The pricing of these services is outrageous. GitHub, for example, gives a lot more value, does a lot more, and charges a lot less per user. When you add all those different services a startup or small nonprofit needs, it ends up being a lump sum.
I stopped using Intercom
41–50 of 63 posts
Re: I stopped using Intercom
#42I add this to my /etc/hosts file. Could not be happier
0.0.0.0 nexus-websocket-b.intercom.io
Re: I stopped using Intercom
#43Anyone have a recommendation for the simplest, easiest solution to solve for "As a user, I'd like to express some concern, frustration, feedback, or questions about your product". Intercom seems like the most well known, but there's a lot in that tool that we just may not need or use and I'm not sure we're looking for something so "robust"... Then again, just slapping a support email alias throughout the product and expecting users to find it and use it doesn't quite solve the problem and it's not scalable. I intend to check out Crisp, Intercom, Drift, hubspot, smooch, pipedrive, and Tawk judging by responses below, but wondering if anyone can help cut through the noise with some personal anecdotes. Just want to make sure users have a way of reaching out and feeling that their voices are being heard
Re: I stopped using Intercom
#44> The short, simple, and most crucial reason: it didn’t work. How do I know? We A/B tested it. Over a fairly long time and a large number of people.
I'd love to see the actual numbers. The screenshot OP posted suggests they've been running A/B tests with 115 + 108 users, which is just not a big enough sample to derive any conclusions.
IMO Intercom's plans are too pricey once you've more than a few users, and its specialized competitors are usually better. But methinks it's a sane choice regardless for most early stage startups: you get a good enough version of just about every tool you need.
As to the other complaint (popup is too familiar) they might have been doing it wrong -- as in like a sales in a retail store showing up asking "can I help you?". Only show the popup when something interesting that you're digging into happens. And man the fort, to make sure there's someone answering at the other end when an actual user replies; else it's pointless.
Re: I stopped using Intercom
#45I realize this article is one data point but I'd offer that I have a completely opposite data point.
1. We accidentally turned off our main Intercom in-trial campaign for a segment of users during an AB test and were surprised how much lower the conversion was. We re-ran the test ensuring both sides had our Intercom in-trial campaign on. It increased in-trial conversion by 25%.
2. We do pay a lot for Intercom (10 person support team, tens of thousands of users, hundreds of thousands of leads) but we also use it a god damn ton for new customer campaigns, activation, churn prevention, reactivation, etc and by in-app, email, and mobile notifications. Replacing all of this would not be cheap.
3. Intercom can definitely be a crutch for bad UX. But you'll only know of those problems if you're actually getting this feedback. It's then on you to have the internal process for addressing common questions or requests in order to reduce the volume of help requests for specific topics.
Re: I stopped using Intercom
#46I 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.
You're being watched. Some of these tools (in the merchant's UI) have a list of users browsing the website with an option to show in real-time what you're doing, what page you're viewing, typing, and how you're moving your mouse cursor. They'd probably show your webcam and mic feed, if they could without being obvious, too.
message pops up
"Hey, can I help? You look confused."
Re: I stopped using Intercom
#47We 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…
Similar situation here – large increase in price for offering the same thing. In the past they’d jacked up the price saying ‘they’ve built new stuff so should charge more’ but have no option to remain using only the old stuff. IMO they completely abuse their customers, and at the same time I don’t blame them one but as customers like us are so locked in that it’s too much hassle to move.
Re: I stopped using Intercom
#48Anyone have a recommendation for the simplest, easiest solution to solve for "As a user, I'd like to express some concern, frustration, feedback, or questions about your product". Intercom seems like the most well known, but there's a lot in that tool that we just may not need or use and I'm not sure we're looking for something so "robust"... Then again, just slapping a support email alias throughout the product and…
We use Olark for years and it's free and it also has an JS interface where your website code can interface with it (populate user info if logged-in, etc.). It is far from perfect but it gets the job done when you want the customer to quickly contact you.
I see now they put some more "unlock to get" things on their website but still their free offering is good enough. The only limit is after 20 live chats you get emails instead.
For us we use it mostly for getting the initial question (in offline mode) and then we take it further via email.
Re: I stopped using Intercom
#49Intercom is a good tool for support, but we have run into a lot of bugs using deeper features.
Their support is great, they allways get back to you.
We started using intercom for all outgoing communications especially email campaigns and ran into reporting bugs, built in templates not showing on outlook, events being not usable in mails ect.
You can only create a company via the API, which by the way loves to duplicate your contacts from time to time.
As a support tool, it is great our users are used to using the bubble to chat to us but we have moved the our mailing and crm elsewhere.
I think about intercom being very useful if you sell a low value product to a lot of clients, so large user base at $5 each.
Re: I stopped using Intercom
#50We used to use Intercom and were frustrated that they charged us a random amount every month.
They also don't have tools for lead gen or making calls to customers. It was a big pain having our calls go through skype. We'd have to take manual notes on the call and there was no good way to schedule follow ups so we ended up using a mish-mash of systems to do this.
Shameless plug: In the end, we started a competing product, MomentCRM, which has simple, predictable pricing, and spans the entire lifecycle of your user. No more data silos or "integration engineers"! I'm one of the founders, and I will move mountains to make sure you're happy if you decide to try it :)