Bring Fin's capabilities to email—handling detailed queries, filtering out spam and phishing attempts, while ensuring your customers receive the same exceptional experience. The seamless AI agent-to-teammate handover will ensure that only more complex issues reach your support agents.
The following instructions have been created based on what we know provides accurate AI-powered email support within your customers’ inboxes.
Step 1: Review your email settings for Fin
In order to use Fin over email, you must first ensure you have the correct setup for your email channel.
Setup requirement | Why it matters |
Automatic email forwarding is set up and verified | This ensures your support emails are received into your Intercom inbox.
|
Your domain is connected and authenticated | This enables you to send emails from your Intercom inbox using your company’s normal support email address e.g. support@yourcompany.com, rather than from an intercom-mail.com address.
This helps protect your email deliverability and gives your customers confidence that your emails are coming from you. |
Reply address is set to "Inbound address" | This gives Fin an email address from which to send emails, so your customers receive replies from your company’s own email address. |
For multi-brand:
1. Define brand(s) within brand settings and connect each brand to the correct Help Center.
2. Connect email address(es) to the correct brand in email settings.
3. A brand aligned verified default address is selected within brand settings.
4. Reply address is set to “Inbound address”. | Fin references Help Centers based on the brand attribute assigned to a conversation.
Connecting email addresses to a brand ensures any conversations sent to that email will be assigned the correct brand. Connecting the right Help Center to a brand ensures Fin knows which Help Center to reference to ensure answers relate to the correct brand.
Notifications and other automated messages are sent from the default email address associated with a brand; this address needs to be verified so it can be used as a sender.
Reply address set to inbound address ensures that Fin over email replies come from the correctly branded email address. |
If you already use Intercom for email support you can check your existing settings to ensure the following are in place.
Visit Settings > Email > Email settings and check that:
The "Reply addresses" is set to Inbound address so that Fin has an email address to reply from.
The "Default address" is a verified email address from your company’s own domain e.g. support@yourcompany.com. This may require setting up your domain within Intercom if you haven’t already done that.
Both your domain and email address need to be authenticated.
For multi-brand users, you should check that:
You have a Help Center that can be referenced for your specific ‘non-default’ brand.
Brands are defined in brand settings; brands are connected to the correctly branded Help Center and have a verified branded email address selected.
Email addresses are connected to the right brand in email settings.
Step 2: Identify the emails you want Fin to handle
Just like Fin over chat, you'll need to identify the audience or support topics you want Fin to handle over email and set a success metric (e.g. resolution rate, CSAT). For example, this could include specific high-volume topics or a sub-set of customers.
Step 3: Prepare Fin's knowledge
Go to AI & Automation > Fin AI Agent > Setup and ensure you've enabled content which Fin can use to support email queries. Update your content to cover your frequently asked email queries. You can add public articles, PDFs, snippets, URLs, or content from previous conversations.
Step 4: Run a small-scale test
Preview Fin over email
Here's how to preview Fin over email before setting it live:
Go to AI & Automation > Fin AI Agent > Overview and open the Fin over email tab.
Click Copy address and send an email from the email address you used to sign up to Intercom.
Once you've previewed the experience, you can finish configuring and testing Fin (see below).
You won't be charged for conversations generated through this preview. Learn more about testing and rolling out Fin to your customers.
Test Fin over email
Now you can set Fin over email live to a small test or internal audience (e.g. yourself and teammates) and monitor Fin’s replies for quality and accuracy.
Go to AI & Automation > Fin AI Agent > Overview and open the Fin over email tab.
Under the "Simple setup", open Who can see Fin and add an audience rule for
Email contains [yourcompanydomain.com]- this will enable you and your teammates to send some test emails for Fin to answer.You can also set up the following:
Handover experience from Fin to a teammate.
When to auto-close conversations.
When a conversation rating (CSAT) is requested.
Select Set Fin live.
Email a question to your default workspace address to see Fin's response.
Note: If you test Fin in your live environment, you will be billed per resolution. However, if you or your teammate has asked to "Get more help" or speak to your team, the conversation is considered "unresolved" and you would not be charged for this.
Review Fin’s responses
Create a set of control questions to share with your team and send a question into your default workspace address, as if you were a customer emailing in for support.
Then ask your colleagues to note whether Fin provided the best response or not. This can also be a great way to identify gaps in your support content.
If Fin didn’t answer correctly, review the sources used to provide the answer (which are linked in Fin’s email reply) and update the content so that Fin can provide a better answer next time.
Step 5: Optimize and rollout
Expand the audience Fin is replying to, so that Fin is replying to some real customer conversations. Review the results and customer feedback then expand Fin to handle more of your volume or topics.
We recommend rolling Fin AI Agent out in stages, such as starting with lower-tiered customers who would benefit the most from self-service. This approach allows you to supervise Fin closely and feel confident with how Fin works over email. See section below for step-by-step guidance.
How to configure your Fin over email settings for rollout
If you use Workflows, follow the steps under Advanced setup through Workflows.
If you don’t use workflows, follow the steps under Simple setup.
Simple setup (without workflows)
Go to AI & Automation > Fin AI Agent > Overview and open the Fin over email tab. At the top of this page, you'll see "Simple setup" where you can:
Determine who will see Fin in email conversations.
Configure the handover experience from Fin to a teammate.
Choose when to auto-close conversations.
Ask for a conversation rating (CSAT) after Fin's email conversation.
Note: The "Simple setup" configured from Fin AI Agent takes priority and will trigger before live Workflows. Please keep this in mind if using both Simple setup and Workflows for Fin over email.
Who will see Fin
Decide which of your customers can interact with Fin AI Agent. You can allow Fin to provide answers to your users and/or leads.
Click + Add audience rule and use data attributes in Intercom to target your audience further. For example, Fin could be enabled for conversations with users on your free plan.
Use email predicates such "Email to" if you want Fin to respond to emails sent to a specific address.
Then click Save and move to the next step.
If Fin cannot resolve the conversation
Then choose what happens if Fin can't resolve the conversation by assigning it to a particular teammate or team inbox.
Then click Save and move to the next step.
Auto-close abandoned Fin conversations
Choose when to auto-close conversations by specifying a length of time Fin should wait before closing conversations.
Select if you want Fin to automatically close the conversation after customer becomes inactive:
If Fin has answered the question, and/or
If Fin was not able to answer the question or the customer left before asking any questions.
You can also Customize what Fin says when closing the conversation to make sure the customer got what they needed and remind them they can still speak to your support team, even if the conversation is being closed.
Then click Save and move to the next step.
Ask for conversation rating (CSAT)
At the end of a customer's interaction with Fin AI Agent you can ask them to give a conversation rating by toggling these settings on:
👍 Send CSAT when the customer clicks "That helped" button or replies with a positive message
⏳ Send CSAT if the customer becomes inactive after Fin showed an answer
If a CSAT survey has been configured within a workflow, it will be sent as a separate email. Learn more about Fin AI Agent CSAT.
Review and set live
Once you're done, click Set Fin live 🎉
You'll need billing permissions to set Fin live if the T&Cs haven't been accepted yet. Accepting these terms is mandatory to be able to use Fin AI Agent.
Advanced setup through Workflows
Go to AI & Automation > Fin AI Agent > Overview and open the Fin over email tab. At the bottom of this page, open "Advanced setup through Workflows" and select View all workflows.
If you used the "Simple setup" to do some initial testing, we advise that you select Pause Fin to prevent this from triggering before your live Workflows.
If you have an existing workflow set up specifically for email:
You can simply add Fin to the workflow, where appropriate.
When you add Fin to your existing workflows, you'll find these under AI & Automation > Workflows if you filter by "Type is Using Fin".
If you don't have a workflow set up specifically for email:
We recommend you create one solely for this channel.
You can ensure a workflow is only enabled for email in the trigger settings.
Have Fin respond to a specific audience
By using branching, you can create different Fin experiences for different audiences.
For example:
For paying customers, you might want to hand over to a teammate when Fin can't answer but for non-paying customers, you might want to direct them to your Help Center.
You can also use the ‘Email’ predicates to exclude specific email addresses or domains, if you don’t want Fin to engage with a certain company or reply to a specific person.
For greater flexibility with email workflows, use the “Email to, "Email cc" and "Email bcc" predicates if you would like to create different auto-reply messages (and other steps and actions) depending on the email address a customer sends their message to.
See additional ways and examples of how you can target specific audiences or customers.
Add as many branches as you need to create different experiences for your different customers.
While you can also determine audience rules within the workflow trigger settings, we recommend only doing this if you have an additional workflow to cover everyone who doesn't match those rules.
Have Fin respond to a specific topic
You can also use branching to create different Fin experiences and paths based on your different email topics.
Click Add step to start creating your branching logic.
Then select Branches under "Proceed to another path".
Once you’ve added a branch, click on Missing condition to open up your branch settings.
Click + Add condition to set different conditions, e.g. if you want to route conversations based on a keyword in the message, select "Message Content" as a condition.
You can repeat this step to add multiple branches per keyword.
Once you’ve defined your branches, click on the arrow to the right to determine the path specific to that branch, e.g. assign to a teammate or let Fin answer.
For example, you can use a "Message Content" filter to route conversations which contain the keyword "billing" directly to your Finance team.
With AI category detection [closed beta], Fin can categorize conversations by topic and use these AI categories as conditions in workflows to automatically route conversations to the right team, ensuring customer requests are handled efficiently.
Add Fin to your email workflow
Once you’ve determined the paths for the different audiences and/or topics, you can then select where you want Fin involved. Add Fin to your workflow by creating a path and selecting Let Fin answer.
Customize Fin's behavior in your email workflow
To customize Fin's behavior in a workflow, click on the Let Fin answer step in the workflow path. Here, you can:
Set expectations for human support.
Control the answer type.
Configure the handover to teammate experience.
Test your Fin over email workflow
If you want to test a Fin over email workflow, send an email to your support email address configured to receive email in Intercom or to the email address in Settings > Email > Email forwarding.
Best practices for email workflows
The "Simple setup" from Fin AI Agent takes priority and will trigger before live workflows. Please keep this in mind if using both "Simple setup" and "Advanced setup through Workflows".
Not all workflow steps are available over email. Check what actions are compatible with this channel. For this reason, we recommend creating a separate workflow solely for email as a channel i.e. don't add email / Fin over email to a workflow that has been set up for Messenger.
We don't recommend having multiple workflows per topic. We recommend you have one workflow for your email channel, with each email topic defined using branches.
When creating a workflow, you should always set a path for "Else". In the event a customer doesn’t fall under a specific topic or audience, this ensures there is a fallback option to support them.
What your customers will see
Fin AI Agent will reply to questions over email the same way it does over chat. The main differences are how responses are formatted and Fin can also participate in group conversations over email.
When Fin replies to an email, it will:
Indicate that it’s an AI agent.
Provide the source of the answer (if public to your audience).
Give users options for next steps, including speaking to a teammate.
Show your email signature.
If the customer's message is not clear, Fin will send a message asking to clarify what they need assistance with.
If Fin doesn't have an answer, it will let the customer know and give them the option to ask another question or talk to a person. Fin will not send any error messages over email like it does for chat (i.e “Oops, something went wrong”). Instead, it will immediately route to your team.
When the customer responds, they have the following options:
Reply with additional information.
Click
That helpedbutton or send a reply confirming the answer helped, which will mark the conversation as a confirmed resolution.Click
Talk to a personbutton or reply asking for help, which will mark the conversation as “Routed to team” and trigger the handover process, if one has been set up.
If a customer clicks on a quick reply button in the email, they'll be redirected to an Intercom-hosted URL with a confirmation message.
Note:
The webpage that opens up will use the same styling colors that you have configured for your Messenger.
The quick reply buttons will expire one week after Fin's email is sent, or if someone replies to the email thread after it was sent.
Customers will also receive a follow-up email confirming the action:
When a customer clicks
Talk to a person(or replies with a variation of this), the handover between Fin AI Agent and a teammate will be triggered.When a customer clicks
That helped(or replies with a variation of this), Fin AI Agent will respond and close the conversation - unless otherwise configured.
Filtering spam messages
Fin AI Agent integrates with Intercom’s built-in spam filtering to ensure it doesn’t reply to spam emails.
Intercom assigns all inbound emails a score and will filter anything that is deemed to be “spammy”. If you’re missing some messages that you think may have been incorrectly filtered, you can check the Spam folder from the Inbox.
You will find any messages filtered as spam in this folder. If any have been filtered incorrectly, you can mark the message as Not spam and send it back to the inbox it was originally intended for.
Emails within the spam inbox are deleted after 2 months.
By default, emails marked as auto responders go to your Spam folder but if you need these to appear in your inbox, you can turn off this setting so they are routed to the inbox from Settings > Channels > Email > Email settings.
Do not use your custom domain email address to sign up to newsletters or advertisements. This will prevent Fin from getting involved in these conversations.
Monitor and report on Fin’s email conversations
View Fin's email conversations in the inbox
After you’ve set Fin over email live, you’ll be able to monitor all conversations where your AI agent was involved. The Fin AI Agent folder in the Inbox allows you to easily review these conversations and take note of any content gaps so you can update it or create new content.
Create a dedicated email inbox view by adding the filters “Current channel” or “Initial channel” is “Email”.
Fin over email reporting
You can report on Fin’s performance over email conversations using the Fin AI Agent report.
Simply use the report filters to see email-only data by selecting “Channel is Email”.
If you have access to Custom Reports, you can use channel data to create your own custom charts for Fin over email.
FAQs
Is multilingual Fin available over email?
Is multilingual Fin available over email?
Yes, Fin for email is also multilingual and can assist your customers in different languages. To learn more about this feature and how it works, check out the article Multilingual Fin AI Agent.
How are Fin email conversations and resolutions billed?
How are Fin email conversations and resolutions billed?
Fin AI Agent conversations over email are charged on a per resolution basis, the same as all other available channels.
How does Fin over email work with Customer tickets?
How does Fin over email work with Customer tickets?
Fin AI Agent over email will respond to Customer tickets the same as it does with conversations. This includes the email setting to auto-convert emails into tickets, where emails will be automatically converted into tickets and Fin will handle the ticket conversation as normal.
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