A deep dive into Fin by Intercom’s agentic AI capabilities

AI in customer support has come a long way from the clunky chatbots that could only spit out links to help articles. The new wave is "agentic" AI, which are tools that can actually do things, like take action, run through tasks, and solve problems all on their own. In this space, Intercom Fin has made a lot of noise, promising it can handle even tricky customer questions autonomously.

But is it really all it’s cracked up to be?

A deep dive into the Fin by Intercom agentic AI capabilities showing the product interface.

This guide gives you an honest look at Fin by Intercom’s agentic AI capabilities, its pricing, and some of the big limitations that tend to get buried in the marketing hype. We’ll break down what Fin actually does, how much it’s going to cost you, and help you figure out if it’s the right move for your team, or if you need something a bit more flexible and predictable.

What is Intercom Fin?

At its heart, Intercom Fin is an AI agent built to handle customer service chats. It works by connecting to your company’s knowledge base to answer questions and solve problems, whether they come in through live chat or email. Intercom calls it the "#1 AI Agent on G2," which is a pretty bold claim that sets the bar high.

It’s set up to work either as a part of the full Intercom Customer Service Suite or as a standalone tool that you can plug into other helpdesks, like Zendesk. The goal is simple: put an AI on the front lines to deal with conversations so your human agents have more breathing room.

Unpacking Fin by Intercom’s agentic AI capabilities

"Agentic AI" might sound like a marketing jargon, but it just means an AI that does more than just chat. It’s supposed to be able to complete tasks and workflows, almost like a human agent. Let’s see how Fin actually pulls this off and where it starts to fall short.

Core answering and knowledge retrieval

Fin’s main job is to answer questions. It uses a method called Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) to scan your support content, find the right information, and then whip up a response that sounds human.

According to Intercom’s own documentation, Fin can pull information from:

• Intercom’s own knowledge base

• Zendesk help centers

• Public website URLs

• PDFs

That sounds okay on the surface, but it’s a surprisingly short list. Most companies have knowledge spread out all over the place, tucked away in Confluence pages, internal wikis, Google Docs, and even old support chats in Slack. By only looking at a few places, Fin often misses the full context, which can lead to answers that are a bit generic or just plain unhelpful.

It’s a different story with more modern tools like eesel AI, which connects to over 100 different sources right away. It can learn from your past tickets, internal documents in Notion, and Confluence articles, giving it a much deeper well of information to draw from for truly on-point answers.

Taking action with Fin Tasks and Data Connectors

This is where Fin is supposed to really flex its "agentic" muscles. The platform has two main features for getting things done:

• Fin Tasks: These are for automating processes with multiple steps, like issuing a refund or canceling a subscription.

• Data Connectors: These are meant to fetch real-time data from other systems to give personalized answers, like checking on an order’s status.

But here’s the rub. A quick search through Intercom’s own help center shows that these core features are labeled as being in "beta" or even "closed beta". This suggests they might not be fully reliable, could require a lot of technical help to get running, or you might not even get access to them at all.

For any team that needs powerful, ready-to-go automation now, that’s a pretty big problem. With a tool like eesel AI, building your own custom actions to look up order details in Shopify or update a ticket in Zendesk is a standard, fully supported feature. You can set it up yourself in a few minutes without needing to join a waitlist or cross your fingers for beta access.

The Analyze, Train, Test, Deploy workflow

Fin gives you a dashboard to see how it’s doing, tweak its tone of voice, and test its answers. It’s a decent system for managing an AI agent and making sure it stays on-brand.

The "Test" feature has one major blind spot, though. You can check answers one by one, but there’s no real way to know how Fin will actually do when it’s facing thousands of real customer questions. You’re more or less flying blind until you launch it.

This is where a more thorough solution really shines. For instance, eesel AI has a powerful simulation mode that lets you test your entire AI setup on thousands of your own past tickets. This gives you an accurate, data-driven preview of your resolution rate and how much you could save before you ever turn it on for customers. It takes all the guesswork out of the process.

The true cost: Pricing for Intercom Fin

Features are one thing, but for most businesses, the price tag is what really matters.

It’s a common complaint you see online: teams are getting hit with surprisingly high and unpredictable bills from their AI support tools.

Reddit

Understanding the per-resolution pricing model

Intercom prices Fin based on a "pay-per-resolution" model. Here’s a quick summary from their official pricing page:

• Using Fin with your current helpdesk (like Zendesk): You’ll pay $0.99 for every single conversation the AI resolves, with a 50-resolution minimum each month.

• Using Fin with the Intercom Helpdesk: You still pay the $0.99 per resolution, on top of a monthly fee for each human agent on the Intercom platform.

Here’s what the full plans look like if you decide to go all-in with the Intercom suite:

The problem with paying per resolution

At first glance, paying for results seems fair. But when you put it into practice, this model causes a few major headaches for support teams:

1. Wildly Unpredictable Costs: Your monthly bill can jump all over the place depending on your ticket volume. If you have a busy month and Fin does a great job deflecting lots of tickets, you’re also hit with a giant bill. Good luck explaining that to the finance department.

2. You Get Penalized for Improving: As you improve your knowledge base and the AI gets smarter, it resolves more conversations. With Fin’s model, that means your costs go up. You’re basically punished for making the system better, which is a strange way to encourage automation.

3. No Real Cost Control: It’s tough to forecast your software budget when a key part of it is a variable usage fee. This makes financial planning and proving the tool’s ROI a constant struggle.

This video explains why AI is breaking traditional pricing models and leading to unpredictable costs, similar to the challenges faced with Fin's per-resolution model.

This is a big change from the clear and predictable pricing other platforms offer. eesel AI’s pricing, for example, is a flat monthly fee for a certain number of AI interactions (which can be an answer or an action). Your bill is always predictable, you never get a surprise, and you aren’t charged more as your AI gets more efficient. Plus, with monthly plans, you can cancel whenever you want without getting stuck in a long contract.

Key limitations of Intercom Fin

Before you go all-in on Fin and the Intercom ecosystem, there are a couple of final, important things to keep in mind.

Deep ecosystem lock-in

Even though Intercom says Fin can work with other helpdesks, it’s pretty obvious that you only get its full power and the best experience if you’re using the whole Intercom Customer Service Suite. The platform is built to pull you deeper and deeper into their world.

This often leads to a "rip and replace" situation, where you feel pressured to move your entire support operation over just to make the most of one tool. That’s a huge project, one that’s expensive, time-consuming, and a massive pain for both your team and your customers.

This is exactly why tools that work with anything are so valuable. eesel AI was built from the ground up to fit right on top of the tools you already know and love. It makes your current setup in Zendesk, Freshdesk, or even Intercom better, without forcing you into a difficult and costly migration.

A challenging and slow rollout

Getting Fin set up and working well isn’t as simple as flipping a switch. To stop it from giving bad answers, you have to constantly manage and update its own dedicated knowledge base. It’s a high-maintenance system that requires a lot of ongoing work.

On top of that, Fin doesn’t let you roll it out gradually. Launching a new AI agent across all your support channels at once is risky. What if it’s not quite ready for primetime? Fin’s all-or-nothing approach doesn’t give you the choice to start small, test it out, and then scale up when you feel comfortable.

This is another spot where a more modern tool makes a real difference. With eesel AI, you can be up and running in minutes, not months, because the setup is truly self-serve. You have complete control to automate just certain types of tickets (like "where’s my order?" or "password reset" questions) and have the AI send everything else to a human. This lets your team build trust in the system and slowly expand what it does over time.

Is Intercom Fin right for you?

Intercom Fin is a decent AI agent and a sign of where support automation is headed. But it comes with some serious strings attached. Its most interesting agentic features are still in beta, its per-resolution pricing creates unpredictable bills that punish you for being successful, and it’s built to lock you into their expensive platform.

For teams that need flexibility, predictable costs, and powerful automation that works with the tools they already have, looking at other options isn’t just a good idea, it’s essential.

Try a more flexible, transparent AI agent

eesel AI was designed to solve all of Fin’s biggest problems. It works with any platform, has predictable pricing, integrates smoothly with your current helpdesk, offers powerful and ready-to-use custom actions, and includes a risk-free simulation mode so you can launch with confidence.

Instead of tearing out your whole tech stack, you can just make it better. Stop stressing about surprise bills and start focusing on what really matters: giving your customers amazing support.

Book a quick demo of eesel AI or start a free trial today to see the difference for yourself.