If you want to make sure a conversation gets answered by the right person in your company, you should assign it to a particular teammate and team. There are three different ways to do that in Intercom:
Note: Manually assigning conversations is available to all teammates with Inbox access. Automatically assigning conversations requires Workflows, which are not available on all plans. Changing workspace assignment settings requires admin or workspace owner permissions.
Manually assign conversations to a team and teammate.
Automatically assign conversations to a team or teammate (you can evenly assign conversations ‘round robin style’ to a specific team too).
Assign all conversations to one team or teammate.
How to manually assign a conversation
When you need to pass a conversation to someone else or another team you can quickly assign the conversation to the best teammate or team who can answer it.
Use the keyboard shortcut A to assign, or click the Actions icon (the four-square grid icon) below the message composer and select Assign to.
How to bulk assign conversations
To bulk assign/close conversations, first select the checkboxes next to the conversations you want, and then click the Assign or Close button that appears.
You can also select the pencil icon to bulk edit your conversations which will allow you to perform the following actions:
Send a Reply/Note (and insert a macro — a saved response template)
Assign to team
Assign to teammate
Add tag
Snooze
Close
Change priority
Data connector (using API)
Add topic
Re-open
Set ticket state
Large bulk jobs run in the background — you'll see a "started" notification immediately and a "completed" notification when the job finishes. The results list refreshes automatically so acted-on conversations drop off. Conversations that can't take the action (for example, already-closed conversations when bulk-closing) are skipped silently and won't appear in the completed results.
Intercom's REST API (a developer tool for programmatic access to Intercom data) allows you to perform a number of bulk updates to conversations, including closing, snoozing, replying, and assigning conversations.
To perform any of these actions you will need a list of the conversation IDs for your chosen criterium. Directions for how to search for conversations using our API are located here.
How assigning to a teammate works
When you manually assign a conversation to a specific teammate, the team assignment also remains in place. This means if that teammate switches on away mode, the conversation will be automatically assigned back to the correct team.
How assigning to a team works
Assigning a conversation to a team will remove the teammate assignment, so it can be picked up from that team’s inbox at the right time, or assigned automatically by round robin, or workload management.
Note: When a conversation is closed by a teammate or automation, the assigned teammate and team remain unchanged. No reassignment or routing occurs as part of the closure process.
How to automatically assign conversations
Conversations can be assigned automatically using Workflows. To create a Workflow go to Fin AI Agent > Workflows and click +New workflow.
Workflows can also automatically tag conversations, mark them as priority, or set conversation attributes & SLA rules. Learn more about building Workflows for all your automations.
The best triggers to use for this kind of Workflow are:
Customer opens a new conversation in the Messenger.
Customer sends their first message.
Customer sends any message
A ticket is created
Once your trigger is set, add an Apply rules step to assign conversations to a team or teammate based on the content of the messages, conversation attributes, how long a customer has been waiting and/or any information about the lead, user or company that you track in Intercom. For example, you can route conversations by plan type, message content, language, or any custom attribute you track in Intercom.
The screenshots below show a rule that assigns conversations to the Customer Success team when the customer's plan is Lite.
For example, if Plan is 'Lite' and Message Content contains 'upgrade', then Assign to 'Customer Success'.
You can then click Save and close and set your Workflow live. Once live, Intercom will automatically assign any new conversations that match your rules to the specified teammate or team.
Best practices for workflow optimization
Keep the following in mind when building and maintaining Workflows for conversation assignment:
Test New Workflows: Start a new conversation or ticket to verify that workflows trigger and execute as expected.
Review Workflow Priority: Ensure workflows are ordered correctly to avoid conflicts.
Monitor Fin Deployment: Regularly review Fin-enabled workflows to confirm they are live and configured correctly.
Notes: The following limitations apply when using Workflows for conversation assignment:
Currently, there is no way to add new participants to a conversation via Workflows. This must be managed manually within the conversation header or within the conversation composer.
When a conversation is assigned to a team inbox via a macro (a saved response template), and round robin is enabled for that inbox, round robin assignment will occur and the conversation will be assigned to an active teammate. This applies to both new and existing conversations moved by macro actions.
Background workflows may defer email assignment when Fin Inbox (Intercom's AI-handled inbox) is enabled. Use customer-facing workflows to avoid this issue.
If your Workflow uses the 'Customer sends their first message' trigger, it may not fire for visitors if it evaluates before identity is captured. To avoid this, use the 'Customer sends any message' trigger instead, which evaluates after identity capture.
Workflows are not available on all Intercom Plans. You can learn more about Intercom's pricing plans and which features are available here!
How to change the default assignee
If a conversation doesn’t match any of your Workflow rules, it will be assigned to your default assignee (inbox recipient), which you can select from Settings > Inbox > Assignments > General in the "Default assignee" section. This workspace-level setting also determines where inactive (idle) conversations are routed, including those that leave the bot inbox after 15 minutes of inactivity, and can't be customized per individual workflow.
Note: Changing the default assignee requires the "Can access Proactive Support settings" permission. Teammates without this permission will not be able to modify this setting. If a teammate is unable to change the default assignee, often "Unassigned" by default, contact your workspace admin to enable this permission.
Note: If a conversation is started from an article in the Help Center, the default assignment will not work for these conversations. You will need to create a Workflow to route these conversations.
For Workflows, the default assignments are applied immediately without waiting for the execution of background Workflows to finish.
Important: The default assignee setting applies only to conversations. It does not automatically assign newly created tickets. To automatically assign tickets to a specific team or teammate, you must use a Workflow.
How to control who can reassign conversations
You can control who can reassign conversations that are already assigned to teammates. This ensures your sales and support teams don't lose conversations that they're working on in their own inbox.
Just go to Teammate settings, click Edit on a teammate, and uncheck Can reassign conversations and edit lead or user ownership, then click Save changes. The permission takes effect immediately.
The Can reassign conversations and edit lead or user ownership permission only prevents reassigning conversations from a teammate's inbox. Teammates will still be able to assign conversations from team inboxes and the Unassigned inbox.
How to see who a conversation is assigned to?
You can view which teammate and team inbox a conversation is assigned to under the Details section which is permanently placed at the top right when using the Intercom Inbox.
If viewing your inbox using the Table View, there is an Assignee and Team column that shows the team/teammate the conversation is currently assigned to (if the column doesn't appear, you'll need to add it using the + icon.
You can click and drag the columns to re-order them and click the 3 dots on a column to hide it so you can focus on the most important information.
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