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How does Intercom deliver push, email, chat and post notifications?
How does Intercom deliver push, email, chat and post notifications?
Damon Alexander avatar
Written by Damon Alexander. Updated over a week ago

If you want to know more about modifying your personal notification settings, check out this article.

To learn how Intercom notifies your users and teammates, read on 👇

  • For users, we delay sending mobile push notifications for 10 seconds. We delay sending emails for 2 minutes (if you have this enabled). If a user reads the message in the Messenger before those time periods, neither are sent.

  • For teammates, we also delay sending mobile push notifications for 10 seconds and emails for 2 minutes. 

For users

Push notifications

  • We wait 10 seconds before sending a push notification to the user. If the user has seen the message within 10 seconds, no push notification is sent.

  • Note that delivery speed for push notifications is variable.

  • It's currently not possible to send a push message with the Intercom mobile app.

  • Want to know more about how push notifications work in Intercom? We explain it in more detail here.

Email notifications

  • You can choose to enable email notifications if a teammate's message hasn't been seen by a user after 2 minutes.

  • A ticket submission triggers an email notification immediately (the 2 minute delay doesn’t apply). Learn more about ticket notifications here.

  • We also group email notifications so multiple replies are consolidated to one email, which is sent once there has been no new reply in the last 2 minutes.

  • User email notifications apply only to teammate replies to conversations.

  • These can be enabled or disabled from Settings > Email > Email notifications:

Browser and audio notifications

  • These are always sent immediately.

  • Audio notifications trigger for all teammate messages, even if you're viewing the conversation.

  • Browser tab alerts appear in all tabs. You have to close each tab individually to make them go away.

For teammates

These rules apply only to user messages via Messenger conversations; replies to email conversations are sent immediately. Notifications are not sent if a teammate has seen the user's reply in Intercom or if email notifications have been disabled.

Important: If all of your teammates have notifications set up, but one of your teammates sees the message within 2 minutes, no one will receive the notification. 

Push notifications

  • We wait 10 seconds before sending a push notification to the teammate. A single push notification is sent with all user messages once there has been no new reply for 10 seconds. 

Email notifications

  • We wait 2 minutes before sending an email notification to the teammate if you have this option enabled. A single email is sent with all user messages once there has been no new reply for 2 minutes.

Browser and in-app notifications

  • These are always sent immediately.

  • Audio notifications trigger for all teammate messages, even if you're viewing the conversation.

  • Browser tab alerts appear in all tabs. You have to close each tab individually to make them go away.

Desktop notifications

  • We wait 10 seconds before sending a desktop notification, for every user message.

  • Mentions are sent immediately via email, push, and desktop notifications.

💡Tip

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