Every Workflow in Intercom starts with a trigger. This table gives a description of each trigger and their common use cases so you can find the right one for your Workflow.
Trigger | How it works | Common use case |
Customer visits a page | Automatically presents a bot workflow in the Messenger when a customer meets certain conditions i.e. time on page or visited URL. | Customer outreach, engagement and proactive support. |
Customer clicks on a website element | Automatically presents a bot workflow in the Messenger when a customer clicks on a button or other element. | Launch a workflow when a customer clicks a button (e.g. contact, get in touch button). |
Customer opens a new conversation in the Messenger | Automatically opens a bot workflow when a customer opens the Messenger, and before they start typing. | Reduce inbound volume, self-serve common queries, triage and capture information and route to teammates. |
Customer sends their first message | Trigger a workflow after a customer sends their first message for every new conversation. Audience targeting includes third-party channels. | Self-serve and take action on third-party channels including email and WhatsApp. |
Customer sends any message | Workflow runs each time a customer sends any message, primarily designed to be non-customer facing. | Tagging, routing to teammates if bot message contains certain words. |
When a customer calls | Trigger a workflow when a customer calls your phone number associated with Intercom Phone. | Creating IVR flows and inbound call routing for Intercom Phone. |
Teammate sends any message | Triggers every time a teammate replies during any inbound or outbound conversation. Notes:
| When a teammate responds to a conversation with the priority CvDA is set to high or urgent send a slack notification to the relevant thread. |
Customer has been unresponsive | Trigger automated bot messages and actions when a customer goes idle after a set period of time. | Teammate efficiency when you no longer need to manually check-in with customers who have not responded to a message. |
Teammate changes the state of a conversation | Triggers when a teammate either closes, opens or snoozes a conversation. Notes:
| Configure and send CSAT when conversation is closed. Send automated messages when conversations become snoozed or are closed. |
Teammate changes the conversation assignment | Triggers when a teammate assigns the conversation to a team. Notes:
| Add a note or tag, apply a specific SLA or use AI summarize when a conversation is reassigned. |
Teammate adds a note | Triggers when a note is added by a teammate. Notes:
| When a note is added to an escalation ticket send a slack notification to the relevant thread. |
A ticket is created | Triggers when a new ticket is created. Notes:
| 1) When a support conversation is converted to an operational ticket send a notification to the responsible team Slack channel 2) When a frontline teammate convert the conversation to a specific ticket type, auto escalate to the responsible team (e.g change the team assigned) 3) When a new escalation ticket is created send a notification to the responsible team Slack channel. |
Teammate changes the state of a ticket | Triggers when a ticket status is changed by a teammate. Notes:
| Notify internal slack channel when ticket is closed. |
Reusable workflows | Workflows without audience targeting that can be linked to from other bots, creating multiple modular workflows in one conversation. | Teammate efficiency when building and managing bots, minimizing the need to duplicate content across bots. |
When using Custom Answers or the Suggest articles task bot with the Customer opens a new conversation in the Messenger trigger:
These will only kick in if the customer skips the quick-replies and chooses to start their conversation in the composer.
If the customer starts the Workflow path, Custom Answers or Suggest articles will not trigger for the conversation.