Can Intercom automate tasks? A complete guide for 2025

If you’re in customer support, your to-do list is probably a mile long. Between answering the same questions over and over and juggling urgent requests, it feels like there’s never enough time in the day. It’s no wonder teams are looking for ways to automate the repetitive stuff. It’s not about being lazy; it’s about survival and giving customers the fast, helpful answers they expect.

So if you’re using Intercom, you’re likely asking the big question: can Intercom automate tasks?

The short answer is yes, absolutely. But the full story is a bit more complicated. Intercom gives you a couple of ways to do it, ranging from simple, rule-based "Workflows" to its AI agent, Fin. The catch? They each come with their own set of headaches, especially when it comes to cost and flexibility.

This guide will walk you through exactly what Intercom offers for automation. We’ll look at the good, the bad, and the pricey, and then explore a more modern way to get the job done without having to tear out your whole setup.

What is Intercom automation?

At its core, Intercom is a platform for talking to your customers. "Intercom automation" is just about using its built-in features to handle some of those conversations without a human needing to jump in. We’re talking about things like automatically sending new chats to the right department, answering common questions, or grabbing a customer’s email address upfront.

Intercom basically gives you two flavors of automation:

1. The old-school, rule-based way: This is where features like "Workflows" and "Simple Automations" live. They work on simple "if this, then that" logic. For example, if a customer’s message includes the word "invoice," then you can automatically route it to your billing team. It’s straightforward and predictable.

2. The AI-powered way: This is where "Fin," Intercom’s own AI agent, Fin, comes into play. Fin is designed to be smarter, understanding what a customer is actually asking and finding answers from your help articles.

Both can be useful, but as many support managers have found out, they also come with some serious trade-offs in terms of how much they cost, how flexible they are, and how much time you’ll spend maintaining them. Let’s dig into that.

A closer look at Intercom’s automation features

Let’s get into the nitty-gritty of the tools Intercom gives you. On the surface, they look great, but once you start using them in the real world, some cracks begin to show.

Rule-based workflows and simple automations

Workflows are your first stop for automation in Intercom. You can build a series of rules that trigger actions based on things like what a customer types or who they are. They’re honestly pretty good for the simple, predictable stuff.

A look at Intercom's rule-based workflows, which can automate simple tasks based on predefined conditions.

You could set up a workflow that tags any conversation with "bug report" and sends it straight to the technical support queue. Or maybe one that automatically asks for a customer’s order number if their message contains "where is my stuff?". These are solid, time-saving tasks that free up your agents from manual triage.

The problem is, customer conversations are rarely simple or predictable.

This video provides an introduction to how Workflows in Intercom can be used to automate various tasks and improve team efficiency.

Here’s where these rule-based systems start to fall apart:

• They’re incredibly rigid. Workflows are like a train on a track. As long as the conversation follows the exact path you laid out, everything is fine. But the second a customer asks something slightly different or uses a word you didn’t anticipate, the train derails. The automation breaks, the customer gets stuck in a loop, and a human has to step in to clean up the mess.

• Maintenance becomes a nightmare. When you only have a few workflows, it’s manageable. But as your company grows, so does the complexity. Soon you have dozens of workflows, some of which might even conflict with each other. It can feel like you need a full-time engineer just to babysit your automations and make sure they don’t break. It just doesn’t scale well.

The Fin AI agent for advanced automation

Fin is Intercom’s solution for handling more complex, free-flowing conversations. It’s an AI chatbot that reads your knowledge base to come up with answers. Fin can also be set up to perform specific actions, called "Fin Tasks," like checking an order status by connecting to another system via an API.

This sounds like the dream, right? An AI that can actually do things. Unfortunately, the reality for many teams is a bit of a rude awakening.

The testing interface for Fin, Intercom's AI agent, used for more advanced automation.

• The cost is steep and unpredictable. This is the big one. Fin runs on a pay-per-resolution model. You pay $0.99 for every single conversation it resolves. Let that sink in. If you have a busy week and Fin resolves 1,000 tickets, that’s nearly $1,000 added to your Intercom bill. This pricing model essentially punishes you for being successful with automation and makes budgeting a guessing game.

• It gets technical, fast. Setting up those cool "Fin Tasks" isn’t exactly a walk in the park. It requires technical skills to work with APIs, which means you’ll probably have to pull a developer away from their other projects. This creates a bottleneck and takes control away from the support team who should be able to build and manage their own automation.

• It can give wrong answers. Fin is only as smart as the knowledge you feed it. If your help center is a bit messy, has old articles, or contains information that contradicts itself, Fin can get confused. When that happens, it might give a customer a completely wrong answer, which is often worse than no answer at all.

The true cost of Intercom automation

When you look at Intercom’s automation, you can’t just look at the monthly subscription fee. The real cost is a mix of that base fee plus the variable, usage-based cost of Fin.

Here’s a quick look at the plans that include automation features:

The issue here is that per-resolution fee. It creates a ton of uncertainty for your budget. You might be hesitant to let the AI handle more tickets because you know every single one adds to the bill. It puts you in a bind: either swallow the unpredictable costs or stick with manual work that burns out your team.

Modern AI tools are thankfully moving away from this kind of pricing. A solution like eesel AI, for example, offers straightforward pricing with plans that include a large bucket of AI interactions. You know exactly what you’re paying each month, so you can automate as much as you want without worrying about a surprise bill.

Adding a dedicated AI layer to Intercom

So what’s the alternative? Instead of getting locked into Intercom’s pricey and rigid ecosystem, many teams are now connecting their helpdesk to a specialized AI platform. Think of it as adding a turbocharger to a car you already own. You keep the helpdesk your team is used to, but you layer on a much smarter, more flexible, and cost-effective automation engine.

This way, you avoid the painful process of migrating to a whole new platform and can just make the tools you already have much, much better.

What you gain from using a third-party AI platform

When you connect a dedicated AI tool to Intercom, you suddenly get a bunch of capabilities that the native tools just can’t offer:

• One source of truth: Your AI can learn from all of your company’s knowledge, not just the articles in your Intercom Help Center. This could be your internal wikis in Confluence, design documents in Google Docs, or even the thousands of resolved support tickets sitting in Intercom. More knowledge means smarter, more accurate answers.

• You’re in the driver’s seat: You get fine-grained control over what gets automated and how. You can create custom AI personas to match your brand’s tone of voice and build out powerful actions without needing a developer to write code.

• A safe way to launch: The best platforms have a simulation mode. This lets you test your AI on your past support tickets to see exactly how it would have responded before you let it talk to a single live customer. It takes all the guesswork and risk out of going live.

• Predictable costs: Finally, you can break free from the per-resolution pricing trap. Modern AI tools use simple subscription plans, so you can automate with confidence and your bill won’t fluctuate wildly from month to month.

How eesel AI improves Intercom automation

eesel AI was built to be this intelligent layer that sits on top of the tools you already use. It plugs right into your helpdesk and gives it a major upgrade with powerful, customizable, and affordable automation.

• Get started in minutes: Seriously. eesel AI has a one-click integration with Intercom. You can sign up and get it running yourself without needing to talk to a salesperson or wait for a developer.

• Train on your team’s best answers: This is the secret sauce. eesel AI learns from your team’s past conversations in Intercom. It picks up on your brand’s voice, learns the solutions to your specific customer problems, and starts delivering accurate, helpful responses right away.

• Test everything with simulation mode: This is what really sets eesel AI apart. Before you turn on the AI agent, you can run a simulation on thousands of your historical tickets. It gives you a clear forecast of your potential automation rate and lets you review every single answer the AI would have sent. It completely removes the anxiety of launching a new bot.

• Customize it all: With an easy-to-use prompt editor and a flexible workflow builder, you have complete control. You can start small, maybe by just automating questions about your shipping policy, and then expand from there. You can define the AI’s personality, how it escalates tricky questions to a human, and what custom actions it can perform.

Can Intercom automate tasks the smart way?

So, let’s circle back to the original question: can Intercom automate tasks? Yes, it can. But its built-in tools present a tough choice: you can either use the rigid and hard-to-scale Workflows, or you can pay up for Fin and deal with its unpredictable costs and technical complexity.

For most growing support teams, the smartest path forward isn’t to ditch Intercom, but to build on top of it. By adding a dedicated AI layer like eesel AI, you can solve the biggest problems of cost and control. You get a smarter, more reliable, and more affordable automation engine that works seamlessly with your existing helpdesk, giving your team the power to build, test, and deploy automation with total confidence.

Ready to see for yourself?

Ready to see what your Intercom support could really do? Check out how eesel AI can bring better, faster, and more affordable automation to your team.

• Start a free trial and connect your Intercom account in just a few clicks.

• Book a personalized demo with our team to see the simulation mode in action with your own data.