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Hi folks! I'm Alissa, a Product Manager at Intercom. 👋 I wanted to ask whether any of you ever requested the ability to create auto-replies for conversations? If so, I'd love to know more! Why would that be useful? When would you want to send auto-replies? Detailed examples of your workflows would be super helpful! 🙏 @Product Wishlist​ 

Superb, thanks so much for elaborating on that Anya!


@Alissa Tyrangiel​ , Localized for 7 Languages only, it's not possible to customize messages there.

Mostly all helpdesk solutions supporting welcome e-mail customization or auto-reply set-up.

 

As I mentioned before, lot's of Intercom customers are using e-mail forwarding and mail support features. It's crucial to have an auto-reply feature to operate e-mail support with Intercom.


That makes sense, thanks a lot for clarifying that!


Hi @Alissa Tyrangiel​ hope you are well, we have already touched on some of these previously.

 

Some immediate use cases for auto-reply;

  1. Introduction and greeting based on customers attributes (Welcome to Premier Support for VIPs)
  2. On snoozing a conversation, sending a standard response to customers
  3. On closing a conversation, sending a standard response to customers
  4. On reassigning a conversation, sending a standard response to customers (with the name of the new agent)

 

As others have mentioned and as some of the 3rd party apps or use cases on scheduling and timing that would be amazing. Dealing with inactive/transient customers and being able to trigger messages would save so many clicks. Additionally, if y'all introduced new status types, automated messages based on a status change updating customers would also be a nice value add.


Thanks @craig​ ! Regarding dealing with inactive customers, how many follow ups do you usually do?

  1. Agent snoozes > Customer unresponsive for X time? > Reply + Close or
  2. Agent snoozes > Customer unresponsive for X time? > Reply + Snooze > Customer again unresponsive for X time? > Reply + Close.

Which one more accurately reflects Siteminder's workflow (or if it's neither, what would it be)?


Our use case is closer to number 2.

 

Generally, 3 attempts over at 24 hour period, so standard practice would be;

  • Customer is inactive, send a message and snooze for 3 hours
  • The customer is still inactive (not online), the agent will send a saved reply message and snooze until end of the day (generally another 3 hours)
  • Following day, the agent will send a final saved reply message and close conversation

 

Additionally, if we see that a customer has read the message (where we have provided the solution) but has not responded we will provide a different saved reply and close the conversation (we understand you are busy and have read the solution provided, please do reach out.. )


A slight variation on the email option would be to send a message and leverage the asynchronous/synchronous experience Messenger offers;

  • Online ticket info pops in-app
  • Offline ticket info is sent via email

Great thanks for clarifying Craig!


Thanks @eric f11​ ! Yes, I'm super interested in this. Has it shipped yet?! 😀😀🤣


Hi @Alissa Tyrangiel​ ​ ! I'm excited about the possibility of this feature being available. At Octopods, many customers have asked for a similar feature.

 

Our app integrates social and SMS chats into the Intercom inbox. The most common use case for auto-replies is setting up an out-of-office message. This is important to our users because:

 

  • Conversations created by Octopods can't run Intercom bots or outbound campaigns
  • When support staff are away (esp. on weekends), anyone contacting them via SMS or other channels will not receive a response in return. Many users would like to at least send an automated away message.

 

Automated welcome messages are also in demand, but they're not as popular as out-of-office messages 😊


Hi @mohamed e11​ , thanks for the input, that's helpful! I'm curious, do you think customers would want a different out of office message than welcome message? Reason I'm asking is because for chat, Intercom currently offers only one way to set expectations which is done using the "Share your typical reply time" task bot. The auto-message looks like this and the "usual reply time" is dynamic based on the configured office hours. As you can see this sort of serves as a welcome message and an out of office message. If this exact task bot was available for other channels (email, SMS, social etc), would this solve the problem? Or is there a desire to have different messages for out of office and welcome?


Thanks for getting back to me so quickly, @Alissa Tyrangiel​! I think customers would prefer the ability to set their own messages, but having this exact task bot as an option for other channels would also be extremely useful, and could satisfy the need.

 

Many customers (those who've used apps like FB or WhatsApp) are used to being able to set custom welcome and away messages on those platforms, or simple, text-based welcome bots, and they lose that when they integrate those channels into Intercom through Octopods. (Admittedly, this is a gap we've thought about filling.)

 

Another use case that may have already been mentioned in this thread (and I believe Bump helps in this area, although I have yet to try it):

  • Sending an auto-message in a conversation based on a tag (or some other trigger). This is helpful for follow ups, but would also allow customers to send outbound messages through API-created conversations, and therefore to channels other than email and the Intercom Messenger.

@Alissa Tyrangiel​ , In Intercom messenger, we can set-up COVID notifications, there is a specific feature for that:

covidHow we can set-up COVID messages for What's app or e-Mail?

It's not possible to customize Task bots, bot only shares the current response time.

 

How do you think this gonna work?

Send a message to the company via e-mail/What's app and get the answer:

Company typical replies in 2 Days? (When there is a holiday and the text may be completely different).

 

TaskBotAnother example from Integromat, take a look at how they reply to incoming support e-mails.

If we send an e-mail to team@intercom.com (Official Intercom Support e-mail), There no such auto-reply:

======================

Hey, We got your message. Due to COVID 19 Crisis, the response may take a little bit longer.

P.S. Did you know about our community? 

======================

 

Using Task bots for this is a bad idea.


Thanks for the input @roy s11​ , appreciate it. 🙂


Screen Shot 2021-04-07 at 12.20.05 PMHi @Product Wishlist​  & @Alissa Tyrangiel​,

 

Like mentioned before, we would like to use auto replies in rules (Automation). Having the option to generate a bot reply just like we have with custom bots (see screenshot) will be great!

 

Many thanks


Currently we snooze conversations and follow up to ensure people received the message and were able to get the issue sorted out. Ideally, we could include a button that users could click to indicate that the issue was solved (conversation closed). If the button or a response was not received, the system would automatically follow up (ideally on multiple channels in-app, then email). This would save us from having to snooze and follow up which is probably 25% of our time right now.


Thanks @user969​ , that makes sense! Noted.


Hi @Alissa Tyrangiel​ thank you for asking! We have a public Google Sheet online that our users can use as a template. Many people do not understand this public concept and therefor request access. These requests all go to our intercom support. So we send them instructions with an reply template on how to go about getting the template for themselves. The effectiveness of this point of engagement is very very low that I almost decided to stop answering, but I find this harsh and unfair. So, in this case I'd really love to send an automatic reply based on the subject and help tem with the instructions to copy the template. Kind regards, Jacob


What about something small like an auto-response outside of business hours (or during holidays).

 

For that matter, how about adding a holiday calendar 😉


Hi @peter r​ you can set your business hours inside the messenger configuration.

For holidays I also change de business hours and days and change the special notice in app, so people will figure it out.

The bot also helps, since it explains that you'll be available when you get back


Howdy! Would absolutely love this feature for being able to automate check ins on unresponsive conversations. If I could trigger off of unattended conversations, it would enable me to send "hello - anything else we can do ?" messages before auto closing so we can confirm that users do indeed want their conversation closed.


Hi @Alissa Tyrangiel​ , 7 Month left and still no any updates 😞


@Alissa Tyrangiel​ & @Product Wishlist​ Any updates of the timing of this feature? I would like to use it for Users who email in to let them know we received their email and give them the estimated timeframe they will hear back from us.


Hi @jasmyn​ . Unfortunately we don't currently have an ETA for a feature like this. 😞


If a customer sends a support request containing key words indicating they're experiencing an issue I'd like to send an autoresponder asking them to be sure they have provided all the details required to solve the issue. A large percentage of my first-response to support messages is just this. Having an autoresponder do this for me would me fixing issues much quicker because by the time I see the message(s) I will have all the detail I need.


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