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Product Announcements
11 posts about Product Announcements. Every summary links to the original.
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Built for you: Inbox updates, customizable conversation assignment, and more! - The Intercom Blog
Intercom announced September 2022 updates to its customer support platform, focusing on operational efficiency and enhanced analytics. The next-generation Inbox, originally released in March, gained Spanish language support, keyboard shortcuts in five additional languages, pinning of frequently used actions in the composer, and a resizable sidebar for faster access to customer details. Conversation assignment via the Balanced Assignment feature became more customizable, allowing teams to reorder attributes such as conversation priority, wait time, and SLA target to control distribution. Bot management was centralized onto a single page in the Operator tab with a search bar, and new report functionality was added: a message-type filter in the Customer Engagement Overview report and a first response time filter in custom reports. Additionally, the iOS SDK was updated to version 13.0.0 for iOS 16 compatibility, and Intercom scheduled a virtual launch event for October 12th.
Built for you: Powerful updates to Series, Banners, Resolution Bot, and more to help you stay personal at scale - The Intercom Blog
Intercom announced powerful updates to Series, Banners, Resolution Bot, and other tools to help businesses scale personalized customer interactions. Series now enables split testing of up to five message variants, team annotations, company-level goals from company data, and tag removal to streamline workflows. Banners can be non-dismissible to ensure customers take action and trigger Product Tours from the banner for guided walkthroughs. Resolution Bot introduces looping mode to answer multiple questions, auto-closes conversations after three minutes of inactivity, includes a bot intro, and offers bot-only self-service with a configurable link. Additional updates include granular sidebar permissions to restrict inbox access, no-reply post messages, mobile carousel and article triggers from in-app buttons, iOS universal links, and API version 2.3 for exporting conversation data.
Built for you: Banners, Series, and more features to create a conversational experience - The Intercom Blog
Intercom introduced new features to unify conversational support, marketing, and engagement, including Banners, Series, and enhanced bots. Banners are an unobtrusive message type for announcements and promotions, with brand styling, personalization, and scheduling. Series is a visual campaign builder that orchestrates behavior-based messaging across channels with audience segmentation for activation, retention, or re-engagement. Custom Bots now include A/B testing with goal setting and retriggering rules for returning visitors, while email targeting can be based on website behavior with new reporting trendlines. Inbox management gains automatic conversation closure, tagging permissions, CSV export with field selection, and predictive answers in Resolution Bot, while API v2.2 adds conversation title viewing, assignment, redaction, and segment listing.
Product thinking: behind our new Messenger home screen - The Intercom Blog
Intercom launched a new Messenger home screen that replaces the previous utilitarian conversation list with a customizable app-based interface. The idea originated from observing customers building their own front-desk solutions and from internal experiments with knowledge base links that showed strong traction. The redesign was further motivated by data showing that 95% of conversation interaction occurs within 24 hours, making the old conversation list less valuable for returning users. The home screen hosts apps for self-service, sales, and support—such as article search, demo booking, Mailchimp subscriptions, Shopify order tracking, and Statuspage updates—and can show different apps for visitors versus signed-in users to avoid hard sells. This app framework was originally built for in-conversation use but was extended to the home screen, allowing businesses to tailor the Messenger as a versatile front desk that can be updated in under a minute.
Crafting feature announcements that spur action - The Intercom Blog
A feature’s value depends on showing customers how it solves their problem, not on development effort. Intercom recommends targeting the right customers using message filters, such as those with access, those without (upsell), those who requested the feature, or those taking related actions, while excluding recently contacted (within 3 days) and new users (signed up less than 30 days ago). Choose the medium based on context: in-app for active users on relevant pages, email for re-engaging inactive users, and time announcements between 10am-2pm on weekdays for best open rates. The message should focus on customer benefits, be concise, include visuals, and stay personal. After announcing, track usage via events and gather feedback to inform future iterations.
What we shipped: 20 new features and counting - The Intercom Blog
Intercom shipped over 20 new features in the first half of 2017, reflecting its philosophy that shipping is the beginning of iteration. Support enhancements include office hours and away mode, an Articles autoresponder that guides customers to the help center while they wait with localization in 38 languages and a link back to the website, animated GIF support, and mobile app additions for articles, images, GIFs, and saved replies. Inbox improvements let teams sort by longest waiting, group conversations, and snooze conversations for follow-up, while integrations added Microsoft Teams and a new developer dashboard that puts everything in one place. The API added Leads and Companies to the Scroll API, and outbound messaging gained engagement-based targeting, the ability to stop a message once it starts sending, and mobile delivery windows for push notifications. These smaller improvements aim to make support more personal and scalable without requiring major announcements.
Announcing the new Intercom Messenger - The Intercom Blog
Intercom announced a new messenger after a year-long development effort, its biggest project ever, taking ten times longer than typical releases, during which the team explored bots and machine learning. The messenger addresses the gap between consumer messaging trends and outdated business methods like email and live chat, which customers find impersonal. It offers three message formats (Chat, Notes, Posts), different delivery modes (interruptive or discreet), and lightweight replies with emoji reactions. The messenger supports customization like color and wallpaper, provides native experiences on web, iOS, and Android, and integrates with multiple channels like web, push, in-app, and social media. Built on the Intercom platform, it uses customer data to personalize messages for 13,000 businesses, with future plans for conversational UIs, bots, and AI to invent the future of business communication.
Switch on the next generation of support – Introducing Intercom Switch
Intercom introduced Switch, a no-code feature that lets businesses move inbound phone call volume to messaging without changing providers, simply by adding an option to their phone menu. When a caller selects that option, Intercom identifies their phone number, matches it to a user profile, and personalizes the conversation flow for a tailored support experience. This shift enables support agents to handle multiple conversations at once, reducing wait times and improving CSAT scores, as 73% of customers value companies that respect their time. Switch integrates Resolution Bot to automate common questions, triage more complex issues, and provide agents with full context, saving team bandwidth. Intercom cites a Forrester report that phone is the most expensive CX channel and messaging the most cost-effective, and early adopter LoyalZoo reported a 50% drop in voicemails and calls after implementing Switch.
Announcing The Ultimate Modern Support Tech Stack Guide
Intercom announced a new guide titled ‘The Ultimate Modern Support Tech Stack,’ addressing the need for support teams to move beyond outdated, disconnected tools. The guide cites a Forrester study finding only 37% of support leaders are satisfied with their current tools, highlighting widespread dissatisfaction. It promotes the emerging conversational support category as a solution that balances personal and efficient customer service. The guide provides a framework for optimizing support tech stacks and recommends integrations with tools like HubSpot, Zapier, and Stripe. Internal research predicts conversational support will capture over a third of the support software market in coming years.
Intercom's New Book: A Guide to Project Management
Intercom published its first book, ‘Intercom on Product Management’, consolidating and updating their best articles from over two years on fundraising, pricing, process, design, and product management with new content to bridge gaps and clarify concepts. The book delivers practical, grounded advice for anyone who works with products, directly addressing the lack of value in abstract and clichéd guidance. The team optimized the reading experience across all devices, creating epub, mobi, and PDF formats with careful design, layout, and visuals, crediting Frantisek Kusovsky and Jeff Kriege for their tireless work. The book is free, with a request that readers share it with others, and even regular readers benefit from updated content that removes repetition and clarifies concepts. Intercom views this publication as the beginning of a series, with plans to continue writing and release more books, measuring value by impact rather than length or breadth.
Prioritizing product announcements in a SaaS world - The Intercom Blog
SaaS companies ship continuously, creating endless marketing opportunities, but announcing everything leads to audience fatigue. Intercom experienced over 12X growth in new signups since investing in marketing in 2014, with product announcements as a primary contributor. They shipped over 100 features in a year and needed a framework to prioritize announcements. Their framework uses two axes: value (existing versus new customers) and innovation (catch-up versus new solution), yielding four priority levels: P1 for big announcements attracting new customers, P2 for features valuable to existing customers, P3 for gap-filling features, and P2 also covers features that unblock sales. Each priority maps to specific tactics: changes page entries accessible inside the app, targeted in-app messages based on usage, email for inactive users, video for demonstration, landing pages, and press coverage only for major announcements.
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