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Is your entire support team using the Intercom app to handle support requests, but your customers are on Slack? We hear you.
When using Slack for customer support, agents regularly encounter the need to switch applications. Worse, they need to be on all customer channels in order to provide the support. The alternative is to ask your customers to leave Slack and ask them to use Intercom to get their queries answered.
Thanks to Intercom-Slack integration with Thena, you won't have to resort to any of these scenarios.
Read on to learn how Thena can integrate your Slack Connect with Intercom for efficient conversational ticketing.
The Intercom app integration with Slack enables you to connect both applications and synchronize conversations between apps so that neither customer support agents nor customers are required to move platforms to interact.
This bi-directional integration allows companies to manage customers on Slack Connect while their support teams remain on Intercom without needing to switch contexts.
Integrating Slack with Intercom comes with a bunch of benefits for your team and customers. Let’s unpack them one by one.
Context switching can kill your team’s performance and result in inefficient workflows. According to one study, 43% of knowledge workers report that switching between different online tools and applications negatively affects their productivity and ability to concentrate.
Slack-Intercom integration allows you to overcome the need to hop between applications, making it easier to address customer queries seamlessly and efficiently.
How can you scale your customer service over time? Not by ordering your support agents to join customer Slack channels. It is actually a risky choice on multiple fronts.
Firstly, you’ll set them up for failure, as requests will get dropped. Secondly, your support agents will be unhappy and lost; worse, the process won’t scale as your business expands.
As we’ve previously discussed, your customers want Slack because they’re already on the platform. In other words, they’re familiar with the platform and the functionalities it offers, so asking them to leave Slack for another tool (in this instance, Intercom) would only create friction and frustration.
Managing customer service on Slack when your support agents are on Intercom often means reduced visibility into tickets. This lack of visibility impacts not only the customers but also the support agents, as they are unable to track the status of tickets efficiently.
Furthermore, without bi-directional communication between Intercom and Slack, teams may find themselves investing significant time and effort into manually tracking and responding to customer queries. This manual process increases the likelihood of overlooking customer messages and restricts leadership's ability to gain a comprehensive insight into the overall customer experience.
Finally, integrating Slack with Intercom enables faster response times in customer service through real-time notifications, streamlined collaboration, and seamless context switching. With instant notifications in Slack, support agents can promptly address customer messages and tickets. The collaborative features of Slack facilitate efficient teamwork and quicker problem-solving.
You can integrate Slack with Intercom in several ways. However, the most popular options are as follows:
Intercom offers native integration with Slack, allowing you to connect the two platforms seamlessly. This integration enables you to receive real-time notifications in Slack when new conversations, leads, or events occur in Intercom. It also allows you to reply to Intercom conversations directly from Slack, improving response times and collaboration.
That said, Intercom’s native integration has limited customization options and a lack of advanced features or workflow automation capabilities.
For businesses with specific requirements or advanced technical capabilities, building a custom integration using Intercom and Slack APIs is another option. This approach allows you to create a tailored integration that aligns precisely with your workflow and data synchronization needs. It requires development resources or working with a developer to build and maintain the integration.
However, because of the complex nature of such integration, companies might need extensive investment and technical expertise. Furthermore, the initial development and setup costs for a custom integration may be higher compared to other integration methods.
There are several third-party tools (Thena, for example) available that provide enhanced features and customization options for integrating Intercom and Slack. These tools often offer additional functionalities, such as customizing notifications, creating advanced workflows, or syncing specific data between the two platforms.
Third-party integrations have numerous advantages, such as extensive customization options, enhanced functionality, and integration with other apps.
Let’s now take a look at how Thena can help you make the most out of your Intercom-Slack integration.
One of the problems with native Intercom integration (a go-to option for most organizations) is that it only functions under certain conditions. More precisely, the Intercom app for Slack can’t handle business logic, meaning:
Therefore, if your clients are already using Slack and you have more than 30 Slack Connect channels, your support team on Intercom needs a solution. And that’s where Thena comes into play.
First and foremost, we have conversations. When a customer asks a question, an Intercom conversation is created within Slack at the click of a button. If you forget to create a ticket, the Smart Inbox Features ensure the message is highlighted as a suggested request.
With Thena, your support agents have much more control over the entire conversation within Intercom. They can manage ticket lifecycle (Open > In Progress > Close), escalate, and share rich text, attachments, gifs, and hyperlinks without needing to worry about the communication flow between Slack and Intercom app.
The Kanban board feature ensures that you can see all Intercom conversations either at a customer level or at your organizational level—all within Slack.
Furthermore, Thena has a CSAT feature, which means that whenever you meet your customers on the platform of their choice (Slack, for example), they’re more likely to give you feedback. This, ultimately, makes it easier for you to track customer service metrics.
As a customer-facing representative, you can stay in Slack and track the progress of customer requests, including past interactions. Thena also facilitates the internal escalation process if you feel the need to do so.
Have you just landed a new client, and it’s time to create a Slack Connect channel with them? On the first interaction for support, Thena will check if the Intercom Organization has been set up. If not—no problem. Thena will create it for you.
Likewise, when your customer has a new employee who gets added to the Slack Channel with you, and when the hiree asks a question, Thena automatically creates a new Intercom user for that organization.
Not all customer support requests can be handled smoothly. Sometimes you need to tap into the expertise of your colleagues, whether by tagging them or escalating support requests further.
Thena allows you to effortlessly tag a colleague to a Slack conversation thread while also adding that user to the Intercom chat.
Furthermore, the Thena escalation feature enables a customer or your own team member to escalate a request in Slack. Additionally, any suggested request can be sent to Intercom in one click (Thena will highlight the action and, with one click, send it to Intercom).
As an added benefit, Thena tags the CSM in Slack if the ticket is created by someone else, ensuring that CSM is always in the loop.
Thanks to Thena, you get to configure how your Intercom-Slack integration works. From white labeling and responding as the support agent to configuring whether you want to inform the user that a support agent will attend to them shortly, Thena does it all.
When it comes to setting up the integration, Thena makes the entire process easy. In fact, you can complete the whole setup in less than 10 minutes.
Here are the straightforward setup instructions for you to follow:
Check out our Knowledge Base to learn the specifics of Thena’s Intercom-Slack integration.
For the integration to function correctly, following the best practices is always wise.
Team Training and Collaboration. Provide comprehensive training on Intercom and Slack integration to all team members involved in customer support. Foster a collaborative environment where agents can share knowledge, ask questions, and leverage each other's expertise to provide timely and accurate responses to customer inquiries.
Here you have it—a complete guide on the best way to integrate Intercom with Slack.
With many integration options on the market, we understand that choosing the right one for your business can be tricky. However, third-party integration tools like Thena are the most versatile and least capital-intensive solutions you can immediately get started with.
At Thena, we believe in seamless communication. Therefore, our powerful Slack-Intercom integration is the solution you’ve long sought.
Yes, Intercom can be integrated with Slack. The integration lets you receive Intercom notifications, conversations, and customer updates directly in your Slack channels, making it easier to collaborate and respond to customer inquiries in real time. By connecting the two platforms, you can streamline communication and enhance customer support within your team.
The native Intercom app for Slack has a few disadvantages. Firstly, it lacks some advanced features and customization options available in the standalone Intercom platform. Secondly, it may lead to message overload and clutter within Slack channels, especially for teams with high message volumes. Lastly, integrating Intercom with Slack requires additional setup and configuration, which can be time-consuming and may require technical expertise.
Intercom has approved the Thena integration, acknowledging its significant value and potential. This endorsement from Intercom underscores the credibility and dependability of Thena, reinforcing its status as a leading solution. Our team is also actively pursuing Thena’s listing on the Intercom’s app store.
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