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Custom actions and objects explained

Connect external databases to Intercom and create fully automated Workflows.

Beth-Ann Sher avatar
Written by Beth-Ann Sher
Updated over 2 months ago

By integrating external data with Workflows or the Intercom Inbox, customers can self-serve effectively while reducing inbound conversation volume and repetitive questions for your team. With custom actions and custom objects, you can connect with external data in more flexible and customizable ways, so your customers can get immediate answers to even more questions.

Set up custom actions and objects in minutes and easily design personalized self-serve support experiences to suit your business without code.


Custom actions

Custom actions allow you to build no-code integrations to get live data and take actions in your external systems. Store this response data in Intercom and use it to power Fin and Workflows with custom attributes on:

  • Standard Objects - People and Conversation.

  • Custom Objects - Your custom data types.

Custom objects

Custom objects provide more flexibility to model your customer data in a way that makes sense for your business - without the need for engineering resources - helping you achieve more advanced automation in Workflows and perform actions in external systems right from your Inbox. Store any type of data in Intercom, such as Orders, Transactions, etc. and define how they reference each other.

An image showing a Custom Action retrieving a customer's User ID and their Shopify Order ID from an external system, allowing them to request a refund..


The power of external data in Fin, Workflows, and Inbox

Resolve queries faster

Customers get a better support experience by reducing time to resolution and no longer needing to wait for human support.

Reduce inbound volume and free up agent time

By increasing the volume of queries that customers can self-serve, your agents can spend less time on repetitive tasks and more time on complex queries and high-value segments.

Empower your teams with a powerful Workflow builder

With integrations in place, your team can build and update Workflows without using any code or needing ongoing technical support.

Let your customers access more information in Workflows

You can configure Fin and your Workflows to present new information back to your customers, as well as let your customers take actions such as rescheduling deliveries or updating their contact details.

No coding required

Teammates need no technical expertise to utilize that data in Workflows.

A personalized response

Our bots let you tailor the customer experience to give customers a fast and relevant bot answer. For example, a bot message can be tailored based on a customer’s order status.

No need to leave the inbox

With custom actions available in the inbox, you can retrieve or process requests to an external system without leaving the inbox. This makes tasks such as processing refunds or deliveries easy.

Different use cases

Here are some of the key use cases to boost your bots and allow customers to self-serve:

  • Quick commerce - When will my order arrive?

  • E-commerce - I want a refund / I need to change my delivery date.

  • Utilities - See my meter readings.


Set up

Making use of the full power of this requires setting up:

It’s possible to use custom actions without custom objects. You can store data within an attribute on any of the standard objects in Intercom instead (People, Company, and Conversation). Using custom actions with Fin doesn't require custom objects either.


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