A practical guide to Intercom webhooks

In customer support, speed and context are everything. Your customers want quick, helpful answers, but your team often gets bogged down with manual tasks, flipping between tabs, and wrangling systems that don’t talk to each other. Trying to get your helpdesk, CRM, and internal chat to play nicely together can feel like a full-time job.

This is the exact problem Intercom webhooks are designed to help with. They're a powerful way to connect Intercom with your other apps, letting you build automated workflows and get instant alerts when important things happen. In this guide, we'll walk through what Intercom webhooks are, how people use them, and the steps to get them running. We'll also get real about their limitations and talk about how to go from simple alerts to truly smart support automation.

What are Intercom webhooks?

The word "webhook" can sound a bit technical if you're not a developer, but the concept is pretty simple. Think of a webhook like a doorbell for your app. Instead of you having to constantly open the front door to check if someone's there (which is basically how older APIs work), the doorbell rings automatically to tell you a visitor has arrived.

In this scenario, Intercom is your house, and the visitor is an event, like a new conversation starting or a customer getting tagged. The doorbell's ring is a notification that gets sent to another app you've chosen.

Intercom’s own developer documentation explains this with three main parts:

1. Endpoint URL: This is the specific web address where Intercom sends the notification. Think of it as the exact door where the doorbell is installed and where the ring is heard.

2. Topics: These are the events you actually care about. For example, you can "subscribe" to topics like "conversation.user.created", "contact.deleted", or "conversation.admin.assigned". These are all the different reasons someone might be ringing your doorbell.

3. Notifications (Payload): This is the package of information that gets delivered. When an event happens, Intercom sends a "payload" to your endpoint URL with all the relevant details, like the customer's ID, the content of the conversation, and a timestamp.

This "push" approach is way more efficient. Your other apps don't have to waste time constantly asking Intercom, "Anything new? Anything new yet?" Instead, Intercom just sends the information over the second it happens.

Key use cases for Intercom webhooks

While the idea is technical, the real-world uses are incredibly practical. Webhooks act as the glue between your different tools, automating the manual work that slows your team down so they can focus on what matters.

Keep your tools in sync automatically

One of the most popular uses for webhooks is just keeping your tech stack on the same page. When something is updated in one system, you want it reflected everywhere else without someone having to manually copy and paste.

For instance, when a new user is created in Intercom (which triggers the "contact.user.created" topic), a webhook can instantly zap that data over to your CRM to create a new lead. This makes sure your sales and support teams are always looking at the same customer info. You could also use webhooks to update a customer database or archive a user in your product when they get deleted from Intercom.

Get the right eyes on issues instantly

Webhooks are perfect for smoothing out internal communication. Instead of hoping someone spots a critical ticket and remembers to alert the team, you can just automate it.

A common example is setting up a workflow where a new high-priority conversation in Intercom triggers a webhook that posts a message to a dedicated Slack channel. This ensures the right people see the issue immediately. In the same way, when a conversation is assigned to an agent ("conversation.admin.assigned"), a webhook could create a task for them in a project management tool, making it harder for things to get missed.

Feed your data tools for deeper insights

Intercom has its own reporting, but sometimes you need to combine your support data with information from other parts of the business. Webhooks can stream event data straight into your business intelligence (BI) platform or data warehouse.

You could use the "conversation.rating.added" webhook topic to send every new customer satisfaction rating to a tool like Tealium. This would let you build custom dashboards to track CSAT scores over time, slice feedback by customer type, and find trends you wouldn't see in the standard reports.

A screenshot of Intercom's reporting dashboard, which can be enhanced by data from Intercom webhooks.

How to set up Intercom webhooks (and the hidden complexities)

Setting up a webhook in Intercom starts in their Developer Hub. The interface itself is pretty clear, but the process has some major technical hurdles that often get overlooked in simple guides.

Here’s a quick look at the steps:

1. Create an app: Webhooks need to be associated with an "app" inside your Intercom Developer Hub. This app is just a container for your webhook settings.

2. Provide an endpoint URL: This is the big one. You have to give Intercom a URL that is live on the internet and built to receive HTTP POST requests. This isn't just a link to a website; it has to be a custom application ready to catch and handle the data Intercom sends.

3. Subscribe to topics: Once your endpoint is ready, you can pick the events you want to track from a dropdown list. You can subscribe to as many as you need.

And here’s where the "simple" setup gets complicated:

• You need a developer: That endpoint URL doesn't just appear out of nowhere. It requires a developer to write code, set up a server, and manage the application that listens for the webhook. For most support teams, this is a huge roadblock that means pulling engineers away from working on the actual product.

• Security is on you: To be sure the notifications are really coming from Intercom and not a random bot, your application needs to check a special signature ("X-Hub-Signature") that comes with every request. This is a critical security measure, but it's another piece of code someone has to write and maintain.

• Things can break: What if your server goes down for a minute? Intercom will try to send the notification again, but a truly reliable system needs its own error handling and logging. This just adds to the engineering overhead.

So while you can build your own integrations using Intercom webhooks, it takes a lot of resources. For teams that want the benefits of automation without the engineering headaches, a platform like eesel AI offers a much faster path. With one-click helpdesk integrations, eesel AI handles all the tricky parts, letting you build intelligent workflows in minutes, not months.

The limitations of basic Intercom webhooks

Getting an alert when a conversation is created is nice, but it's really just step one. Real support automation is about understanding the customer's problem and actually solving it. This is where you start to feel the limits of basic webhooks.

A webhook knows that a conversation happened, but it has no idea what the customer is asking about. It can't understand intent, sentiment, or nuance. To build anything truly helpful, you often end up chaining webhooks together with rule-based tools, which leads to complicated workflows that are fragile and a pain to manage. A system that routes tickets based on keywords will break the second a customer phrases their question a little differently.

On top of that, a webhook can't take action inside the helpdesk on its own. It can kick off a process somewhere else, but it can't, for example, look up order details in Shopify, draft a personalized reply based on the customer's history, and then tag the conversation for follow-up.

This is the main difference between simple triggers and an AI-native platform. eesel AI doesn't just see an event; it understands the conversation. By training on your past tickets and knowledge base articles, it can figure out what a customer needs and perform smart, multi-step actions, from drafting the perfect reply to escalating a ticket with all the necessary context.

Feature	Basic Intercom Webhooks (DIY / Zapier)	eesel AI Agent
Setup Time	Days to weeks (requires developers)	Minutes (no-code, self-serve)
Intelligence	None (simple event trigger)	Understands intent, learns from past tickets
Custom Actions	Limited, requires complex external workflows	Rich actions (API calls, ticket updates, triage)
Maintenance	High (managing code, servers, and errors)	Zero (fully managed platform)
Simulation	Not possible (test in production)	Powerful simulation on historical tickets

A quick look at Intercom pricing

When you're thinking about automation, it's also worth looking at the costs. Intercom's pricing is split into a few parts.

• Customer Service Plans: There are three main plans (Essential, Advanced, and Expert) which are priced per agent. These plans start at $29/seat/month for Essential, $85/seat/month for Advanced, and $132/seat/month for Expert if you pay annually.

• Fin AI Agent: On top of the per-agent cost, Intercom’s AI agent, Fin, is priced at $0.99 per resolution.

This model means you pay a base cost for each agent plus a variable fee for every resolution the AI handles. This can make your monthly bill hard to predict, especially if your support volume suddenly spikes.

In contrast, platforms like eesel AI offer predictable pricing based on your interaction volume, with no extra fees per resolution. This lets you scale up your automation without worrying about surprise costs, and you can start on a monthly plan and cancel anytime.

From simple Intercom webhooks triggers to intelligent automation

Intercom webhooks are a fantastic tool for connecting your apps and creating simple, event-based notifications. They can definitely help you sync data and streamline some of your internal processes.

But for meaningful support automation, the kind that actually resolves customer issues and reduces your team's workload, you need something a bit smarter. You need a system that can understand conversations, not just react to triggers.

That's really what eesel AI is all about. It's a no-code platform that works with Intercom to turn those basic events into intelligent, automated resolutions.

Ready to move beyond basic webhooks? See how eesel AI can automate your frontline support in minutes. Start your free trial today.