Intercom provides a diverse range of channels within the Help desk, enabling you to offer assistance to your customers no matter where they are.

This all-in-one approach allows you to cater to your customers' preferences while maintaining a seamless and scalable experience for your team.

All channels can be set up and customized from Settings > Channels in your Intercom workspace, including:

We'll go through each of these channels below in more detail. 👇

Allow your customers to send and receive messages on your website or app through the Messenger, and set up powerful inbox automations to handle these conversations effectively.

With a modern and flexible no-code design, you can align all your brand and business needs, while engaging customers in-context and driving action across their journey.

Forward emails from your support address and manage all inbound email from your chosen Intercom inbox (emails can be forwarded externally too if you need to collaborate with teammates outside of Intercom).

You can also set up a custom email address in the Help Desk and start conversations from there.

With Intercom Phone, your inbound and outbound calls appear right in your inbox alongside your other conversations, so you can handle them all in one integrated view, there’s no need to swap between tools just to speak one on one.

You’ll keep the same context as you do over chat or email, so you’ll have useful information at your fingertips before you make or take a call.

Workflows can be used to assign calls to the correct team, let customers schedule a call back, or give the option for customers to leave a voicemail.

Switch allows customers to move from a conversation over the phone to a chat conversation in the Messenger. This can reduce hold times and offer a better customer experience in a space where your team can handle volume more efficiently.

2-way SMS allows you to have a back-and-forth SMS conversation with customers right from your inbox.

You can also send real-time promotional offers, transactional messaging, and more using Series to create campaigns and customer communications, meeting your customers wherever they are.

Intercom supports a variety of social channels, allowing you to connect with your customers on platforms they use frequently, while triaging and responding to all direct messages you receive straight from the Help Desk.

Integrate Facebook as a channel and receive private Facebook messages directly in your Intercom inbox where they can be managed and responded to efficiently.

Integrate WhatsApp as a channel to send and receive WhatsApp conversations directly from the Help Desk, or send outbound WhatsApp messages to your customers.

WhatsApp can also be offered as a follow-up channel in the Messenger, allowing customers to swap to WhatsApp and continue the conversation where it's convenient for them.

Integrate Instagram as a channel to see all Instagram direct messages in your Intercom inbox, consolidating your customer interactions in a single location and eliminating the need to switch between tabs or handle multiple queues.

Using Workflows you can effectively triage Instagram direct messages to the right inbox and provide quicker responses to potential leads or users.

Working across multiple channels in the Help Desk is super easy with channel-specific views.

Using the Current channel or Initial channel filters, you can filter conversations and tickets by channel, and create views for conversations or tickets that came in via the Messenger (web, Android, or iOS), email, social media, SMS, or phone.

You'll find the option to filter by current or initial channel when creating or editing a view.