concise, and more effective.
System limitations – Instructions that attempt to perform actions Fin cannot take. Learn more about what Fin Guidance can't be used for.
If an issue is found, the writing assistant will explain why and suggest possible improvements.
It may also offer a reworded version of your guidance for better clarity and effectiveness. You’ll be able to compare the suggestion with your original text and choose to accept, edit, or refine it further.
Tip: If you’re unsure how to write a prompt for a specific use case, try using a writing tool like Claude AI or ChatGPT. Describe the scenario and ask it to generate a clear, AI-friendly prompt that’s easy to interpret.
Use attributes in Fin Guidance
User, company, or conversation attributes can be included in your guidance to tailor responses for specific customers. For example:
“If the customer’s {Plan Name} is "Pro" then always escalate to the team."
Here, the placeholder {Plan Name} will automatically populate with the customer’s actual pricing plan before Fin generates a response.
This enables you to adapt your guidance to each customer’s specific situation, such as their location, subscription tier or recent activity.
Give channel specific guidance
Fin knows what channel it's using. To give Fin different guidance for different channels, you can write "If the channel is email, then do [Email Guidance]", or "If the channel is the Chat Messenger, then do [Messenger Guidance]". For example:
"If the customer is contacting us via email, avoid suggesting they reach out to us through email for further support. Instead, focus on addressing their query directly."
The channel names Fin recognizes are: Chat Messenger, Android, iOS, Email, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and SMS.
Test Fin Guidance
Before you save or enable a piece of guidance, you can use the Preview panel to ask Fin some questions and see how your new guidance is applied.
When you're happy with how Fin is using your guidance, click Enable to set the guidance live for Fin's conversations with customers.
Analyze Fin Guidance
Once your guidance is enabled, you can track its impact on Fin’s conversations. You’ll see how often a piece of guidance was applied and what percentage of those conversations were resolved by Fin or routed to your team.
To dive deeper, you can:
Drill into the metrics to view a list of conversations where the guidance was used.
Use advanced filtering to uncover patterns and insights.
Click into a conversation to preview the interaction and see how guidance influenced Fin’s response.
These insights help you refine your guidance, ensuring Fin consistently delivers accurate and effective support.
You can also track when Fin applies your guidance through the Inbox. The conversation events record which specific pieces of guidance were used as part of a response.
FAQs
How does Fin Guidance work?
How does Fin Guidance work?
Fin Guidance works alongside the other content and data sources you provide. Before generating a response, our AI Engine checks for relevant guidance and applies it to ensure Fin’s response aligns with your policies.
Guidance can also use the following context to adjust Fin's response if these are referenced in the guidance prompts:
The current date and time.
The channel the conversation is using (Messenger chat, Android, iOS, email, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and SMS).
Attributes that have been specifically referenced in the guidance.
The conversation history.
The language the customer is using in the conversation.
The brand name and bot identity you have configured for your workspace.
Learn more about the technology behind Intercom's patented AI agent, Fin.
Can I create different guidance for different audiences?
Can I create different guidance for different audiences?
Yes, you can tailor Fin’s responses for different customer segments by using user, company, or conversation attributes in your guidance.
For example:
🛎 “If the customer’s {{Pricing Plan Name}} is "Pro", always escalate the conversation to a human.”
🌍 “If the customer’s {{country}} is 'France', use French greetings and localized terminology.”
This allows you to personalize Fin’s behavior based on factors like subscription tier, location, or past interactions, ensuring responses feel relevant and specific to each audience.
How does using Fin Guidance impact Fin’s response time?
How does using Fin Guidance impact Fin’s response time?
Using Fin Guidance adds a slight delay of a few seconds to Fin’s responses. This delay remains the same regardless of how much guidance you have - it’s the use of any guidance that introduces latency.
What can Fin Guidance not be used for?
What can Fin Guidance not be used for?
Fin Guidance cannot:
Take actions on the conversation (other than handing over to the team). For example, guidance cannot be used to route handovers or escalations to a specific team inbox, tag conversations, update conversation attributes, mark conversations as priority or take any other actions. Instead, these should be configured via Fin AI Agent Simple Setup or Workflows.
Control which content sources Fin generates a response from for different types of users. If you want Fin to use specific content when responding to customers, you can apply audience rules to the content in Knowledge.
Be used to ignore specific domains/email addresses e.g. if you don't want Fin to respond to emails sent to a specific email address/teammate's email. This type of targeting must be done using audience rules in the Simple Setup or Workflow where Fin is used.
Read or re-write Custom Answers. Custom Answers are hardcoded and not supported with Fin Guidance.
Add conversation tags or pull information from specific content sources based on a prompt.
How can I ensure my guidance is written effectively?
How can I ensure my guidance is written effectively?
Follow our best practices and review the examples.
Check your guidance wording by running it through a writing tool like Claude AI or ChatGPT to ensure clarity and ease of interpretation.
Test your guidance using the preview to see how Fin would answer related questions. Whenever you update your guidance, you can test it before you set it live.
Is Fin Guidance applied to Custom Answers?
Is Fin Guidance applied to Custom Answers?
No, Custom Answers are hardcoded responses and won’t be modified by Fin Guidance.
Do Fin Guidance based handovers contribute to the Fin AI Agent routed to team rate?
Do Fin Guidance based handovers contribute to the Fin AI Agent routed to team rate?
Yes, Fin Guidance based handovers follow the same route as non-guidance based handovers.
Does the Messenger preview for Fin take the customer's attributes into account?
Does the Messenger preview for Fin take the customer's attributes into account?
The Messenger preview for Fin does take the customer's attributes into account, but the customer will be the Preview User. So for example the name will be "Preview User" and not "John Smith".
The best way to test different user experiences depending on the user's attributes is to set Fin live to a limited test audience.
Can Fin Guidance be written in a language other than English?
Can Fin Guidance be written in a language other than English?
Yes, Fin Guidance can be written in another language. However, it is recommended to use the language you are most comfortable with to clearly express the guidance you need Fin to follow.
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