Writing for Intercom, a selection
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How your support team improves your product
Blaming your customer support team for unhappy customers is like blaming weathermen for the rain. Sure they’re involved, but only on the receiving end.
Our new book: Intercom on Customer Support
Today we released our third book, Intercom on Customer Support. It explains how we think about customer support, and the principles we applied as we scaled our team to support over 8,000 customers in 85 countries.
Book 2: Intercom On Customer Engagement
In the world of recurring revenue, SaaS companies realize they need engaged customers if they are to grow a healthy, sustainable business. This is where having a solid customer engagement strategy comes in.
How to show customers the value of free
The way technology is sold to businesses has changed fundamentally in the last decade and as a result so has the role of customer support/success teams in helping to close sales.
Design principles: a shared inbox for your team
We recently released a completely redesigned team inbox for Intercom to make it even easier for companies to talk with their customers.
Show, don’t tell, with GIFs
The gif is the cockroach of file formats. Every time we think it should die it re-appears with a new use case. In Intercom we create GIFs all the time to help our customers, and they love them.
How to Educate & Persuade Customers
The most effective messages we see in Intercom either educate or persuade customers. Let’s talk about why they work.
The right type of customer conversations
Conversations with customers are valuable, but they have to be the right type of conversations—not merely questions about forgotten passwords and the like. They have to add value, for you, and them.
Analyzing Abandonment in Your Product
Conversion rates and usage patterns will cause you many a sleepless night. Your team deploys a new feature or flow, posts the announcement, then sits back and waits for glory. Instead, you get nothing.
The Danger of Dogfooding
When everyone involved in building a product are also using the product themselves, they’re said to be ‘dogfooding’. Dogfooding empowers good design decisions, but it has its downsides.
Effective messaging: say the right thing at the right time
Communicating with a large user base is damn hard. Every product owner knows this.
Product Demos That Don’t Suck
Product demos can be a great marketing tool when they focus on giving the attendees a fantastic experience. Customers should leave a seminar knowing how to kick ass at their job, not how to use an interface. Unfortunately, that’s rarely the case.
Have You Tried Talking To Your Customers?
I remember daydreaming in the boardroom of a renowned university in Ireland while pretending to listen to a group of stakeholders argue over a label on a web form.
Getting Insight Into Your Userbase
There are 3 types of data that every product manager or application owner should have easy access to: User Activity, Product Usage, and Revenue.
Automated E-mails & customer respect
“Today we launched automated emails in Intercom. A feature that evokes the old Spider-Man quote: “With great power comes great responsibility”.”
Know Your Customers and How They Decide
Everything you design—from slide decks to email newsletters, from marketing sites to company t-shirts—has a goal, and that goal is to get someone to decide to do something that benefits you or your company.
The Death and Rebirth of Customer Experience
Karl arrives late into work. There’s no starting time or closing time, his store is always open.