Biz Tips: Intercom #TheNextChapter: The chronicle of a launch
GROWTH:
Intercom #TheNextChapter: The chronicle of a launch
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 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:
It 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.