Intercom

• Intercom is expensive, especially for startups and small businesses
• Their AI agent, Fin, charges about $0
• 99 per resolution, which adds up quickly at scale

• There's not a lot to dislike
• I would love it if Intercom allowed replies to conversations to be scheduled
• Our support team has established operating hours, and so if someone works outside of those hours, we don't want to give our customers the impression that we're available 24/7

• I would say it’s not ideal for folks that need SLA tracking or escalations within the ticket itself
• There are also some reporting drawbacks

• Working with the sales team is like walking onto a used car lot in a shady part of town
• You're on your own and no one cares
• We have been a customer for 2+ years
• Intercom Sales Ninja reaches out in January for a meeting
• I ask if anything has changed
• They so say no, and so I decline
• Turns out Intercom changed their pricing in January
• New pricing is roughly 30% lower for our feature set
• Our contract auto-renews in February
• Whoops, I'm busy running a business, I don't obsessively check the Intercom pricing page
• Rather than simply re-adjust our pricing to the lower price point when the contract auto renews, like every other software vendor that doesn't view their customers as wallets they can pick, they hope we don't notice
• Whatever, my fault
• I reach out to add a new seat to the contract, so we can get a new contract under the new pricing
• Simple, right
• Me: Hey, I noticed the new pricing
• Add a seat and send over a new contract with the new pricing
• Easy peasy
• Sales Ninja: Sure, no problem
• I'll send over a contract
• 2 days later - Sales Ninja Docusigns a contract with a new seat under the old 30% higher rate
• Cool move to trick us into 12 more months of the old pricing
• Luckily, I read contracts before signing
• Me: Hey, you sent the wrong thing
• Here's what we need (again)
• Sales Ninja: Sure, no problem
• 2 days later - Sale Ninja Docusigns another contract with a bunch of extra stuff I didn't ask for like thousands of dollars in minimum commitments to emails and FinAI responses that the website clearly states are pay as you go
• Email Sales Ninja back pointing out we clearly didn't ask for all the minimum commitments on pay as you go messages
• Wait 5 days
• Don't hear anything
• Set yet another godforsaken Google Meet that should be an email because Sales Ninja loves to waste your time to break your spirits
• Google Meet goes exactly like you would expect
• Sales Ninja provides vague excuses about why the extra stuff needs to be there
• I still don't have a contract signed and I hate these guys
• Anyway, The software is great
• At least four different colleagues have asked what we use and I always lead with my experiences with the sales team
• This isn't the first time something like this has happened
• Changing support systems is hard, so think long and hard if you're willing to deal with a commission obsessed sales team
• They certainly aren't there to help you

We've switched from Zendesk so there a couple of things that Intercom hasn't quite caught up to speed with Zendesk for like nested attributes, a couple metrics for calls

• What I like least about Intercom is its complicated pricing structure
• Some features have their own pricing structure instead of being included in a given tier, which is confusing when you see the value in one of their tools but don't have a clear pricing range to show to management to procure the tool

• Most people got frustrated and would request to talk to a real person anyways

One of the flaws is not having a live chat with support, sometimes I want to explain and show my issue in a meeting

• There are so many options that it takes sometime to figure everything out
• Not in terms of difficulty but in terms of options

• The pricing model is slightly steep, with functionality which would be considered essential on other platforms (balanced agent loading
• ) stuck in the highest tier