Know the value of your customers

Customer information is most valuable when consolidated. When all your information about all your customers is in the same place, every part of your business benefits.

Intercom has always offered a single place to store all your customer information: who they are, their account data, their activity, all communications with them, and much more. Today we’re adding another big piece of the jigsaw. Today we’re launching a Stripe integration.

We’ve long argued the benefits of consolidated customer data. Let’s take a step back and look at why.

Siloed data limits what’s possible

When customer information is spread across many products (e.g. helpdesk system, analytics app, product database, marketing tool) it limits any given business function.

Simple ideas like “Let’s support our best customers first“, “Let’s talk to the customers who never use this feature” or “Let’s tell customers in San Francisco about our drink-up“, require so much legwork that they’re not worth suggesting. And because obstacles upstream always propagate downstream, you just stop having these ideas. Your silos make you dumb.

Consolidated data makes you smarter

Conversely, when you connect customer information, ideas that previously weren’t feasible suddenly become quick, simple, and incredibly valuable. It improves every function of your business.

Some simple examples:

• Supporting customers is much better when you know who they are, and what they’re doing, and you can prioritise accordingly
• Marketing to customers is far more effective when you can distinguish active users from lapsed, and yesterdays sign-ups from long term loyal customers
• Getting feedback on a feature is easy when you can isolate the people who use it, and talk to them when they use it

Adding Stripe Data

Intercom now imports customers from Stripe, segments them by price plan, shows you each customer’s plan and payment history, when their card expires, and lots more. Every event that Stripe knows about is replayed into Intercom.

Knowing if a customer is paying, how long they’ve been paying, and how much they pay can inform lots of business functions. Some quick examples:

• Customer support: Prioritise your paying customers over your long term free users
• Marketing: Target your various upsells & cross-sells to qualified customers
• Product management: Categorise your feedback by the type of customer it comes from (free vs basic vs premium)

All Stripe data can be seen and used everywhere Intercom customers expect, e.g. daily sign up mails will now be prioritised by value of customer, you’ll now see it in our iOS app, our Android app, our activity stream, auto-message filters, etc. And, of course, you can now Sign up for Intercom with Stripe.

We’re really looking forward to see how people use this new integration and the Stripe guys are too.

“Pretty much every SaaS business in the world can benefit from Intercom,” said Patrick Collison, their CEO. “So we’re super excited that they’re integrating so deeply with Stripe.”

We’d love to hear your feedback about our new Stripe integration – either in the comments or through Intercom.