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Customize the Intercom Messenger
Customize the Intercom Messenger

Set the Messenger's appearance, language, apps, reply time, visibility and more.

Beth-Ann Sher avatar
Written by Beth-Ann Sher
Updated this week

You'll find your Messenger settings in Messenger & Omnichannel. The Messenger settings are divided into three sections. We’ll go through what each of them contains and how to manage them below.

You must have the Can access Messenger settings permission to manage Messenger settings.


Platforms

Web

This is where you manage your Web Messenger.

Mobile SDKs

This is where you manage your Mobile SDKs.

The settings here are the same as Web, other than where a feature is web-only. Learn how the Messenger works on mobile apps.

Web includes both the desktop web + mobile web. Mobile SDKs refers to your mobile SDK app (if you have one).

Content > Layout and Spaces

The Content tab relates to your customer's initial experience with the Messenger, from the Messenger Launcher to the Messenger Home.

Terminology:

  • Messenger Launcher - the chat bubble/circle (as you see at the bottom right of your screen now 😉).

  • Messenger Home - the Home space which opens when customers click the Messenger Launcher for the first time.

Layout

This is where you can choose to use the Default Messenger or Compact Messenger shape.

Spaces

This is where you control which spaces your visitors and users see in the Messenger by turning them on or off.

  • Home - A space to make your own and decide exactly what you want to display to your visitors and users.

  • Messages - A space for conversation management. Both inbound and outbound conversations and conversations which contain Tickets will live here.

  • Help - A space for customers to access a full, in-context Help Center from anywhere in your product.

  • News - A space for your News feed, suitable for a variety of announcement types and curated for each customer. (Opt-in available.)

  • Tasks - A space where customers can complete your custom Checklists when onboarding or using your product to its full potential. (Opt-in available.)

Note: Messages is a permanent space in the Messenger and can’t be turned off.

Reorder how the spaces appear by using the drag and drop on the left. The Home Space will always remain at the top, but it can be turned off if you’d like to remove it from your Messenger.

Set your welcome message

Choose how you’d like to greet people and introduce yourself when they open the Messenger.

Note: This can be configured to support up to 43 languages from Messenger > General settings.

Customize Home with apps

Customize Messenger Home by adding and removing apps. Choose whether customers can start a conversation with you, search for articles in your Help Center, see featured News announcements, or view any other custom apps.

Note: Messenger Home needs at least one app.

Show the Messenger Launcher

You can decide to show or hide the Messenger launcher based on audience rules.

Styling

In Styling, you’ll find all the ways you can customize and style the Messenger to match your brand and preferences.

Set your brand colors

Select your brand colors to match your Messenger Background color and the Action color which is used in buttons, links and more to highlight and emphasize.

Style Messenger Home

Stylize the Messenger Home with your logo and decide whether to display your teammates’ avatars for a more personal touch.

Tip: Use the guidelines below when uploading a logo. 👇

The space available for a logo will change if you've chosen to show your team avatars.

Customize the Messenger header further with optional color gradients, background image, background fade, or text color.

Tip: If you select Image as your header background, we recommend using an image size of 800 x 600 pixels.

Customize the Launcher

Decide how the Launcher should appear by uploading your own image, and choosing where to position it on your site.

Note:

  • Check our plans and pricing to add this to your subscription.

  • The Launcher uses the Action color you selected in brand colors.

  • You can only set the Messenger to one position on your site (it can’t appear in multiple positions across the same site).


Conversations

Design the Messages Space and choose how to introduce your team, set expectations, and control conversation behaviors from Conversations.

Control inbound conversation volume

Control inbound conversation volume by deciding who can start a conversation in the Messenger. You can make this more targeted by adding display conditions based on user attributes.

You can also turn on/off and add display conditions for the following options:

Prevent users or visitors from having multiple inbound conversations

  • With this turned on, if a customer already has an open conversation from the last 3 days, they'll be encouraged to continue that existing conversation, as opposed to starting a new conversation.

  • Value add: This is a great way to combat duplicate conversations from being created.

Require users or visitors to search before starting a conversation

  • With this turned on, a customer won't be given the opportunity to start a conversation until they search your articles through the Messenger.

  • Value add: This encourages users to self-serve before adding to your teams volume. This is a great way to deflect support conversations.

Prevent users or visitors replying to closed conversations

  • With this turned on, a customer won't be able to continue a conversation after the set timeframe.

  • Messenger experience: If teammates closes an existing conversation, the customer won't be able to reply to the conversation from the Messenger, instead they'll see a note "Your conversation has ended" and a button prompting them to start a new conversation.


    Email experience: If teammates closes an existing conversation, and the customer replies to an email notification after the set timeframe, a new conversation will be created.

  • Value add: This allows teammates to get the credit when it's due. With this setting turned off, a customer can keep replying to the same conversation (or email thread), reopening the conversation - which would only count as 1 conversation towards the teammate's volume KPI.
    Also, with this setting turned off, if your team is experiencing high volume, a customer can reply to an old conversation to reopen the conversation in the teammate's individual inbox (as long as they don't have Away & Reassign replies turned on). This essentially allows the customer to jump the queue.

  • What timeframe to use? Teams with live chat usually enable this setting with a "1 day" timeframe. Teams with more complex, troubleshooting conversations usually enable this setting with a "5 day" timeframe.

Team introduction

Edit the Team introduction to introduce your team to customers and set expectations before they start a conversation in the Messenger:

Note: This can be configured to support up to 43 languages from General settings.

Special notice

Write a Special notice to all your visitors and users. For example, if your response times are slower than usual.

Note: This is a temporary beta feature that’s limited to a single language.

Office hours and reply times

Set your Office hours and reply times and let customers know when to expect a response.

Tip: If you have various teams with different operating hours, set custom hours for teams here.

Require email

Choose whether users and visitors are required to leave their email before starting a conversation. For example, we could require an email from users and visitors Only outside of office hours.


General settings

In General settings, you’ll find all other Messenger settings, including your Messenger preferences, supported languages, and security settings.

General

Configure your Messenger preferences such as whether customers hear a sound for incoming messages you send:

Choose supported languages

Choose which default language should be displayed in the Messenger interface for all customers, or add different languages to display the Messenger in these languages when they match your customer’s browser or device settings.

Keep your Messenger secure

Keep your Messenger secure by listing your trusted domains and subdomains, separated by commas.

Important:

  • If you leave this blank, the Intercom Messenger can be added to any domain.

  • You can list multiple domains, separated by commas.

  • To list all subdomains just use an asterisk, like *.intercom.com.

  • Ensure you add the full domain name (i.e. 'www.intercom.com', not 'intercom.com').

  • We don't support adding localhost, but you can add '0.0.0.0' and/or '127.0.0.1' and the Messenger will work on these domains.

  • At Intercom we updated our terminology to progress beyond harmful, racially biased phrases. This setting used to be the "Whitelist". We now use "Trusted list". To read more on why and how we made these changes please read our article on why words matter.”

Set up identify verification

We also strongly recommend setting up identity verification to keep third parties from impersonating your logged-in users and seeing their conversations.


Save and set live

When you’re happy with your Messenger preview, click Save and set live.

The Messenger works beautifully in your mobile app too. To use the new Messenger, you'll need to install or upgrade to iOS SDK 14.0.1 and Android SDK 14.0.1. Learn more about using the Messenger in your mobile app.


💡Tip

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