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Setting up the Inbox

How to set up your inbox for effective omnichannel support with Intercom.

Beth-Ann Sher avatar
Written by Beth-Ann Sher
Updated yesterday

This will guide you through setting up the Inbox in Intercom, allowing your teammates to work efficiently across all channels you support by routing the right conversations to the right people.

We’ve broken it up into sections:

Tip: This guide focuses on essential steps to get up and running in the Inbox. If you’re just starting your journey with Intercom, we recommend reading the Getting started with Intercom guide before diving into the Inbox.


Step 1: Get to know your inbox

Once you’ve added your channels (email, chat, phone, etc.) and invited teammates, you’ll want to decide where your incoming conversations will go, who will handle them, and how quickly. The Inbox is where this all comes together.

Set office hours and reply times

The first thing to do is manage your customer’s expectations by letting them know when you’re available and how long you’ll take to reply.


Step 2: Organize your inbox and focus your teammates

Instead of all conversations landing in one inbox, team inboxes and views let you organize them by topic, channel, region, or whatever works best for you. You can assign teammates to handle certain inboxes, then use Workflows to automatically route conversations to their inbox.

Consider how to structure your inbox

We recommend structuring your inbox by:

  • Channels e.g. email, chat, phone, social, etc., or

  • Topics e.g. pricing, troubleshooting, product feedback, etc., or

  • Skill levels e.g. product basics, technical support, etc., or

  • Regions e.g. Asia, Europe, North America, Oceania, etc.

Create inbox views

Inbox views allow you to define a set of filters and then show all conversations that match those filters in one view. Quickly switch between views and keep an eye on urgent issues, your direct reports, or whichever conversations you consider most important. Then easily add views to custom folders to keep your inbox organized just the way you want it.

Note: Setting up some views requires filtering by conversation data which we teach you how to collect in Step 5.

Set up team inboxes (Advanced and Expert plan only)

Team inboxes give bigger support teams their own dedicated inbox, enabling better conversation routing and response times by ensuring every customer receives the support they need from the right expert. Team inboxes allow you to manage teammate workload and availability, including regional office hours and reply times.

Pro tip: We find the best assignment method for support teams is ‘balanced assignment’ for routing conversations to the most available and relevant teammate as quickly as possible. This still allows you to set an assignment limit for the number of conversations agents should typically be working on at one time. If you’re unsure, 3 conversations is a good place to start.

Step 3: Handle any customer interaction with conversations and tickets

Teammates can have conversations for quick, dynamic interactions with customers, while leveraging tickets to manage more complex issues. Together, they create a streamlined workflow that keeps your inbox efficient and your customers satisfied.

Understand the difference between conversations and tickets

Conversations are simple queries that can be handled quickly, while tickets are for more complex queries or escalated issues that take time to resolve, require investigation, multiple steps, or collaboration.

  • Conversations are created when customers or teammates send a message through one of your supported channels, e.g. live chat, email, phone, etc.

  • Tickets are created when customers submit a ticket form, or teammates open a ticket directly from the inbox.

Decide which ticket categories you’ll need

There are three distinct ticket categories to handle different use cases and processes, so you need to decide which ticket categories your team will use.

Create ticket types

Based on the ticket categories that will be useful to you, start creating ticket types within each of those categories. Keep in mind that each ticket category has different visibility settings for customers and teammates who work on them. Each ticket type will have its own unique attributes which are used as a ‘form’ for gathering the right details. Fin AI Autofill enables you to automatically complete some of these details when creating a new ticket from the inbox and speed up the process.

For example, if you wanted a ticket for insurance claims, you could create this ticket type:

  • Ticket category: Customer ticket

  • Ticket type: Insurance Claim

  • Ticket attributes: Policy Number, Incident Details, Contact Information, Supporting Documents.

Note: Ticket types can be edited from your workspace settings. However, once a ticket has been created in the inbox, its ticket type can’t be edited or changed.

Create ticket states

As tickets progress, they can go through four behavioral states: Submitted; In progress; Waiting on customer; and Resolved. The current ticket state will appear as a label on the ticket in your inbox (and will be visible to customers if the ticket is shared) so you can keep track of each ticket’s progress. The behavior of a ticket state can’t be changed, but you can add and customize the names of these states to better reflect the progress of your ticket type.

For example, if you had a ticket type for bug reports, you could rename the ticket states:

  • Submitted > Issue logged

  • In progress > Investigating

  • Waiting on customer > Engineer working on a fix

  • Resolved > Fixed

Note: Ticket states you customize will retain the behavior of the original ticket state. For example, if you use the "Submitted" state and rename it "Issue logged," tickets will show the state as "Issue logged" when they are first created and in the "Submitted" stage. Learn more about ticket state behaviors.


Step 4: Boost inbox efficiency with macros and automations

As your support team starts receiving a range of conversations and tickets, they’ll often find themselves repeating answers and actions they take in the inbox, like assigning a conversation, tagging a conversation, or sending a response and snoozing a conversation. Macros make it easy for them to send saved replies which immediately take the appropriate follow-up action at the click of a button, while Workflows can run in the background to automatically assign, close, apply SLAs and more.

Create your macros

Create your first macros by focusing on frequently asked questions, or anticipating some of the questions you expect to receive from customers.

Build inbox automations (Advanced and Expert plan only)

Build inbox automations using Workflows to automate repetitive tasks for your team. These can take actions on conversations (tag, close, assign, etc.) and use conditional rules or branching.


Step 5: Capture data for valuable insights and optimization

Now that the Inbox is the heartbeat of your support operations, its evolution depends on leveraging meaningful insights. By using conversation attributes and tags, you unlock powerful tools for internal organization and customer understanding. These features provide a clear picture of recurring topics and pain points, helping you identify areas for improvement. With this data, you can fine-tune your processes to ensure your customers receive the exceptional support they deserve, while empowering your team to perform at their best.

Create conversation attributes and tags

First, identify the conversation attributes that will provide the most valuable insights for your reporting—think of details like issue type, urgency, or customer segment. Next, create tags to categorize and keep track of conversations as they flow into the inbox. Both conversation attributes and tags are useful for creating inbox views.


What’s next?

  • Improve your customer experience - Learn how to track the right metrics and deliver remarkable customer service with Intercom.

  • Leverage AI and Automation - Learn how to speed up your support with Workflows to automatically triage and route conversations, and enable Fin AI Agent to resolve queries for you.


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