Intercom #TheNextChapter: The chronicle of a launch
Editor’s Note: Intercom was part of the “The State of Product-Led Experience” a comprehensive report on Onboarding & Product Led GTM practices with insights derived from 40 Product-Led organizations. Authored by Despina Exadaktylou founder of ReinventGrowth-the Product Experience Agency.
Exemplary research participants were:
HubSpot, Typeform, Segment, Pendo, Gainsight, Intercom, Drift, Filestage, Appcues, Viral Loops, Chargebee, Vidyard, Lemlist, Supporthero, Salesflare, Close, GoSquared, Autopilot, TravelPerk, Yesware, Receptive.io, and so many others.
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Introduction
Intercom announces its next chapter and the whole world holds his breath, in order to hear carefully what the Unicorn in customer engagement has to share with the rest of us!
Not a few hours ago Intercom finally announced what’s #TheNextChapter. If you are a fan, customer or just into SaaS you must have watched its journey so far- with one way or another! So it doesn’t take a wild guess to figure out that its new product would be Bots-related!
The company’s own DNA is defined by inventing, creating and building new things.
The motto that follows their vision though does not change!
KEEPING BUSINESS PERSONAL! One phrase that ended up representing a legacy! A legacy built with one common denominator: No matter what you offer, building a long lasting relationship with your customers, speaking to them in a way that matters is and always will be the No1 factor leading to growth.
#TheNextChapter is huge for the company. It has been a year since its inception and has been in beta the last four months and is already delivering awesome value.
The Operator
The Operator is the 3rd core component of Intercom’s vision- after the Messenger and the growing ecosystem of apps & integrations- and the company’s 1st bot , that since evolved has become the automation technology which powers the growing family of conversational bots.
The operator works seamlessly with the other two components to create workflows and help Intercom’s customers achieve the desired outcomes.
Last August Intercom launched Custom bots ideal to be used if you are into sales or marketing. Custom bots use cases are product recomendations, Out-Office-Hours replies and lead quailification — to begin with- and of course in combination with the app-store they offer infinite opportunities for personal communication at scale.
Moving forward to today, where Answer Bots were launched to offer a full automated personalized experience which would accelerate growth across the customer lifecycle.
For those who are deep into user experience, and supporters of the product-led era this very launch substitutes another yet milestone for the SaaS industry! Intercom just proved that the way to scale growth can be done in a self served, yet fully personalized way!
“We believe that people that will ignore the potential for automation will suffer the same fate as those who ignored the web” claimed Eoghan in his keynote speech.
I can pretty much guess what most of you think right now! A personal connection requires two humans communicating on each end! Yes it does.
But when it comes to business matters it also means relevance and saving time when processing every day tasks by getting to the ideal outcome instantly! It is any company’s obligation to serve those kind of solutions to its users to allow them to move forward and be more productive, yet autonomous- in case it has innovation & excellence in its DNA that is!
Answer Bot Characteristics Overview:
Let’s begin from the most important one: The bot is powered by AI so even if the same question is being posed with a different way, stay assured that it will grab it!
✔️Instant resolutions, 24/7 Give your customers precise answers even when your team is busy or offline.
✔️On-brand automation Control exactly what Answer Bot says, so your answers are always on brand.
✔️Richer answers with apps Show people the status of their order, embed help articles, let people register for webinars, and more.
✔️Immediate efficiency gains Improves customer response time by 44% while freeing up your team for more valuable work.
✔️No dead ends Always provide an option to wait for the team and talk to a human to get help.
The chronicle of a launch part one: The email announcement
Back to our launch’s anatomy, even for Intercom the 1st touch of the launch’s funnel, or as I would like to call it of the new release’s onboarding funnel, is:
1) An email announcement via the weekly newsletter leading to a related landing page
(Full disclosure: I am not an active Intercom user (yet) so please note that I would not be able to know if the users received as a 1st step an announcement via the Messenger or perhaps the Operator itself!)
1.a) Which also includes a link of a teaser leading to a blogpost of what’s in store.
2) Then of course the 3rd point to stumble upon would be the landing page.
It comes with no suprise that a company which is culture is deep into educational content, would not just go with another yet promotional landing page!
The page was into storytelling 100% as any other Intercom campaign, recounting how business communication evolved from a simple telephone call, to Email, to websites and eventually to live chat messaging.
As someone scrolled down he could get fun facts and all the essential information to understand the importance and the dynamic business communication has since its inception. Embracing in that way the company’s motto “KEEPING BUSINESS PERSONAL” and at the same time creating an (user) experience around it.
That said the concept behind this page was the extension of the History of Messaging story, which showcases in a similar way what Intercom’s DNA entails.
The anatomy of a launch part two: The Kick-off
Eoghan McCabe, Intercom’s CEO opened his keynote speach two nights before- and there is the magic in companies that have their whole culture ingrained into creating a personal bond- with the statement: “We have spoken many times about building products, but we have never actually spoke about our products”
And there you have it! The personal bond so many companies desperately try to create with their users is formulated instantly! Well no,my bad! In Intercom’s case it is just embraced, as it is already there since its very inception.
Moving forward, Eoghan went trough the market’s needs claiming that bots are here to stay and that evolution they bring along should be taken advantage by most parts of a company- with marketing, sales and customer success being just in the core of them.
Matt Hodges, VP, Commercial Product Strategy at Intercom followed to showcase Intercom’s portfolio and show examples of as to how Answer Bot is interconnected with the company’s existing solutions.
The chronicle of a launch part three: The Answer Bot is here
The L-day is finally here! For the lucky ones that were in the kick off, Answer Bot is already a product that they know they want to try!
For the rest of us though we have a number of ways to get introduced on Intercom’s exciting new chapter via:
- The email announcement
The announcement would either lead you to the explanatory introductory blogpost to Answer Bots or to the prelaunch campaign’s landing page mentioned above. Which now of course has changed and directs the user to watch the keynote announcement OR to give a try to one of the Operator bots.
The Operator bots landing page stands out from the rest informational pages the service has created so far! Despite the fact that its structure follows the same logic with the rest, the black background makes it even more impressive!
That effect essentially predisposes the user to focus on the eternity symbol which represents the customer lifecycle! Web design at its best!
- a) The teaser to blog-post
2. Followed by the the in-app announcement
3. Hitting your inbox again by announcing that Des Traynor hunts the product in Product Hunt
To lead you to upvote the product itself and give you at the same time a 1st taste of its capabilities via video and personal notes from the makers!
4 . Leading to the Website’s product landing page
If you are familiar with the logic behind Intercom’s product exposure and overall website structure this landing page will not be big news for you.
Not because is another typical webpage exposing a feature, but because it makes sense to you that since it is created by Intercom it will have the following characteristics:
- It is a page that belongs to the service’s main site but it can as well be characterized as a standalone microsite.
- The feature’s capabilities are validated by data
- Its graphics are AWESOME & lean at the same time- despite the fact that they are colourful, which usually leads to “noisy” results
- Its copy is short yet fully explanatory
- It provides free value in order to embrace user motivation to try the feature. In that case by simply showcasing how many hours you support teams saves by using the Answer Bot.
5. To end up to its thorough educational knowledge base articles
Wrapping it up!
With more than 30.000 active customers in its portfolio Intercom is innovating in products we haven’t yet imagined, in many ways! This article was just a taste of what a launch should look like! Not only in terms of execution but also in terms of creating products that will make sense long term and will not just solve local KPI’s problems!
Answer bot completed the automated cycle in the customer engagement journey, Intercom has created long ago! It was something that most of us pretty much saw it coming with one way or another!
The next step (most probably) would be case studies that would onboard the user to the feature’s context even more!
So I guess that with the customer journey completely automated now the only question which makes sense to ask to the customer engagement unicorn is #WhatsNext?
At ReinventGrowth we are convinced that Product-Led GTM practices are the future of SaaS. Keen on making the transition to a Product-Led GTM Model? Contact us today and let us know how we can help your organization get there.
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