Custom Answers allow you to build bespoke answers to the most important questions for increased accuracy, consistency, and specificity and when you want to create answers that include rich media, Data connectors, Custom Objects and/or Custom Apps.
Fin can then use these Custom Answers to resolve specific questions a customer asks at the start of a new conversation, and Fin will prioritize them over its AI answers.
Note: Custom Answers are unavailable for customers who joined Intercom on or after March 19, 2025. Instead, you can use Fin Tasks. Customers with existing Custom Answers can continue using them for now.
Get started
To create a Custom Answer for Fin, go to Fin AI Agent > Train > Custom Answers and click New answer.
Some of your customers’ common questions are automatically identified and listed under Unanswered Questions.
Click View all questions to see a list of unanswered questions for you to review.
At least 250 conversations over the last year are required to produce unanswered questions, and only if these questions (or similar variations) are repeated to form a cluster. If you don't see unanswered questions here, you can still look through any unanswered conversations in All Reports > Fin AI Agent.
Choose your language
Choose a language which will be used to train and compose this answer.
Choose your questions
Your customers will ask the same question in different ways. When creating an answer, you should train it to recognize several variations of the question by accepting or rejecting the examples shown.
There is an upper-limit of 30 non-stop words a question can have (stop words are things like "it", "the", "they", "what", etc.). If a query is longer than this, Fin AI Agent will not send Custom Answers, as it is likely too complex for a Custom Answer to solve.
You can also search for a question your customers ask often and then select Add an example question manually, if this question hasn't been asked yet.
Add qualifiers to specify your questions even more
If you’d like a Custom Answer to send only when specific words are used in the question, use qualifiers. This can come in handy when you have similar answers for different parts of the system/product. It will help you define which word has to be mentioned in the question exactly, to get the right custom answer.
By adding them, the answer will only send for questions that contain those words, and not for any similar questions without them.
The presence of qualifiers in a question doesn't guarantee an answer will send.
You can then add qualifiers separated by lines.
If you separate your Custom Answer qualifiers by commas the Custom Answer will not trigger for these qualifiers.
Learn how to format qualifiers and how to use them based on the result you are trying to achieve.
Create your answer
You can create a powerful answer using the plus icon to add follow-up actions with conditions and rules to take each customer down the right path.
To create an engaging answer, make use of attributes, text, emojis, GIFs, public articles, images, file attachments, videos, and Product Tours.
Using this workflow builder, Custom Answers can also link to reusable workflows. Learn more about path building.
Choose your audience
Choose to target the answer to a select group of people. This means this answer can only fire for the group of people who match the audience rules.
Additionally, every other Custom Answer condition will need to be met (i.e. the customer will have to ask a relevant question, match any trigger words, match the audience rules for the Workflow, etc.).
Test your answer
Now you can click Test at the top of the page to see a preview of this Custom Answer in action and ensure relevant questions are matching the answer you’ve created.
Give your Custom Answer title at the top one last check before you set the answer live, since your customers might see it while interacting with the bot.
Set your answer live
Once you set an answer live it will be added to your list of Custom Answers which can be enabled by adding Fin AI Agent to a Workflow.
Note:
A Custom Answer must be set live for Fin to be able to use it.
Fin will first respond with Custom Answers if there’s a strong match. Otherwise, it will generate its own AI answer (if AI answers are enabled).
When Fin AI Agent is configured to use both Custom Answers and AI answers, if a customer sends multiple messages that would trigger the same Custom Answer, the Custom Answer is only sent the first time it matches. Subsequent times where the Custom Answer matches in this conversation, the Custom Answer won't be sent again, an AI answer will be sent instead. This is to avoid customers being stuck getting the same answer for their problem after asking multiple times.
Customer experience
If a customer clicks That helped , or if they don’t reply within three minutes, Fin AI Agent will close the conversation. If they’d like to see another answer, they can click Get more help .
Depending on how you’ve configured your Custom Answer workflow, it can either explain where to get more help, or hand over to a teammate.
If you’ve asked Fin to hand over to a teammate, it will leave the conversation open so your team can follow up. The conversation will then be routed according to your handover and routing setup.
Note:
Fin will only show the
Show me moreoption if you’ve created multiple answers that relate to the customer’s question.Because Custom Answers offer a chance to talk to the team, they will likely drive more conversations to your inbox without allowing Fin to use AI answers.
Managing Custom Answers
Find and improve underperforming answers
For a detailed look at how a single answer is performing, just open the answer from Fin AI Agent > Train > Custom Answers.
Duplicate Custom Answers
You can duplicate Custom Answers by navigating to Fin AI Agent > Train > Custom Answers, opening an existing Custom Answer and clicking the More dropdown, then select Duplicate.
This will allow you to duplicate the Custom Answer as a reusable Workflow which can be added to your other Custom Answers or Workflows.
Recover deleted Custom Answers
It is currently not possible to restore deleted Custom Answers as this action is permanent and irreversible.
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