It's way too expensive for what it delivers.
I stopped using Intercom
21–30 of 63 posts
Re: I stopped using Intercom
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you take out the complaint about pricing, then what remains is a general take on live-chat solutions. It's a valid complaint--and, from my experience, correct for most cases--but shouldn't be aimed solely at Intercom. I've tested live chats from Intercom, Drift, HubSpot, Smooch, and others, and they're all equally underwhelming.
I think I also addressed that on my post. My personal experience was with intercom though. > Of course, intercom.io isn’t the only one now, and there are a few competitors in this space. The principle is pretty similar though. I think intercom was the most successful company doing this, or the first, or both. But it’s not really important. It’s mostly about intercom as a concept, rather than a specific implementation…
Fair enough. I must’ve skimmed past that in my first reading.
Re: I stopped using Intercom
#23I've been using Crisp for a while on my own project where users can click ito start a chat (it doesn't pop-up with a message initially). I don't have any hard data but I've found it really valuable in terms of being a solo developer:
- For support problems, resolving over chat is much quicker and personable. I think this leads to happier customers. Composing well thought out and well written emails back and forth eats up a huge amount of time in comparison.
- It's way easier to get to know your customers more with chat. You can quickly ask them a series of related questions and get an answer, whereas with email it's much more effort on both sides e.g. a series of question/answers like "What kind of website are you checking with the tool? Oh, so how many websites do you have? Would you find it more helpful if...?" is painful over email and they'd probably stop replying.
I looked at the free chat offerings from Crisp, Intercom, Drift and Tawk recently. I think until you're getting large numbers of chat users per day there's not a lot to decide between them. I mostly prefer Crisp because the admin interface responds quickly and settings are easy to find. It's pretty crazy how many features and settings they all have.
Re: I stopped using Intercom
#24We actually had to stop using Intercom because of their pricing. We had a custom plan for years that accommodated our needs greatly. We were very happy and sang their praises all the time. A couple of months back they announced that they would be changing their pricing, so our $300/month price would become $2000/month. We started a long discussion with a sales person back and forth and they just wouldn't help us. We got copy and pasted responses that were not at all answers to our concerns.
It ended with them charging us $1800 even though we explicitly said we just wanted the "Chat" option for $100 per month a couple of times. After a stressful evening they refunded us. It really did leave a bitter taste in our mouth.
I agree completely with the article. Intercom was a crutch for us to deal with the failings of our own product.
Re: I stopped using Intercom
#25I wonder if 'Intercom makes no difference in conversion' is the rule or the exception. I wish there was a meta study. Also, it's worthwhile to mention that there are 100% free really good Intercom alternatives, like https://www.bitrix24.com/tools/contact_center/ and https://www.tawk.to/features/
> Also, it's worthwhile to mention that there are 100% free really good Intercom alternatives
When I was looking into this, I think live chat really is something where you want them to have a paid business model because of its importance.
Re: I stopped using Intercom
#26We tried using Intercom as a “all in one” tool for support, leads, CRM, and it just wasn’t good enough. We ended up getting Pipedrive for the CRM. Then we hooked up the new Pipedrive integration which is one click to generate a new user, and deal after they show interest with our bot or with us. For support, we love it and so do our customers. I know there are a lot of chat solutions but it feels the best to me. The…
We started with Intercom for all also.
Ended up with Pipedrive for sales, and zendesk for support. We still intercom for sales, but it's not impressing me that much.
Wanted everything in one place, but intercom was not the right tool.
Re: I stopped using Intercom
#27"The friendly bubble is just everywhere… So from a novelty thing, it becomes “oh. that bubble again”.
This. Exactly this. It's just like banner ad blindness. Sure, it'll work in the first year or so, but after that, people will start to turn blind to it.
Re: I stopped using Intercom
#28I mostly stopped using it because it's so expensive and we didn't get a lot of benefit out of it. Just people asking questions that can be answered by reading the first line of the page they're on.
Re: I stopped using Intercom
#29I hate these things, in the same way I dislike a sales person rushing up to me immediately I set foot in a store. It's much worse on a web page, simultaneously creepy like I'm being watched checking out the site and useless knowing it's not actually a real person.
Re: I stopped using Intercom
#30We tried using Intercom as a “all in one” tool for support, leads, CRM, and it just wasn’t good enough. We ended up getting Pipedrive for the CRM. Then we hooked up the new Pipedrive integration which is one click to generate a new user, and deal after they show interest with our bot or with us. For support, we love it and so do our customers. I know there are a lot of chat solutions but it feels the best to me. The…
We use Intercom for support and push SQL's into Pipedrive. It works great. It keeps Pipedrive clean and our Sales people focused on real opportunities. We use Intercom a lot for its "segments", and do a lot of personal mail from there. For example, we hosted a drink-up in Copenhagen one day and was able to quickly shoot an email to all customers living there in about 2 minutes. I used a filter to identify who hasn't used the app in a while, remembered their names, and inquired when I met them. I dig it for that.