Use Intercom to Chat and Learn From Mobile App Users

Live chat is one of the ways you can communicate with your website’s visitors as they browse through your store. Companies use live chat widgets and services to solve customer service issues, actively promote sales and answer questions your users have about your products and services.

Generally, live chat features are only available on websites; not on mobile applications. Intercom changes that, giving merchants the ability to talk directly with app users who are accessing their stores on their smartphones or tablets. It also works across email and web, making it a single service for multi-channel customer support.

Retail apps are becoming more common, and can be a great feature for brands that use customer accounts or are omni-channel in other ways. Read this post first about whether your store should consider developing an app for your brand.

Pushing the right buttons

Intercom is a “customer experience management software” that helps merchants communicate and understand their app users better. When you are managing a traditional store, you can see with your own eyes customers that are browsing, and ones that seem like they might walk away. You can then use your team to go up to people and ask if they need anything, direct them to the right area of the store or give them information about specials and promotions.

What Intercom does is simulate some of those same possibilities to a mobile app or website setting. You can use it to collect useful information about how people are using your app, and communicate directly with users.

The Intercom platform helps generate leads and turn them into customers

Intercom is a platform that aims to help businesses engage with their customers more directly and learn about the customer journey through three main products:

• Intercom Respond which lets you talk directly to people who are on your website or app
• Intercom Engage which lets you sort out your users based on behaviour and send more targeted messages, and 
• Intercom Educate which creates a platform to answer frequently asked questions and design tutorials based on common sticking points

Send messages to users based on their behaviour

Intercom’s “live segmentation” feature means you can set “triggers” for certain behaviour. For example, if a user navigates to your FAQ page, you can pop up a chat app asking them what kind of help they need. If a user navigates to a Sales page, you can pop up a chat letting them know about your latest deal. Merchants can customise the triggers they use, meaning you reach the right customers with the right kind of information.

What this does is allow you to prioritise clients based on how they are interacting with your website or app. You can choose whether to contact people who are lingering, people who view certain (say, high-value) products, and other types of customers your company wants to target.

Another useful feature is to send emails to clients based on in-app behaviour. For example, if you see some clients haven’t been using your app in a while, you can email them a video tutorial that could help re-engage them.

Get immediate feedback about your mobile app and service

Intercom collects useful data from users and organises it so you can track customer interactions over time. For example, all chats through Intercom, user behaviour on your website and app, and see how they are interacting with your products (like how often they’re on your app or what pages they frequent). That allows you to get a fuller picture of how individual customers are experiencing your brand, and step in with support at crucial moments. Tracking your customer journey is a huge step in pushing your business further.

The Intercom Engage feature lets you ask customers their opinions on your products and services through surveys. You can select what kinds of users you want to answer feedback (such as those who chose not to use certain products, or those who have been using it for at least a month, etc.). This kind of information is of course crucial in making smarter user experience decisions.

Hello, is it me you’re looking for?

You can decide whether Intercom will automatically pop up for someone who uses your app, or whether you want to let them take the lead and only say hey when they want. The first option would allow you to be more aggressive with sales, but the second may be preferred by customers who just want to browse - similar to a brick and mortar store with sales associates.

Matchmaker, matchmaker make me a match

What often happens with Live Chat or other customer messaging systems is that customers just automatically get sent to a customer service rep, whether or not it’s a good fit. Instead, Intercom gives you an inbox system that lets you assign particular reps to customers based on language or type of question they are asking. By getting the right person in there from the get-go, you end up saving the customer time - which equals a happy customer.

Make it human

One of the biggest shifts is turning online commerce into a more personalised experience for clients. Using a live chat application allows you to show your users there is a real human behind their screen, which helps build trust and loyalty.

The results are very real. Live chat is known to reduce cart abandonment rates by 20% because there is someone on the other end to help a customer through cart and payment processes - often the most important sticking point. And, live chat rates the highest customer satisfaction of support services - 12% higher than email and 29% higher than phone.

Intercom and Shopify

Intercom integrates with Shopify, allowing eCommerce store owners and managers to effectively communicate with people interested in your brand.

For store owners, finding ways to effectively communicate with your customers in real-time can help drive leads, solve order issues, and target your marketing emails. By being able to speak directly with those visiting your website or app, choose which rep is going to take which chat based on actual behaviour, and learn from customer data about your clients, merchants can make their customer experience more engaging and personal for the customer.

Learn more about setting up Intercom with Shopify here.

Ready to get chatty?

Elkfox can help you choose the right kind of service to engage your customers and learn from their behaviour on your website. Talk to us about talking to your customers.

*Image via Shopify