You can control who has the ability to start a conversation with your team and tailor the level of support you offer. This lets you encourage some users or leads to search your Help Center, or take advantage of other self-serve options instead.

How to control inbound volume

To control your inbound volume, go to Settings > Channels > Messenger > General > Control inbound volume.

If any settings are updated while a customer has an active session in the Messenger, the new ‘Control inbound volume’ criteria may not take effect until they refresh the page.

You can define a different set of rules separately for:

Visitors (this includes Leads)
Users

Let visitors/users start a conversation

For example, to only show the Send us a message button to visitors on a certain page, select Let visitors start a conversation, then click + Add display conditions.

Here you can choose the conditions that must be met for the new conversations button to display. For example, "Current page URL contains enterprise”:

This example will only allow visitors to start a new conversation if they’re on the “Enterprise” page of your website, to ensure that your sales team are only chatting with high value leads. There are many other ways to tailor the ability to start a new conversation, like users on a certain plan or those who are participating in a beta.

When you add multiple display conditions, you can also switch from Match all to Match any rules. For example, you could set this up for visitors who match a specific page, or those who have visited more than 2 pages on your site would see the new conversation button by selecting Match any.

Note: Visitors/users without the new conversation button will still be able to reply to messages you send. They just won't be able to start new conversations if this setting is disabled or they don't match the conditions.

Get even more targeted with who can start conversations

If you’ve set up our Clearbit Reveal app, you'll have additional data that you can use to target your ideal visitors. For example, you could set the new conversation button to appear for high value prospects who work at eCommerce companies with over 50 employees, who have raised $1,000,000 in funding.

Note: You’ll need a Clearbit Reveal API Account to integrate with Clearbit.

What does it look like for users and visitors?

When someone visits your site or app, who isn’t able to start a new conversation, they’ll still have access to previous conversations with you, the Articles Search app, and other apps in your Messenger.

Prevent visitors/users 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.

This setting impacts:

When the button to start a conversation is visible in the Messenger.
The position of "Open conversation" in the Continue the conversation card in the Messenger.

This also works for mobile users providing you are on the latest versions of the Android/React/iOS SDK and the most up to date Cordova plugin.

Note: This only prevents multiple conversations created from the Messenger. It does not prevent new conversations from other channels like email, Facebook, Instagram etc.

Previous conversations

If the customer has old conversations that are closed, it might still be possible to create duplicates by:

Creating a new conversation about an issue.
Replying to the earlier conversation, effectively reopening it.

To mitigate this, it is recommended that the "Prevent visitors/users from having multiple inbound conversations" setting is used in tandem with existing “Prevent visitors/users replying to closed conversations” setting. What this does is:

While the customer can create a new conversation from Messenger, they will NOT be able to reply to any old conversation that is closed.
Leading to only 1 open inbound conversation per user/visitor.

Outbound conversations

The "Prevent visitors/users from having multiple inbound conversations" setting only controls inbound conversations i.e. conversations started by the customer. If the customer has existing outbound conversation, it will still be possible to create duplicates by:

Creating a new conversation about an issue.
Replying to the outbound conversation for the same issue.

Interplay of prevent duplicates with outbound support conversations (OSC)

The "Prevent visitors/users from having multiple inbound conversations" setting allows for limiting one conversation per user/visitor. This might lead to scenarios where a single conversation is about many issues. To gracefully handle such scenarios, you can leverage OSC.

For each issue in the single running conversation, teammates can create an OSC chat or email with the given user and also assign the new OSC to the relevant team to action on. The customer will be able to see all the OSC chats in the Messenger.

Workflows

When the "Prevent visitors/users from having multiple inbound conversations" setting is turned on, any outbound Workflows will be prevented from firing whilst that user or visitor has an open inbound conversation in order to prevent duplicates being created via a reply to a conversation initiated by an outbound workflow.

Duplicates can be created whilst a bot is handling the conversation

If a user starts a conversation and whilst the bot is handling the conversation the end user starts a new conversation in a different browser tab a duplicate will be created. iOS has the same issue. Instead of tabs being the issue, if the user has an inbound bot set up, they can open a new conversation, select a quick reply and leave the conversation before the bot responds….then just start a new conversation the same way. This results in two conversations being opened at the same time.

Using the Messenger APIs to directly open a new conversation

On both the Web Messenger and Mobile SDKs, a developer can directly present the Messenger to the new Conversation space using the Messenger API. Doing this will skip any checks that block duplicate conversations. This behavior will occur if a developer:

calls Intercom(‘showNewMessage’) as shown here in the web Messenger.
calls [Intercom presentMessenger] as shown here, in the iOS SDK.
calls Intercom.client().displayMessenger() as shown here, in the Android SDK.

There are variations of those methods where a customer can pass in a default message, eg. Intercom('showNewMessage', 'pre-populated content'). These methods will also skip any checks to prevent duplicates.

Require visitors/users 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.

Let visitors start a conversation after a 😞 reaction in Help articles

With this turned on, when customers react with 😞 (negative feedback) on an article they are viewing whilst in your Help Center, they’ll get an automatic reply from your team in Messenger asking how you can help.
Value add: Your team can then resolve the issue and make quick changes to the article based on this feedback. This will reduce further disappointment and result in more happy customers 😃.

Note: This setting only triggers a new conversation when giving 😞 (negative feedback) to articles from your Help Center. A new conversation won't be triggered when negative feedback is given on an article being viewed within Messenger - in these instances a button to "Send us a message" appears prompting the customer to start a new conversation with your team. Learn more about article feedback.

Prevent visitors/users 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.

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