Fin AI Agent in app: A 2024 overview

Customer support has definitely moved on from the days of clunky chatbots that only understood keywords. We’re now in an era of AI agents that can actually grasp context, follow tricky logic, and solve problems with multiple steps, often without needing a human to jump in. In this new world, Intercom's Fin has made a name for itself, promising to handle a huge slice of customer conversations on its own.

But what’s it actually like to use day-to-day? This article will give you a straightforward, no-fluff overview of the Fin AI Agent in App. We’ll walk through its main features, what it really takes to get it running, its unique pricing model, and some of the major limitations you should know about before you decide to go all in.

What is the Fin AI Agent in app?

Fin is Intercom’s own AI agent, built from the ground up to automate customer service. At its heart, it’s made to learn from your company's own information, like your help center articles, internal docs, and past support conversations, so it can answer customer questions accurately.

A look at the user interface for Intercom's Fin AI Agent in app, a tool for customer service automation.

Intercom calls Fin the "#1 AI Agent for all your customer service," and its big promise is the ability to solve complex, multi-step problems that would stump a simpler bot. It’s designed to work across all the channels your customers might use, from chat and email to voice calls.

While Fin can connect with other helpdesks like Zendesk and Salesforce, it’s really a native part of the Intercom world. This means it works best when you’re already using Intercom for everything else. That’s a pretty important detail to consider if your team is already settled and happy with its current tools.

Key features of the Fin AI Agent in app

Fin is built around a four-step cycle that Intercom calls the "Fin Flywheel": Train, Test, Deploy, and Analyze. Getting a feel for the features in each of these stages will give you a good idea of what this agent can do.

Training Fin with procedures and guidance

Fin’s real strength is that it can do more than just answer basic FAQs. This is possible because of two key ways you train it:

• Procedures: Think of these as step-by-step recipes that tell Fin how to handle complicated requests, like processing a refund or updating a user's account details. You can write these instructions in plain English, which sounds easy enough. The catch is that for critical business tasks, you need precision. This often means you have to use more rigid controls like branching if/else logic or even some code editing. While powerful, building and maintaining these procedures can quickly turn into a technical job that needs someone with an engineering mindset to oversee it.

For teams who’d rather not get tangled up in complex workflows, an AI agent like eesel AI lets you define custom actions and a specific persona in a simple prompt editor. You can connect it to any API to look up order info or process a request without having to build and manage a web of multi-branched procedures from scratch.

Testing Fin with AI-driven simulations

Before you unleash an AI on your customers, you obviously want to know it's going to behave itself. Fin tries to solve this with its Simulations feature.

• Simulations: This tool lets you test out how the agent will respond to different questions and situations before you push it live. You can run entire make-believe conversations to see exactly what Fin does and where it might get stuck. You can also run tests every time you change a Procedure to make sure you didn't accidentally break something else.

The thing is, a simulation is only as good as the test cases you create for it. Coming up with a list of tests that covers every possible user question is a pretty big manual task. This is where tools with more automated testing can give you more peace of mind. For example, eesel AI lets you run simulations on thousands of your actual past support tickets in an instant. This gives you a really precise, data-backed forecast of how it will perform before you ever turn it on for your customers.

eesel AI's simulation feature, which provides a data-backed performance forecast for the Fin AI Agent in App alternative.

Omnichannel deployment

Fin is designed to be wherever your customers are. You can deploy it across a bunch of different channels, including:

• Live chat and email

• Social media like Facebook and Instagram

• Messaging apps like Slack and WhatsApp

• Phone calls (with Fin Voice)

Fin Voice is a pretty neat feature, offering natural, human-sounding conversations to automate phone support. But getting Fin to work well across all these channels takes a lot of careful setup for each one. The best and smoothest experience is, not surprisingly, with Intercom's own Messenger. If your team uses a different helpdesk, making Fin work just right can feel like a major project.

This is where a platform-agnostic tool like eesel AI really has an edge. It’s built to plug directly into the helpdesk you already use, whether that's Zendesk, Freshdesk, or Gorgias, with one-click integrations. You get the benefits of a top-tier AI agent without having to change your team's workflow or switch tools.

AI-powered insights and analysis

Once Fin is up and running, you need to see how it’s doing. Intercom gives you a set of analytics tools called Insights. This includes things like Topics Explorer, which automatically groups conversations by topic, and CX Score, an AI-powered metric that tries to measure support quality without needing surveys.

These metrics are useful, but they’re mostly about tweaking Fin’s performance inside the Intercom world. If you want a bigger picture that helps you improve your entire support operation, you might find yourself wanting more. The reporting in eesel AI, for instance, doesn't just show you what the AI did; it points out the specific gaps in your knowledge base by looking at the questions it couldn't answer. It can even auto-draft new help articles based on successful ticket resolutions, helping you improve your documentation and your automation at the same time.

The analytics dashboard in eesel AI, an alternative to the Fin AI Agent in app, showing knowledge gaps and deflection rates.

How to set up and deploy the Fin AI Agent in app

Let's be real: getting Fin up and running isn't a five-minute job. It requires a pretty structured process that takes you from training the AI all the way to slowly rolling it out to your customers.

Here are the general steps you'd have to take:

1. Train Fin: First, you connect your knowledge sources, Help Center articles, PDFs, public website pages, and so on. You'll also set up "Guidance" to define Fin's tone of voice and what it should and shouldn't do.

2. Configure workflows: This is where things get complicated. You’ll use Intercom's Workflows builder to map out the logic for how Fin talks to customers. This means creating different paths for different people (like only showing Fin to free users), setting up rules for certain topics, and defining exactly when Fin should hand a conversation over to a human.

3. Test: Using the simulation and preview tools, you'll need to really put Fin through its paces to make sure it's answering questions correctly.

4. Deploy: Once you feel good about its performance, you can set Fin live. Most teams start with just a small group of users and then expand its reach as they keep an eye on how it's doing.

The main takeaway here is that setting up Fin means you have to invest real time in learning and configuring Intercom's workflow system. It’s a powerful tool, but it’s a long way from the simple, self-serve setup that many teams are hoping for.

graph TD  

    A[Step 1: Train Fin] --> B(Connect Knowledge Sources: Help Center, PDFs, etc.);  

    A --> C(Define Guidance: Tone of Voice & Rules);  

    B --> D[Step 2: Configure Workflows];  

    C --> D;  

    D --> E(Map Customer Logic with Workflow Builder);  

    D --> F(Set Rules for Topics & User Segments);  

    D --> G(Define Human Handover Points);  

    E --> H[Step 3: Test];  

    F --> H;  

    G --> H;  

    H --> I(Run Simulations & Previews);  

    I --> J[Step 4: Deploy];  

    J --> K(Set Fin Live for a Small User Group);  

    K --> L(Monitor Performance & Expand Reach);  

This is a sharp contrast to how eesel AI works. With eesel AI, you can connect your helpdesk and knowledge sources with a couple of clicks and go live in minutes, not months. You don't need to become an expert in a new, complex workflow builder just to get started.

Understanding Fin's pricing and limitations

For many teams, this is where the rubber meets the road. Fin's pricing model is very different from most other software, and it can have a big impact on your budget.

Fin’s pricing is $0.99 per resolution.

Intercom says a resolution happens "when a customer either confirms their question was answered... or exits the conversation without requesting further assistance (assumed resolution)." That "assumed resolution" bit is critical because it means you could be paying for chats where the customer simply got frustrated and left.

This per-resolution model has a few big drawbacks:

• Unpredictable costs: Your monthly bill is tied directly to how many support tickets you get. If you have a busy month, a new product launch, or an unexpected bug that causes a spike in questions, your bill could be way higher than you expected.

• It penalizes success: The better Fin gets at its job, the more issues it resolves, and the more you pay. This model creates a weird situation where you're almost discouraged from maximizing the tool's effectiveness.

• Difficulty in budgeting: It becomes almost impossible to forecast your monthly support costs, which can make financial planning a headache.

As a direct alternative, eesel AI offers clear and predictable pricing based on a flat subscription fee. You know exactly what you'll pay each month, no matter how many tickets your AI agent resolves.

A look at eesel AI's pricing page, which offers a predictable, flat-fee subscription as an alternative to the per-resolution model of the Fin AI Agent in app.

Here’s a quick comparison:

Feature	Fin AI Agent	eesel AI
Pricing Model	$0.99 per resolution	Flat monthly/annual subscription
Cost Predictability	Low (scales with volume)	High (fixed, predictable cost)
Hidden Fees	None, but costs can jump unexpectedly.	None. Add-ons are explicit.
Incentive	Resolving more tickets costs you more.	Resolve as much as possible for one flat fee.
Best For	Teams with very low, stable ticket volumes.	Teams looking to scale automation without unpredictable costs.

Finally, there's the chance of being locked into their ecosystem. While Fin can connect to other platforms, its best features and smoothest experience are deeply tied to using the full Intercom suite. If you ever decide to switch helpdesks down the line, pulling away from Fin could be a real challenge.

The Fin AI Agent in app: Powerful, but at a cost

So, what's the verdict? The Fin AI Agent in App is, without a doubt, a capable and feature-rich tool for automating customer support. It's particularly good at handling complex questions and is a solid choice for teams who are already all-in on the Intercom ecosystem.

However, that power comes with some serious trade-offs. The setup is complex and requires you to become an expert in Intercom's workflow builder. More importantly, the per-resolution pricing can lead to unpredictable and growing costs, which just isn't sustainable for many teams. Before you commit, you have to ask yourself if that complexity and pricing model really fit with your team's budget and goals.

The simpler, smarter alternative for AI support

For teams that want the power of a top-tier AI agent without the high costs and setup headaches, eesel AI is the ideal solution. It’s built to deliver great results, fast.

Here’s what makes eesel AI different:

• Go live in minutes with a truly self-serve platform that anyone on your team can set up.

• Integrate seamlessly with the helpdesk you already use, like Zendesk or Freshdesk, with no migration required.

• Pay a flat, predictable fee with no sneaky per-resolution charges, so you can automate as much as you want without worrying about surprise bills.

• Test with confidence by simulating the AI on thousands of your past tickets to get a clear, data-backed picture of its performance.

Ready to see how easy AI-powered support can be? Start your free eesel AI trial today.