What Intercom is
Intercom is a customer service helpdesk: a shared inbox, tickets, a help centre and the Messenger that customers chat in on the web and in mobile apps, with Fin, an AI agent, built in. The company behind it was founded as Intercom in 2011 and renamed itself Fin in 2026, taking the name of its AI agent; the helpdesk keeps the Intercom name.
Technology, e-commerce and fintech companies use it for support that mixes AI and human agents. Its REST API and webhooks let other systems work with its contacts, conversations and tickets, which is why it is one of the support desks our admin backoffice connects to.
What it does in your platform
Admin backoffice
Links every Intercom conversation and ticket to the customer it is about. An agent goes from Intercom to the customer's full view in the backoffice: accounts, cards, trades and cases on one screen, with every action logged.
How the connection works
The backoffice talks to Intercom's REST API, and Intercom reports changes through webhooks signed with your app's client secret. The access token and the secret stay in the platform's secrets.
Customers become contacts
Each platform customer is matched to an Intercom contact whose external ID is the customer's platform ID.
A conversation starts
The customer writes in through the Messenger, email or another channel, and the conversation, or the ticket it becomes, sits on their contact.
A signed webhook arrives
Intercom reports new conversations and tickets with an X-Hub-Signature header, which the platform checks before accepting. Intercom does not promise delivery order, so each update is placed by its timestamp.
The conversation meets the customer
In the backoffice, it sits on the customer's record, next to their accounts, cards, trades and cases.
The agent acts, on record
Changes the agent makes follow their role's permissions, with a second approval for sensitive actions, and the audit log records each one.
Next to other providers
Intercom is one of the support desks the backoffice connects to, next to Zendesk and Freshdesk. Conversations reach the same place in the backoffice whichever desk your team works in, and staff sign in to the backoffice itself with your company's single sign-on.
Conversations live in Intercom; the backoffice holds the link to each customer. A later move to another support desk changes the connector, not how your agents work in the backoffice.
When Intercom fits best
A strong fit when
- Chat is your main support channel, on the web and in your apps.
- You want an AI agent to answer first and hand over to people when needed.
- You want support data hosted in the EU, with every conversation linked to a customer.
Also worth a look
- Zendesk, when your support runs mainly on tickets across many channels.
- Freshdesk, another helpdesk built around tickets and automation rules.
How we get you live
The contract
We help you get your Intercom account and contract in place, in the data hosting region you need, or connect the workspace your team already uses.
The mapping
We set up with you how customers map to Intercom contacts, which conversation and ticket events reach the backoffice, and which roles see them.
The keys
The access token and the app's client secret go into your platform's secrets and nowhere else, so every webhook is proven to come from Intercom.
A full test run
The whole loop runs in an Intercom development workspace, from a new conversation to the agent's action in the backoffice, before your agents switch over.
