Intercom (Messenger)
Connect your AI support agent to your Intercom workspace and existing Intercom live chat widget (Messenger) on your website.
Last updated
Connect your AI support agent to your Intercom workspace and existing Intercom live chat widget (Messenger) on your website.
Last updated
You can now integrate your AI support agent directly into Intercom for a seamless AI experience.
The Intercom integration is available on all paid plans, see pricing.
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 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, Email Assistant, Site Search, Private (Internal) mode, Integrations with Slack and more.
Ensure that you have turned off Fin before completing these steps.
Login to your Dashboard and go to Channels.
Once enabled you will see "Add to live chat apps" appear, click on the Intercom icon.
Then click the "Connect your Intercom account" button.
This will open an authorizations/permissions screen, click "Authorize access" if you agree.
Your AskAI is now connected to Intercom and will be providing "note" responses.
There are 4 ways you can use your AI agent within Intercom (you can use as many of these as you want at once):
In Intercom in the left-hand sidebar go to "Messenger & Omnichannel"
On the Messenger application, click "Manage settings"
Then expand the "Customize Home with apps" accordion.
Click "Add an app" at the foot of the page, then select "My AskAI" from the list of apps
Click the "Save changes" button at the top right of the page.
You will now see an AI Q&A widget on your Intercom messenger homepage, it'll look like this.
To remove the widget or to edit the visibility of it you can read more here.
In addition to adding the widget to your homepage:
You can share the widget as part of the conversation with the user by pressing CTRL+K and then searching for "My AskAI" and pressing enter. The user will then be given the Q&A widget in the chat itself.
Your team can use the widget within the Help Desk to get answers they can share with the user. To do this:
Scroll to the bottom of the right-hand panel
Click "Add app"
Select "My AskAI"
Drag the app to be visible in the panel.
You're done!
Toggle conversational replies "on" by going to your Dashboard then Channels > Intercom clicking the "Reply directly to customers" button.
That's it! Your Intercom messenger will now automatically respond to user queries using your AI agent's knowledge.
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:
Toggle note replies "on" by going to your Dashboard then Channels > Intercom clicking the "Reply with 'notes' for admins" toggle.
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.
To stop draft notes from being generated for a conversation, just add a note to the conversation with:
"Stop writing AI notes"
This must be written as a 'Note' and not a 'Reply'
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).
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 handover, 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.
You can give control or take back control from the AI at any time, here's how:
Just reply to any open conversation as an admin/agent and the conversation's control will be taken from the AI agent.
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."
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"
Turn on the toggle switch for Workflow/Triage settings
Decide on a trigger phrase to use for your AI workflow handover 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)
This phrase must exactly match the pre-defined button you are going to use in your workflow message.
Turn off "Let customer type" in your initial welcome message workflow
Your AI agent will now only begin responding after the AI chat button has been pressed.
To stop your AI agent from replying to a specific set of phrases in Intercom, share with us a list of the phrases you would like to block via email and we will update your bot with these.
(Available on Pro accounts and above).
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:
Going to Channels > Add to live chat apps and click on the Intercom icon
In the pop-up, scroll to "Use inactivity auto-close settings" and toggle "Automatically close a conversations" to the On position
Set the amount of time you want the ticket to close after (by default this is 60 mins)
(Optional) You can also set a message to send automatically when the ticket closes notifying the user the ticket will be closed.
These changes will go live immediately.
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.
You can prevent "instant" human handover on the 1st message in a conversation on Intercom by navigating to Channels > Intercom and then toggling the "Ask for more information before handover" feature.
This option is on by default.
When a user tries to handover immediately they will be asked to provide more information first. On any subsequent messages, they can initiate a handover to an agent.
You can use the Intercom integration to use your AI agent directly within:
Instagram DMs
Facebook Messenger
SMS
It will retain all the same features of the Intercom agent, including human handover, but within the respective platforms.
Refer to Intercom's instructions on how to get each channel set-up with your AI agent.
You can use the My AskAI Intercom integration on any Intercom plan.
