Intercom

You can now integrate your AI support agent directly into Intercom for a seamless AI experience with our Intercom app, you can find it here in the Intercom app store.

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What are the benefits of using My AskAI within Intercom?

There are several reasons why you should use your My AskAI within Intercom:

• While Intercom has its own AI agent (called “Fin”), it is expensive, around 5-10x the price of My AskAI per conversation (we also think ours is smarter, but we’ll let you be the judge!), you can read our full comparison here.
• You can add more knowledge to your AI agent in addition to your website and Intercom help center by using our connections, live data or file uploads.
• There are several ways your CS team can use your AI agent within Intercom, so you can use whichever works for them (read on below for more).
• You don’t have to add any code to your site to get your AI agent live, just connect our app and you’re ready to go.
• Every AI answer is provided with “References” to the sources used to answer the question.
• As well as an AI agent, you get all our other features like Improve, Insights, Private (Internal) mode, Integrations with Slack and more.

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How to use your AI agent within Intercom Messenger

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How to connect your AI agent to Intercom

1. Login to your Dashboard and go to Channels.
2. Once enabled you will see the section “Add to helpdesk”, click on the Intercom icon.
3. Then click the “Connect your Intercom account” button.
4. This will open an authorizations/permissions screen, click “Authorize access” if you agree.

5. Your AskAI is now connected to Intercom and will be providing “note” responses.

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How can I use my AI support agent within Intercom?

There are 3 ways you can use your AI agent within Intercom (you can use as many of these as you want at once):

1. As a full conversational AI agent
2. As an internal tool for your support team to answer questions faster
3. Default: As an agent tool to draft responses in notes, ready to send (or edit)

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How to set up an AI-powered support agent within Intercom (Fully conversational support)

1. Connect your AI agent to Intercom
2. Toggle conversational replies “on” by going to your Dashboard then Channels > Intercom clicking the “Direct replies” button beneath “Reply type”.
3. That’s it! Your Intercom messenger will now automatically respond to user queries using your AI agent’s knowledge.

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How to draft AI conversational replies to users, without sending them in Intercom

You can set the agent to automatically create AI note responses for you to use instead of replying directly to the user, to do this:

1. Connect your AI support agent to Intercom
2. Toggle note replies “on” by going to your Dashboard then Channels > Intercom clicking the “Draft ‘note’ replies” toggle.
3. That’s it, now when someone talks with your Intercom you will see the AI response appear as a note you can use to help with your reply.

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How can I run a workflow after a human escalation in Intercom?

To assign a ticket or conversation to a specific human agent on escalation, follow our guide here.

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How can I stop draft notes from being generated for a conversation or email in Intercom?

To stop draft notes from being generated for a conversation, just add a note to the conversation with: "Stop AI replies"

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How does human escalation work when using the Intercom messenger integration?

If, at any time, the user wishes to be passed over to a person to continue the conversation, all they need to do is say so, saying “Talk to a person” (or similar words to that effect) or, if the AI agent can’t answer a question, a “Talk to a person” button is shown that the user can click(this button will only show on the Intercom chat widget, not on other connected Intercom channels such as Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp or Instagram). Once the conversation is passed over to the human, the AI will not respond again until the agent hands back control to the AI. When the AI agent cannot answer a question, it will also prompt the user to type “Talk to a person” to make it obvious they can speak to a person. As part of the escalation, the AI agent will summarize the conversation so the agent can pick up where the user left off so there is no repetition or frustration. To trigger a workflow after a human escalation has taken place, follow these instructions.

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Can I automatically assign a conversation or ticket to a specific team inbox on escalation in Intercom?

Yes, you can automatically assign escalated tickets to inboxes in Intercom. To do this go to Helpdesk & Channels > Intercom then scroll to the “Assign to Team Inbox on escalation” section and select the inbox from the dropdown options. When tickets are escalated from that point on, they will be auto assigned.

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Will the AI agent reply to emails within Intercom?

Yes, your AI agent can reply to emails received in Intercom. To turn this feature on or off:

1. Turn off any email auto-replies or reply workflows for email within Intercom (Settings > Channels > Email > Auto-replies)
2. Login to your My AskAI account
3. Go to Dashboard > Channels > Intercom > Email replies
4. Turn on email replies

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How can I take control from or give control to the AI agent in Intercom?

You can give control or take back control from the AI at any time, here’s how:

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To take control of a conversation

Just reply to any open conversation as an admin/agent and the conversation’s control will be taken from the AI agent, note, this will not work for email replies. For email replies in Intercom you will need to add a note saying “Stop AI replies” to the ticket.

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To give control to the AI agent

1. Create a Macro (Settings > Workspace> Macros (Saved replies)) with the below message. The underlined text must be included. The remaining text can be customized.
   
   "Hi there, I'll pass you back to our AI assistant for any further questions."

2. Now, to use the Macro, just type CTRL+K in the reply field and then select “Use Macro” and click “Hand back control to AI assistant”

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How can I add my agent as part of a triaged workflow in Intercom?

1. Connect your agent to Intercom
2. Turn on the toggle switch for Workflow/Triage settings
3. Decide on a trigger phrase to use for your AI workflow escalation button, type it into the field below the toggle switch and include this as the text in a button in your workflow (example workflow below for “Chat with AI assistant” as the trigger phrase)

4. Turn off “Let customer type” in your initial welcome message workflow
5. Your AI agent will now only begin responding after the AI chat button has been pressed.

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I have multiple brands, users or email accounts in Intercom, can I have the AI agent only respond to one of them (or specific ones)?

Yes, you can set your AI agent up so it only responds to specific conversations or brands in Intercom. By default your AI agent will reply to all inbound conversations. But if you want it to reply to only certain email addresses e.g. support@company.com and not vip-support@company.com then you can use workflows to triage tickets. This will ensure it only replies to these accounts.

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How do I auto-close a ticket in Intercom after a set amount of time?

You can auto-close tickets in Intercom (that have not been transferred to a person) after a certain time period without a response to an AI agent’s response by:

1. Going to Channels > Add to helpdesk and click on the Intercom icon
2. In the pop-up, scroll to “Auto-close inactive conversations” and toggle “Automatically close a conversations” to the On position
3. Set the amount of time you want the ticket or conversation to close after (by default this is 60 mins)
4. (Optional) You can also set a message to send automatically when the ticket closes notifying the user the ticket will be closed.
5. These changes will go live immediately.

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Will the AI agent use responses to questions the customer has given as part of my workflow?

Yes, your AI agent will use responses given by customers to workflow questions as context for its responses. This is a great way to improve the accuracy of your AI agent’s responses and ensure a better user experience.

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Can I delay my Intercom email replies to make them seem more ‘human’?

Yes, you can delay your Intercom email replies to make them seem more human. Go to Channels > Add to helpdesk > Intercom > First email reply delay and specify the number of minutes you want the AI agent to wait before sending the reply. When the time period is up the response will then be sent.

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Can I stop people speaking to a person on their first message on Intercom?

You can prevent “instant” human escalation on the 1st message in a conversation on Intercom by navigating to Channels > Intercom and then toggling the “Prevent immediate escalation” feature. This option is on by default. When a user tries to escalate immediately they will be asked to provide more information first. On any subsequent messages, they can initiate a escalate to an agent.

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How can I add my Intercom AI agent to other services, like WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook Messenger, or SMS?

You can use the Intercom integration to use your AI agent directly within:

• WhatsApp
• Instagram DMs
• Facebook Messenger
• SMS

It will retain all the same features of the Intercom agent, including human escalation, but within the respective platforms. Refer to Intercom’s instructions on how to get each channel set-up with your AI agent.

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Which Intercom plan do I need to be on to use My AskAI?

You can use the My AskAI Intercom integration on any Intercom plan.

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How can I pause or temporarily turn off AI replies or notes in Intercom?

To pause or temporarily pause AI replies or notes in Intercom go to Channels > Intercom then scroll to the toggle for “Pause AI agent”. When you are ready to turn it back on, just toggle the Pause button once more and it will start responding again.

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Can I turn off the “Just thinking…” or “Just having a think…” messages in Intercom?

Yes, you can turn off the “Just thinking” or “Just having a think” messages. Just go to Channels > Add to helpdesk > Intercom > Hide ‘just thinking’ message and toggle the “Hide the “just thinking” message to off.