We've created this Getting started guide to help you set up your Intercom experience, and then build on the basics! There are lots of ways to support your customers in Intercom (but you don't need to cover them all right away to get started):

Help Desk to answer customer queries
​Articles for scaling self-serve support
​Product Tours for guiding your customers to success
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We also cover automating actions with:
​Fin AI Agent and Workflows

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Uploading a happy, smiley avatar or profile picture lets your users know that there's a real person at the other end of the Messenger.

You'll need:
A happy, smiley photograph

Get notified about the things that matter to you in the ways that suit you best.

You'll need:
Nothing!

Group users together by applying tags directly from the Help Desk or Contacts. You can tag users based on activity in a conversation, like highlighting a bug so product teams can review, or by their status, like their role in a company.

You'll need:
Help Desk (to apply tags here)
A clear idea of what tags you need to create
People data in Intercom

Get up to speed with previous conversations so you have the context you need to resolve customer issues, on-brand, every time. You can also use these conversations to monitor trends or review a user's conversation history.

You'll need:
Help Desk
Previous conversations in the Help Desk

Build a library of macros to common questions so you can speed up response times.
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​You'll need:
Help Desk
Articles
A list of desired replies
Copy for each reply

Customize the visibility of inboxes in your workspace so you can access the inboxes that matter to you fast.
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​You'll need:
Team inboxes and/or teammates in Intercom

Create a customized Help Desk that connects all the tools you use to resolve conversations. Get more context on your conversations and take action with Help Desk apps.

You'll need:
Help Desk

Write help content for your users to answer a question, help them complete tasks and share best practice tips so they get the most out of your product or service. 

You'll need:
Articles
An idea of what articles you'd like to write
Article copy and its' structure

Group your articles together in collections so users can find articles relating to a specific topic, or question.

You'll need:
Articles

Make sure users can find your Help content by making your Help Center public.

You'll need:
Articles
Help Center URL

By setting up a Fin AI Agent profile, you can set up how Fin introduces itself as well as which subset of your users see which profile, while Custom Answers allow you to build bespoke answers to the most important questions for increased accuracy, consistency, and specificity.

You'll need:
Fin AI Agent/Custom Answers
An idea of your most common questions
Answer copy and its' structure

Train Fin AI Agent to recognize questions by adding at least 10 example questions for each of your Custom Answers.

You'll need:
Custom Answers
Previous conversation volume in Intercom

Gather information upfront and route conversations to the correct team with Workflows. Helping you get to the root of the issue from the very beginning.

You'll need:
​Workflows
Permissions to send messages to more than one person and both Automation permissions

Create interactive, multi-step tours to show users how to resolve their issue with Product Tours.

You'll need:
Product Tours
An idea of the tour you'd like to create
Tour copy and its' structure

Have a little more time?
Here's just a small collection of some of our favorite support-related articles from our colleagues at Intercom...