Attracting and retaining large customers for Intercom.
Project sneak peak
Background
Intercom is a B2B support product that came to market in 2011; it’s mission was to make internet business feel personal again. They quickly gained product market fit amongst SMB’s. By 2016, however, they set out to expand their business to enterprise customers.
More frequently, Intercom was being compared to ZenDesk, a leading enterprise support tool.
Research questions
What needs do enterprise companies have for support products? What do they look for when shopping for a support product? What do they actually use once they implement the support product?
How do different roles within a support team (e.g., IC versus manager) use support products? What are their met and unmet needs? How do they supplement or workaround unmet needs today?
Project team
My role: Lead user researcher
Immediate team: Group PM (support products), Director of Product Marketing, Director of User Research
Key stakeholders: CEO, Chief Product Officer, VP of Product
Impact
Insights from this project helped define Intercom’s 2017 strategy and roadmap. The insights helped create a 1.5-year long program of work focused on building out Intercom’s support offering. After a year of work, we saw significant (and confidential!) increases in enterprise customers signing up for, and successfully using, Intercom’s support product.