Intercom promises to dramatically simplify the entire process. It’s a platform that not only automates multiple CRM tasks, but it also helps make your interactions with customers more personal. And these days, personalization is everything. Paul Adams, VP of Product at Intercom, encourages us to “say goodbye to ‘Dear valued customer, your ticket number is x,’ and say hello to more, ‘Hey Tom, your new shoes in the right size are on their way.”

The basic Intercom platform is absolutely free, and is essentially a database of current customer information that you can use to track leads and perform filtered searches.  Beyond the basic platform, Intercom offers three products that you can add to your package for an additional fee: Acquire, Engage and Support.

Acquire is for live chatting, Engage is for automating your marketing, and Support is for customer service.

Acquire, Engage, and Support

Acquire is a live chat program for your website, but it goes beyond the typical customer support chat. Instead of waiting for confused customers to reach out to you, Acquire can be set to send targeted messages to customers based on behaviors that you specify. In fact, I got to see Acquire in action; after exploring Intercom’s website for about ten minutes, a rep named Sean sent me a chat message to see if I needed more information.

Acquire also captures email addresses from chats so that you can follow up, and chats become part of a “continuous record” in your customer database. Chatting with acquire doesn’t have to be stiff and businesslike – you can make conversations fun and personal by adding stickers, emojis, and GIFs.

You can also use Acquire to track the impact of your chat conversations, measuring whether or not they are leading to sales.

Engage is all about automating the messages you send your customers, whether they be within your app, on social media, or in email. You can use Engage’s composer to design attractive messages, or select from their templates. You can automate the delivery of targeted marketing messages for the best times and platforms, then track their impact. You can even compare different versions of the same messages to see which ones are performing best.

Support is all about fielding customer questions and complaints. Intercom speeds up the process by helping you automate the delivery of questions to the most appropriate team member.

By using a shared inbox, several different team members can tackle difficult questions behind the scenes, collaboratively.

Discounts for small teams

Intercom boasts some pretty big-name customers, including Yahoo, Ancestry, and Hudl. But the startup wants to help out other small businesses, which is why they are offering a discounted Early Stage package for qualifying startups with fewer than five teammates.

Check out Intercom to learn more.

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