A practical guide: How to use Intercom to assign conversations to teams with workflows

Let's be honest, it's a familiar feeling: you open your Intercom inbox, and it's overflowing. Trying to get the right conversation to the right person feels like a never-ending game of tag. Manually assigning every single message isn't just slow, it's how you end up with missed opportunities and annoyed customers.

But it doesn't have to be that way.

This guide will walk you through, step-by-step, how to set up automatic assignments in Intercom using their Workflows feature. We'll cover everything from start to finish. Then, we’ll talk about where these rule-based systems can get a little clunky and look at a more intelligent, AI-powered way to level up your Intercom setup without having to switch platforms.

What you'll need to get started

Before we jump in, let’s make sure you have everything ready. Setting this up is pretty simple, but you’ll want to have a few things sorted out first.

• An active Intercom subscription: The Workflows feature we’ll be using is part of Intercom's Advanced and Expert plans.

• The right permissions: You'll need admin access (or permissions to manage workflows) in your Intercom workspace. If you're not sure, it's worth a quick chat with your workspace admin to get that sorted.

• Clearly defined teams: This whole process works a lot better if you've already set up your teams inside Intercom (like Support, Sales, Billing, etc.). If you haven't, it’s a good idea to spend a few minutes creating them before you start.

How to assign conversations to teams with workflows in Intercom: A step-by-step guide

Intercom’s built-in tools are a great place to start bringing some order to your inbox. Let's go through exactly how to build a workflow that automatically sends conversations to the right team.

Step 1: Create a new workflow from scratch

First thing's first, you need to head to the right spot in your Intercom dashboard.

Navigate to the AI & Automation section in the sidebar, and then click on Workflows. Think of this as your mission control for all things automation. Once you're in, you’ll see a button that says + New workflow. Go ahead and click that, and when it asks, choose the Create from scratch option. This gives you a blank slate to build your assignment logic just the way you want it.

A screenshot showing the visual workflow builder in Intercom, which is the starting point to Intercom assign conversations to teams with workflows.

Step 2: Choose your trigger and define the audience

Now it's time to tell Intercom when to kick off your automation. This is done with a "trigger," which is just the event that gets the workflow started. For routing new conversations, a really common and useful choice is When a customer sends their first message.

Next, you’ll define the audience. This is important for making sure your workflow only runs on the right conversations. You can add rules to filter by the channel (like Email or the Messenger) or by customer details (for instance, only running this workflow if a customer's "Plan type" is 'Pro').

Step 3: Build the workflow path with rules and actions

This is where you'll build the brain of your assignment system. You’re basically creating a set of "if this, then that" instructions for Intercom to follow.

Start by adding a rule. Let's say you want to send all billing questions to your finance team. Your rule might look something like this: If "Message Content" contains "pricing" OR "billing". This tells the workflow to keep an eye out for those specific keywords in the customer's message.

Then, you connect that rule to an action. In this example, the action would be: Then Assign to the Finance Team.

You can build out more complicated logic by adding more rules. Just be careful with your "AND/OR" settings. It's a common trip-up that can lead to conflicting rules and conversations ending up in the wrong place.

An example of creating rules and actions in Intercom to control assignments.

Step 4: Set the workflow live and keep an eye on it

Once you're happy with your logic, it's time to flick the switch. Click the Set live button in the top right corner.

But your job isn't quite done. It's really important to monitor your new workflow to make sure it's behaving itself. You can see if a workflow has run on any conversation by looking at the conversation events in the inbox. Get into the habit of checking the target team's inbox to confirm that conversations are landing where they should. If something seems off, you can always pause the workflow and tweak your rules.

The limitations of rule-based assignment

Setting up basic keyword-based rules in Intercom is a good first move. It’s certainly better than having to assign every single conversation by hand. But as your company grows and support tickets pile up, you’ll probably start to see the cracks appear.

Rule-based automation just has some built-in limitations:

• Fragile keywords: You’re basically betting on customers using the exact words you’ve thought of. Someone asking "how much does this cost?" might slip right past a rule looking for the word "pricing." You end up in a constant game of catch-up, adding dozens of new keyword variations.

• A tangled mess of workflows: To cover every possible scenario, teams often end up with a huge web of dozens, sometimes hundreds, of workflows. They become a nightmare to manage, and a small change in one can accidentally break another one down the line. Figuring out what went wrong can take forever.

• No understanding of context: A simple workflow can't grasp the intent or feeling behind a message. Is the customer frustrated? Is this a simple question or an urgent bug report that needs to be fast-tracked? Rule-based systems see them all as the same.

• Siloed knowledge: The rules can only use information from the message itself or basic Intercom attributes. They can't check your internal guides in Confluence, your notes in Google Docs, or, most importantly, the solutions from thousands of past tickets to make a smarter routing decision.

A smarter way to assign conversations: AI-powered assignment with eesel AI

This is where adding a dedicated AI layer on top of what you already have can completely change the game. Instead of replacing your helpdesk, tools like eesel AI plug right into your existing setup to make your automation smarter, not just more complicated. It improves what you've already built, so there's no need to start over with new tools.

Go from setup to intelligent automation in minutes

Unlike the time-suck of building and testing dozens of manual rules, eesel AI is built to be incredibly easy to get started with. You can connect your Intercom account with a single click and get going right away. There are no mandatory sales calls or long demos just to see if it's a good fit. You can be up and running in the time it takes to make a cup of coffee.

Learn from your history, not from fragile keywords

This is the biggest difference: eesel AI learns from your thousands of past Intercom conversations. It automatically goes through your support history to understand the context, nuance, and common patterns in how your team actually solves problems.

So instead of you manually telling it, "if a message has the word 'bug', send it to Engineering," the AI learns that conversations that sound like this one, based on all your past data, usually get handled by the Engineering team. This method is way more accurate and holds up better over time because it's based on how your business really works, not just a list of keywords you came up with.

Unify all your knowledge for context-aware routing

Your company’s knowledge isn’t just in your macros. It’s spread out across platforms like Confluence, Notion, and Google Docs.

eesel AI connects to all of these sources, giving it the full picture to make the right routing decision. For example, it can figure out that a customer's question is about a new feature that's documented in Confluence and automatically send it to the product specialist team, even if the customer doesn't use any specific keywords.

This diagram illustrates how a smart AI can access multiple knowledge sources to make better decisions when you Intercom assign conversations to teams with workflows.

Test with confidence using simulations

One of the scariest things about automation is the risk of getting it wrong. One mistake in a live Intercom workflow could send hundreds of conversations to the wrong team and create chaos.

eesel AI fixes this with a powerful simulation mode. You can run your AI setup on thousands of your historical tickets in a safe, separate environment. It will show you exactly how it would have tagged, replied to, and routed each conversation, giving you a clear forecast of its accuracy and performance before you activate it for a single live customer. This lets you roll out new automation without the anxiety.

While a manual Intercom workflow follows a rigid path, an AI-driven one is much more dynamic. A conversation comes in, and the AI analyzes its content by comparing it to patterns from past tickets and connected documents. Based on this complete understanding of what the customer actually wants, it assigns the conversation to the team that's best suited to handle it.

Best practices for assigning conversations

Whether you’re using native workflows or a more advanced AI tool, a few good habits will set you up for success:

• Start small: Don't try to automate everything on day one. Pick one or two predictable types of conversations, like password resets or billing questions, and get that working perfectly before you try to do more.

• Define clear ownership: Make sure every team knows exactly what kinds of conversations they are responsible for. This stops things from falling through the cracks and prevents teams from stepping on each other's toes.

• Have an escape hatch: No automation is perfect. Have a clear, simple process for what agents should do when a conversation gets sent to the wrong place or if the automation can't handle a tricky issue.

• Review and improve: Regularly check your performance reports. In eesel AI, the analytics dashboard doesn't just show you what the AI did; it actively points out gaps in your knowledge and identifies trends, giving you a clear path for making things better over time.

Move beyond rules to intelligent routing

Using Intercom to assign conversations to teams with workflows is a great first step toward taming a chaotic inbox. It can save you time and provide a solid baseline of organization.

But for support teams that are growing quickly, rule-based systems eventually hit a wall. They get hard to maintain and just aren't smart enough to understand the real context of a customer conversation.

By adding an AI platform like eesel AI on top of the tools you already use, you can move beyond simple rules. You can automate with context, accuracy, and the peace of mind that comes from knowing your system is getting smarter every day.

Ready to see how AI can transform your Intercom workflows? Start your free eesel AI trial today and see it in action in just a few minutes.