With the Intercom Messenger installed on your site or in your app you’re already offering your customers an easy, personal support experience. But, as your business grows you need to provide your team with simple, effective processes so they can handle any number of more complex conversations without burnout or inefficiencies.

This is where conversation data attributes come in, enabling advanced Help Desk processes and automation. Let your team handle conversations efficiently and consistently, like with a traditional ticketing system, without losing the personal experience of the Messenger. You get the best of both worlds.

With the right conversation attributes, any conversation can be managed efficiently from start to finish. Your customers can provide context up front without the hassle of a form, and rules-based automations can update conversation attributes automatically. These attributes can then be used in Help Desk views, rules, and reporting to design and manage different support processes for different types of conversations.

In this article we’ll work with three example conversation attributes:

We’ll also finish with a checklist of steps you can follow to set up the ideal process in your own workspace. 🙌

Note: Some of the features outlined in this article are only available on certain Intercom plans. See our plans and pricing here.

To create a new conversation attribute, go to Settings > Your workspace data > Conversation data, and click + Create attribute.

For our example ‘Product area’, let’s create a list attribute and add options for the different parts of the product (as the product changes we can always add or remove options):

To ensure that this attribute has a value set before a conversation is closed, you can set it as required. This guarantees accurate and comprehensive reporting. Just select Required attribute.

Then, if a teammate attempts to close a conversation before providing this value, they'll be reminded to set it:

If the conversation data you're collecting is only relevant for certain conversations, you can limit its visibility to certain teams.

For example, your Sales team might set an attribute for each lead's intended use case, but this is no longer relevant for the folks in Customer Support:

And that’s it. Just hit save and you’ll see your new attribute under ‘Attributes’, where your team can easily set or update it as they chat with your customers:

To choose a specific order in which the attributes should appear, drag and drop them with the handle icon on the left:

Tags are very flexible, and applied to individual replies in a conversation. Useful for marking a particular part of the conversation so you can find it later.

Conversation data attributes are more structured, because you can define the data type that should apply: text, numbers, true/false or a list of values. They're perfect for ensuring consistency and categorizing all of your conversations for reporting purposes. For example, by type, urgency, product area etc.

Some examples:

To save your teammates time you can collect conversation data up front from your customers, then based on their answers, automatically assign conversations to the right team with the right service level and priority.

It's easy to set this up using Workflows (or Basics) to build a bot automation.

Conversation attributes can also be updated automatically using Workflows. For example, if a new message contains keywords like ‘Bug’ rules can set the conversation issue to ‘Bug report’:

Or, you may want to infer certain attributes based on other conversation information. These examples set the Product Area conversation attribute based on the URL where a conversation is started:

Conversation attributes can also be updated automatically actions in macros. For example, if a conversation is being escalated due to an error, your escalation macro could set the conversation type to ‘Bug report’:

Help Desk views allow you to define a set of filters, then show all conversations that match those filters in real time. It’s easy to switch between views and keep an eye on urgent issues, your direct reports, or whichever conversations you consider most important.

As an example, imagine you’ve just released an update to the ‘Projects’ feature in your product, and you’d like to monitor all serious bugs being reported. This view uses all three conversation attributes to show conversations where:

Here’s a couple of other views we recommend:

Learn more about creating and using Help Desk views.

Conversation attributes not only speed up your inboxing processes but give you consistent, well-defined reporting, on exactly the points that matter to you and your team.

Filtering your Customer Support reports with conversation data lets you dig into specific areas, for actionable insights into how your team is performing.

To continue with the example from above, let’s say it’s been a week since you launched the update to your ‘Projects’ feature and you want to see how satisfied your customers have been with responses to their questions. Just filter the Customer satisfaction report for all conversations where:

Or, for an alternate approach, filter the Responsiveness report for all conversations where Type is ‘Bug’, and see how quickly these issues are being resolved. You can also subscribe to the report to monitor it on a regular basis:

Now that you know how to get the most out of conversation data it’s time to create your own attributes and set your workspace up for success. Just follow this simple checklist: