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The Outreach & Intercom Integration

Rachael S.
Updated

Purpose: 

The purpose of this article is to provide information to Outreach Users regarding the Intercom integration. 

Intended Audience: 

  • Outreach Users

Seamlessly connect your Intercom messages with your sequences in Outreach, so you can convert on more leads and move deals through the pipeline faster. By sending Intercom conversations to Outreach and triggering follow-up tasks, sequences and other activities in Outreach, connect all of the parts of your lead or customer’s journey and automate the next best action for you to take as a salesperson.

Note:  You need the same admin on both platforms (Intercom & Outreach) to enable the integration, and adding the Intercom integration is an org-wide action rather than a personal one for just one rep’s account.

There are two sides to the Outreach & Intercom integration:

  1. Get Insights You Need from Sales or Support Conversations - See a full transcript of your Intercom sales or support conversations in your Outreach activity feed to provide the context you need before your next action
  2. Trigger Off of Intercom Messages- After you've chatted with your lead or customer on Intercom, use Outreach triggers to customize what happens next by triggering a sequence, task, call, and more!

Below, we’ll explain how to enable the integration, how it works, and best practices for using the integration.

Enabling the Integration

  1. Click on the initials on the bottom left-hand corner of the Outreach platform. On the setting panel that appears, find the section labeled “User Admin” and select “Org”.
  2. Scroll down the page until you find the section labeled “Intercom Integration”. Click “Learn More”
  3. You’ll be redirected to the Intercom integration installation page.
  4. Click install, then authorize on the pop-up. You’ll be prompted to sign into Intercom, then authorize access to Outreach.
  5. You’ve successfully connected your Intercom account to Outreach! You now have the opportunity to configure more on Intercom’s configuration page:
    • Enable Intercom-branded events in your Outreach Activity Feed- If a prospect or customer with a corresponding email address in Outreach sends a message in Intercom, a “New Conversation” will post in that prospect’s activity feed in Outreach. Each Intercom chat message - from the prospect or from the rep - will then be posted as a line in your activity feed. If there is too much Intercom activity clogging up your activity feed, we’d suggest unchecking “Inbound Messages” and “Outbound Messages” so each individual message doesn’t post to Outreach. A URL of the full transcript of the chat can be found on each event. Ensure you’ve filtered in “External” activities in your Activity Feed.
    • Setup Outreach Triggers to React to Intercom Events- By default, if a prospect or customer sends a chat through intercom, Outreach will keep the prospect/customer in any sequence they're in. To ensure that prospect’s next step is contextual, you can trigger custom actions within Outreach so they don’t continue in their current sequence unless desired. We recommend setting up a new trigger immediately to designate what should happen next after a Intercom event occurs.
  6. Save any changes.
  7. Now that you’ve enabled the Intercom integration, Intercom will begin working automatically. A green check mark verifies that the integration has been successfully installed.
    Note: If the integration has already been enabled, you can always come back to this page to manage the Intercom app’s settings. Instead of seeing the “Learn More” button, you’ll instead see a button that’s labeled “Manage App”.

What’s Next?

Now that you’ve enabled the integration, what do I need to do?

Short answer: nothing! Intercom will post chat events to the Outreach activity feed. Once the app is installed, an email notification will be sent to all Outreach admins on your account.

Long answer: set up your triggers.

After a prospect or customer chats with you on Intercom, by default, nothing will change in Outreach. Triggers allow you to customize what happens to that prospect in Outreach after the chat finishes so the next step is contextual.

Note: You will not see the Intercom trigger settings until you have set up the integration. You must also have admin access in Outreach to create triggers.

  1. In Outreach, click on the initials on the bottom left hand side of the Outreach platform.
  2. Under the section labeled “System Config” select “Triggers”
  3. On the top right hand side of the trigger list view page, select the blue “Add” Button
    Screen_Recording_2019-04-02_at_09.27_AM.gif
  4. Name your trigger. We recommend making it descriptive so that you can quickly glance at the name and understand what the trigger is accomplishing.
  5. Under the Event section, you have three options. We'd highly recommend only triggering off of the "Intercom - New Conversation" event as it only occurs once somebody actually begins a chat with you. Triggering off of the specific messages creates far more noise than one trigger based on the conversation simply being initiated.
    • Intercom - New Conversation: when a prospect engages with a chat (meaning they have to type something and send it)
    • Intercom - Inbound Message: message sent by the prospect or customer in the Intercom chat
    • Intercom - Outbound Message: message sent by the rep in the Intercom Chat Most customers utilize the “Intercom- New Conversation” event
  6. In the “Prospect Conditions” section, add conditions on the prospect that must be met for the trigger to fire. You also have the option to add account conditions.
  7. Under trigger actions, decide what should be done when the Intercom event occurs and the prospect and/or account conditions are met.
  8. Save your changes and return to the trigger overview page and activate your sequence by clicking on the toggle next to the sequence game so that it turns green.

Example Trigger

  • Event: Intercom - New Conversation
  • Target: Prospect
  • Prospect Conditions: Id (Outreach Internal), Is Not, Empty
  • Trigger Action (#1): Action - Stop Sequences, Scope - Mark All Sequences Finished For Prospect
  • Trigger Action (#2): Action - Create Task; Task - Action Item; Priority - High; Time Between Event And When Task Is Due - 0 Minutes; Task Note - Decide how to follow-up with the prospect after their Intercom conversation
  • Trigger Action (#3): Action - Add Tags, Tags: IntercomChat

FAQ

Why can’t I see Intercom conversations in my Outreach activity feed?

First, have you cleared the filters on your activity feed? If “External” events are checked/filtered in and you still aren’t seeing your Intercom activity, contact Outreach Support.

What triggers should I set up?Every situation is different, but we recommend starting with more manual triggers until you know your process. For example, trigger an action item to decide how to follow up after your Intercom chat is over. Or trigger a follow-up sequence with the first step being a manual email, allowing you to decide on personalized messaging.

How do I differentiate between a sales and support Intercom conversation?

Whether the Intercom chat was with your support team or with the sales team, an “Intercom - New Conversation” is fed into Outreach. There currently isn’t a way to differentiate between the two from Intercom, except by reading the messages sent and received. That’s why we recommend using generic, more manual triggers until you know your process.

We’ve seen customers utilize triggers to follow up on sales chats with prospects that didn’t convert and on support chats with customers communicating on product issues.

How do I set up triggers of my Intercom events?

See our support docs for triggers here.

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