There are two ways you can qualify your leads in Intercom. You can:
Manually qualify your leads via the Help Desk as you chat to them, or
Set up automations to qualify leads on your behalf, based on whatever data is most important for your business.
Before you do either, you’ll need to define the qualification data that’s most useful to collect about your leads. The data you add, should help your Sales team quickly identify and focus on promising prospects.
You’ll need access to the Help Desk to qualify your leads.
Define the characteristics of your ideal customer
First, sit down with your team and define the characteristics of your ideal customer. Here are some questions to guide you:
What’s their goal for using your product?
Do they have a specific role in an organization? For example, are they a CEO or a marketer?
Do they work in a specific industry?
How big is their company?
Do they work for a B2B or B2C company?
Do they work in a specific location?
What scale do they want to use your product? For example if you have a B2B messaging service do they hope to send over 50 messages a month?
How long do they want to use your product for?
Are there any products or services your customers require to use your product? For example, if you have a mobile messaging service, you’ll want to make sure your lead has a phone.
Add your qualification data to Intercom
Once you’re clear on who you’d like to prioritize chatting to, it’s time to choose your qualification data in Intercom. Just visit Qualification settings on your workspace.
From here, you can choose from the default data we’ve set up for you:
Name
Email
Phone
Company name
Company industry
Company size
Company website
Or you can select ‘Add data’ to:
Select from existing user or company data you’ve already added to Intercom, or
Create new custom qualification data that matters to your business.
Asking your leads a large volume of unnecessary questions will turn them off. Only add data that will help your team understand who each lead is and whether they’re a good fit for your business.
You can’t add more than 30 qualification attributes to Intercom.
Add custom qualification data
To add a new custom qualification attribute click ‘Create new data.’ From here, you’ll need to answer a few questions:
Keep your qualification data names simple
The first thing you’ll need to do is name your attribute. To ensure you capture the right data, choose simple names your leads and teammates can easily understand.
For example, if you want to find out your lead’s role in the company, name it something simple like ‘Job title.’
If you set up Workflows to qualify this data, leads will see these names in the Messenger.
And your teammates will see these names in your lead’s profile as they qualify them.
Format your data correctly
Next, choose a format for the values you’ll collect (text, number, true or false, or list).
Carefully consider the type of answer you’d like your lead to submit. For example:
Text is great if you want your leads to describe their answer (like their job title or goal for using your product) in their own words.
Numbers are great for identifying lucrative, larger companies. For example, you can assess the size of a company and the amount they have to spend, etc.
Lists are great if you want your leads to choose from a number of pre-defined items. For example, you can ask whether your leads work for a B2B or B2C company. Keep your list simple and don’t give too many options to choose from.
True or false questions help you check whether your leads have something that’s key to using your product. For example if you have a mobile messaging app, you can check if your leads have a mobile phone.
If you’d like to edit a qualification attribute you’ve added to your list, just click on that attribute. You can edit its format, options and description from there. If you'd like to edit its name, you'll need to delete and recreate it.
Manually qualify your leads as you chat to them
Your qualification attributes will appear in each lead’s qualification profile, ready for your team to fill in.
As you chat to your leads and gather qualification data about them, make sure to add that data to each lead’s profile.
Set up automations to qualify leads on your behalf
To set up automatic qualification, you can qualify leads using Workflows.
Or, if you don't have access to Workflows, just select Qualify leads from Automation > Basics. From here, you can choose up to four pieces of data to collect.
What data should you collect?
Only choose data that will help you understand who each lead is and whether they’re a good fit for your business.
What data should teammates collect?
Have your teammates ask more complex questions. For example, you can look for quick answers, like your lead’s company size. But teammates should ask questions that require longer or more in-depth answers. (e.g. what goal they’re hoping to achieve or how much they’d like to spend on a plan).
What’s next?
Next, assign leads who give specific answers evenly among your sales team.
If you’ve set up our Salesforce integration, you should also create each new lead in Salesforce and add a note as a task to show the lead is qualified and has been assigned an Account Executive.
Once you start gathering qualification data about your leads, you can use this data to create more targeted messages for visitors.
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