A practical guide to Intercom automation in 2025

If your team uses Intercom for customer support, you’ve probably spent some time thinking about automation. And for good reason. The idea of clearing out repetitive questions, getting customers answers faster, and freeing up your support team for the tricky stuff sounds pretty great. But actually making it happen? That’s often another story.

Lots of teams get stuck. They either build complex workflows that become a nightmare to manage or get stung by surprise bills from AI tools that charge per interaction. It can feel like you’re stuck choosing between a system that’s too rigid to be useful and one that’s too expensive to be sustainable.

This guide is here to help you cut through that noise. We’ll take a practical look at your Intercom automation options, from the tools built right into the platform to some of the more powerful alternatives out there. By the end, you’ll have a much clearer picture of what works, what doesn’t, and which direction makes the most sense for your team.

What is Intercom automation?

At its core, Intercom automation is about using tools to handle the repetitive, time-sucking parts of customer support inside your Intercom workspace. Think of it as a smart assistant for your support team, helping them triage conversations, answer common questions, and generally streamline their day.

The main idea is to make your whole operation more efficient. This way, your team can resolve issues faster and spend their brainpower on the complex problems that actually need a human touch.

There are two main flavors of automation you’ll run into:

1. Rule-based automation (Workflows): This is your classic "if this, then that" setup. You create rules that trigger specific actions. For example, if a message contains the word "refund," you can set up a workflow to automatically tag it and assign it to the finance team.

2. AI-powered automation (AI Agents): This is a bit more advanced. It uses artificial intelligence to figure out what a customer is really asking, in their own words, and then tries to solve the issue on its own, almost like a digital support agent.

Exploring native Intercom automation tools

Intercom has its own set of automation features, and for a lot of teams, this is the obvious starting point. They’re already part of the platform, so getting started is relatively straightforward. But as your team and customer base grow, you might start to feel the limitations.

Simple Intercom automation and workflows

Intercom’s Workflows feature is a visual, no-code builder for creating these rule-based automations. You can drag and drop triggers and actions to build a flow that does things like tag conversations, assign them to the right person, or send a quick "we’re offline" reply.

It’s a solid tool for handling simple, predictable tasks. The catch, of course, is that customer conversations are rarely simple or predictable.

Many teams find that what begins as a few helpful rules quickly snowballs into a tangled mess of hundreds of workflows. It’s not just a headache to manage; it’s also incredibly brittle. Change one thing, and you might accidentally break a whole chain of events. Troubleshooting can feel like a full-time job. More importantly, these rigid workflows can’t understand intent. They just follow a script. If a customer phrases their question slightly differently, the whole thing can fall apart, leaving them frustrated and having to repeat themselves to a human agent anyway.

This video demonstrates how you can use Intercom's Workflows to automatically route customers to the right place based on your chosen criteria.

Intercom Fin: The AI-powered approach to Intercom automation

To get around the limits of rule-based systems, Intercom introduced Fin, its own AI agent. Fin is built to understand natural language, dig through your knowledge base, and give direct answers to customer questions. It’s a definite step up from basic workflows, but it brings a new set of challenges to the table.

First, there’s the cost. Fin’s pricing is based on a "$0.99 per resolution" model. That might not sound too bad initially, but it makes your support costs completely unpredictable. If you have a busy month, you could get a surprisingly high bill, which feels like you’re being penalized for your own growth. As some users have pointed out, it can sometimes be more expensive than just having a human agent do the work.

Second, Fin can feel like a bit of a black box. You don’t have much say over its tone of voice or the specific actions it can perform. If it gives an answer that’s wrong or just doesn’t sound like your brand, there isn’t a lot you can do to steer it back on course.

Finally, Fin is stuck working with only the information you’ve put into Intercom. It leans heavily on your help articles. But let’s be real, the actual answers to your customers’ toughest questions are probably scattered all over the place, in Google Docs, Confluence pages, and buried in past support conversations. Fin can’t get to that treasure trove of knowledge, which means it can’t handle much beyond basic FAQ-type questions.

The rise of third-party Intercom automation solutions

With the limitations of Intercom’s built-in tools, it’s no wonder so many growing teams start looking for outside help. They need a solution with more muscle and flexibility, but they don’t want to ditch the helpdesk their team already knows and loves.

Why look beyond native tools for Intercom automation?

The search for a third-party tool usually comes down to a few core needs:

• Predictable pricing: Businesses need to know what they’re spending each month without worrying about a per-resolution fee that can spiral out of control.

• More control: Teams want to be able to tweak their AI’s personality, decide exactly which types of questions it should answer, and customize the actions it can take.

• Unified knowledge: A truly helpful AI needs to learn from everywhere your company knowledge is stored, not just one help center.

Third-party automation platforms can work as an intelligent layer on top of Intercom. They plug right into your current setup, beefing up its capabilities without forcing you to go through a painful migration to a whole new system.

Key criteria for evaluating third-party Intercom automation tools

When you start shopping around, it’s easy to get lost in all the marketing buzz. Here are a few things to focus on to find a tool that will actually work for you:

• Ease of setup: How fast can you get up and running? Do you have to sit through a long sales cycle and mandatory demos, or can you just sign up and start building on your own?

• Pricing model: Is the pricing straightforward and flat, or are there hidden fees based on how many tickets it resolves?

• Knowledge sources: Can the AI connect to all the places your team keeps information? Look for integrations with internal wikis like Confluence, shared documents in Google Docs, and, crucially, your past support tickets.

• Customization and control: Can you set specific rules for what the AI automates? Can you change its persona and connect it to other tools to do things like look up an order status?

• Testing and deployment: Is there a safe way to test the AI on your real customer data before you set it live? A good platform should offer a way to simulate its performance so you can build confidence.

A better approach to Intercom automation with eesel AI

eesel AI was built from the ground up to solve the exact problems that support teams run into with traditional automation tools. It’s powerful, flexible, and refreshingly straightforward, offering a smarter way to handle support on Intercom.

Go live in minutes with a self-serve Intercom automation platform

Forget about scheduling demos just to get a peek at the product. eesel AI is completely self-serve, which means you can sign up, connect your accounts, and build your first AI agent all on your own, in just a few minutes.

The one-click Intercom integration is designed to fit right into your existing support process. There’s no need to rip out your helpdesk and start from scratch or spend weeks with a developer to get things connected. It just works.

A flowchart showing the quick, self-serve implementation of eesel AI for Intercom automation, from connecting data to going live.

Unify all your knowledge, not just help articles

One of the biggest frustrations with AI bots is that they often don’t know enough to be truly helpful. eesel AI tackles this head-on by connecting to all the places your team’s knowledge lives. It can learn from your historical support tickets, so it understands your brand’s voice and the details of common issues right from the start.

Beyond your helpdesk, eesel AI also integrates with tools like Notion, Slack, and even e-commerce platforms like Shopify. This allows it to pull information from across your entire company to give customers accurate, context-aware answers that most bots can’t.

A screenshot of the eesel AI platform showing how it connects to multiple business applications to build its knowledge base for Intercom automation.

Gain total control with a customizable workflow engine

With eesel AI, you’re in charge. You get fine-grained control over what gets automated and how the automation happens.

• Selective Automation: You can create very specific rules to decide which tickets the AI should handle. For example, maybe you only want it to answer "how-to" questions. No problem. Or perhaps you need it to immediately escalate any message from a VIP customer. Done. You decide what to automate and what should always go to a human.

• Custom Actions: eesel AI can do a lot more than just chat. You can set it up to perform API lookups to check an order status in Shopify, pull account details from your internal database, or even update ticket fields right inside Intercom.

The eesel AI interface where a user can define specific rules and guardrails for their Intercom automation agent.

Test with confidence and deploy gradually

Letting a new AI loose on your customers can be nerve-wracking. That’s why eesel AI has a powerful simulation mode. You can test your setup on thousands of your past support tickets in a safe, sandboxed environment. You’ll see exactly how the AI would have responded and get a solid forecast of your resolution rate before a single customer ever talks to it. This lets you tweak its performance and roll it out feeling confident.

A screenshot of the eesel AI simulation mode, demonstrating how to safely test your Intercom automation on past tickets before deployment.

Intercom automation pricing comparison

The difference in pricing philosophy between Intercom’s tools and a platform like eesel AI is pretty clear. One is variable and can grow in unpredictable ways, while the other is all about transparency and predictability.

Intercom’s pricing model

Intercom’s pricing for automation includes a monthly fee for each of your support agents, plus that variable cost for every resolution its AI, Fin, handles.

Plan	Base Price (per seat/mo)	Fin AI Agent Cost
Essential	$29	+ $0.99 per resolution
Advanced	$85	+ $0.99 per resolution
Expert	$132	+ $0.99 per resolution

Source: Intercom Pricing, subject to change.

eesel AI’s pricing model

eesel AI offers simple, transparent plans based on a fixed number of monthly AI interactions (which could be an AI reply or a custom action). This means you get a predictable bill every month, with no per-resolution fees to worry about.

Plan	Monthly Price (Billed Annually)	AI Interactions/mo	Key Feature
Team	$239	Up to 1,000	Train on docs, Slack integration
Business	$639	Up to 3,000	Train on past tickets, AI Actions
Custom	Contact Sales	Unlimited	Advanced integrations & security

Source: eesel AI Pricing, subject to change.

Choosing the right Intercom automation strategy

For small teams with simple support needs, Intercom’s native automation tools can be a perfectly fine place to start. But as your company scales, their limitations around control, knowledge access, and cost often become a real bottleneck.

For teams that are serious about providing great support without burning out their agents, a third-party solution like eesel AI offers a much more sustainable way forward. By bringing all your company knowledge together, giving you full control over the process, and offering a predictable price, it lets you build a better customer experience without the hidden costs and headaches.

The best Intercom automation strategy is one that can grow with you, giving your team the tools they need to succeed without creating more problems than it solves.

Ready to see how a more powerful and controllable AI can transform your Intercom support? Start your free trial of eesel AI or book a demo with our team to see it in action.