What we shipped: 7 new features to help you automate, streamline and customize your Messenger

At Intercom, we know how challenging it is to strike a balance between being personable and being efficient. You want to be welcoming to your visitors and helpful to your customers, but your time is in demand.

That is why we are continually updating our products in ways that help you engage with your visitors, leads and customers quickly and effectively.

In the past month, we’ve shipped 7 new features to help you further automate your funnel, streamline your handoffs and customize your Messenger:

Get leads to the right reps faster by auto-assigning them to their account owners in Salesforce

You can now set and sync account owners from Salesforce for every lead and user in Intercom. You can also set owners manually or automatically via our API.

What does this mean? It means you can:

• Auto-assign new messages from leads and users to their account owners via our bot, Operator, and assignment rules
• Get alerts for all conversations started by accounts you own
• Create a custom segment to see all accounts you own from the lead and user list
• Easily message all accounts you own by using the “Owner” attribute when creating a message

Have more helpful and personal conversations with notes in Inbox profiles

When you’re answering a customer’s question, you want to see all their relevant information. That’s why the Intercom Inbox shows a profile next to every conversation, to give you the context and data needed to answer quickly and be as helpful and personal as possible.

We’ve made it even easier for you to give a great answer right away with our new notes in Inbox profiles feature.

The same note you or a teammate add to any customer profile is now visible in the inbox to the right of every conversation, helping you give the best answers from the very beginning, speeding up work and making your customers even happier.

Make it easier to navigate your website or app by adjusting where your Messenger is located

Customize where your Messenger appears so that it fits seamlessly into your webpage or app screen’s layout, doesn’t overlap any crucial content and makes it easy for leads and users to see and engage with your Messenger.

You can now align your Messenger to the right- or left-hand side of your webpage or app screen and also adjust how close it is to the sides and bottom of the window on desktop. We know some of you have been asking for this one for a while :)

Keep conversations targeted by customizing who can see your Messenger

When responding to inbound conversations, you want to focus your time on the customers that matter most to your business. Now, you can control which users see your Messenger.

You can show or hide the Messenger launcher based on user and company attributes, just like you can for visitors. For example, you could choose to make the launcher visible only to VIP customers.

Capture better qualification data from leads on your website

Operator can now ask new leads a customizable multiple choice question to understand who they are or what they’re interested in and then proceed to qualify them uniquely based on their answer.

Here’s what some of our customers who are already using this feature have been asking their leads:

• Which product or plan is the lead interested in?
• Is their intended use for business or personal?
• What is their business type – B2B or B2C?

Let Operator save you time by automatically disqualifying bad leads and sending targeted content

Operator can now automatically reply and close conversations based on qualification data you collect or you can also set Operator to simply send targeted content to hold leads over until you have time to respond.

How can you use this feature?

• Send low value leads an invite to your next webinar or a discount to get started and close the conversation
• Send leads who aren’t ready to buy a link to sign up for your newsletter and close the conversation
• Send valuable leads relevant content for their use-case to hold them over until you can reply and engage yourself

Drive more leads to conversions with Messenger apps in Operator’s lead qualification

You can now use Messenger apps, such as the Content Showcase app, Article Search, or Google Calendar Meetings app, in Operator’s follow-up actions based on the qualification data you collect. This is in addition to our other follow-up actions including, assignment, sending leads to Salesforce and tagging.

To keep up to date with the latest updates and changes, see our full changelog here.

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