The Conversational
Support Funnel
Starter Kit C
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The Conversational Support Funnel Starter Kit
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The future of support is conversational . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
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Scale personal support with the Conversational Support Funnel . . . . . . 5
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Six ways to optimize your funnel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
4 Worksheet: Manage every conversation with efficiency and empathy
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Contents
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The Conversational Support Funnel Starter Kit
Part 1
The future of support
is conversational
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PART 1: THE FUTURE OF SUPPORT IS CONVERSATIONAL
Today, customer
support is undergoing
an irreversible
transformation.
Customers’ expectations are on the
rise – a recent study from Deloitte
found that two-thirds of customers
will switch brands due to poor
customer service . At the same time
support teams are grappling with an
increased flood of conversations,
which is fueling customer
frustration and team burnout .
Something’s got to give . Support
teams need to find a way to meet
and exceed customer expectations,
while reducing the burden and
workload on their team . We firmly
believe that conversational support
– where support teams provide a
messenger-based support experience
– is the next generation way to give
customers the personalized, fast,
convenient help they expect . Using
a modern business messenger, like
Intercom, you can have personalized
and contextual conversations with
customers in a way that feels far
more lightweight and convenient
than the channels of the past .
We’ve worked with thousands of
support leaders who have embraced
and successfully scaled their
conversational support, which has led
to increased efficiency, an improved
customer experience, and better
team morale . Now we’ve developed a
blueprint to show you how to unlock
the exact same benefits for your team .
The Conversational Support Funnel
is a framework that allows support
teams to combine human, self-serve,
and proactive support into a seamless
messenger-based experience for
customers . In this guide we’ll show
you how to apply the Conversational
Support Funnel to your business,
so you can proactively answer
customer questions before they
arise, empower customers to resolve
questions on their own, and free
your support team up to answer the
most critical, complex queries .
All of this will result in better
efficiency, more loyal customers,
and a happier team . Enjoy!
of customers will switch
brands due to poor
customer service
Source: Deloitte
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The Conversational Support Funnel Starter Kit
Part 2
Scale personal support
with the Conversational
Support Funnel
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PART 2: SCALE PERSONAL SUPPORT WITH THE CONVERSATIONAL SUPPORT FUNNEL
Introducing the
Conversational
Support Funnel
The Conversational Support Funnel
combines human, self-serve, and
proactive support to empower
your team to get ahead of known
problems, automatically answer
repetitive questions, and quickly
resolve complex and VIP issues . It’s
the most effective, efficient way to
provide personal support, at the scale
your business needs as it grows .
As you can see most of your
customers’ questions are absorbed
through self-serve and proactive
support, liberating your support
team to focus on the most important
conversations that require a
specialized, human touch .
Repetitive questions that can be
automatically answered with chatbots
and knowledge base articles.
“Here’s how to reset the password on
your account .”
Complex and VIP questions that can
only be answered by a human.
“Sorry to hear you’re not happy with your plan .
How can I help?”
Known questions that can be answered
pre-emptively using targeted content.
“Our website will be down for planned
maintenance this weekend .”
Inquiries that can
be anticipated
VIP inquiries
Inquiries that can be
resolved using automation
Complex inquiries
requiring human support
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Resolve complex
and VIP queries with
human support
Despite the advances in modern
technology, many support teams
still focus most of their valuable time
and resources on human support .
They’re in the trenches answering
as many questions as possible and
closing tickets as fast as they can to
meet their KPIs . Unfortunately, this
reactive support approach requires
playing constant catch up with an
ever-increasing influx of queries .
With customer expectations of great
support at an all time high, this places
even further pressure on your team .
Human support is an essential part of
any successful support strategy, but
the reality is that it doesn’t scale and
it’s expensive to operate . Having your
team answer mundane or repetitive
questions isn’t the best use of their
time, resources, or talent .
When you optimize the
Conversational Support Funnel for
your team, self-serve and proactive
support will automatically take
care of the mundane and repetitive
questions . That leaves your team with
more hours and headspace to provide
real value to customers and resolve
critical queries – like messages
from VIP customers, emotionally-
charged complaints, and complex
troubleshooting issues . After all, not
even the best chatbot can help calm
an angry customer, investigate a
thorny issue, or build a rapport with
high value customers quite like your
team can .
The good news is that even with
human support your team doesn’t
have to go it alone . With the right
tools – like inbox automation,
messenger apps, and reporting – you
can make your human support more
efficient, personal, and even more
profitable . Here are our tips:
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Quickly get the customer details
you need in the inbox
With modern support tools, you can
use inbox automation to prioritize the
most important issues and route them
to the right support rep on your team,
so customers get the specialized help
they need the first time around . Once
an issue is routed to a rep, they can
step in to provide the customer with
an empathetic, thoughtful response .
With Intercom, you can quickly view
a customer’s profile in the inbox to
provide even faster, more personal
support . The profile includes rich
context about that customer, like what
plan they’re on, what company they
work for, and whether they’ve been
in touch before with a similar issue .
You can even track your customer’s
journey to see what actions they’ve
taken in your product and what pages
they’ve visited .
These personal details will help
you better understand who the
customer is and what their needs are,
without asking lots of introductory
questions, which as we all know can
be maddening for the customer .
Instead, you can get right to the heart
of addressing and resolving the issue
at hand .
“Through Intercom we can tell if the
person is an admin for a large paying
customer, a free user, a user who’s
about to convert, etc . Intercom knows
everything about our users, which helps
our team all get on the same page faster .”
– Jason Mills, Director of Sales and Success at Expensify
Pro tip: If you’re using Intercom
you can view both Intercom
and third-party data, like data
from Salesforce, Github, and
Stripe, right from the inbox.
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Provide faster help with
apps in the inbox
Many support teams have multiple
tools in their support tech stack,
like social media, call center, and
issue management tools . Switching
between various support tools
and channels can be a drain on
your team’s time and morale . It
also means customers need to
wait longer for help, which can
lead to frustration . Not the best for
your support team’s reputation!
By choosing a platform that can plug
into and play nicely with the other
tools in your stack, you’ll make your
support more efficient, powerful,
and ultimately more helpful for
customers . With Intercom, there are
lots of useful apps you can integrate
with and use right from the inbox to
streamline your support . For example:
• The Aircall app lets you start a
quick call with a customer from
the inbox . It provides a fast, easy,
and delightful experience for your
customers too as they can join the
call directly from the Messenger .
• Twitter and Facebook apps
automatically pull your direct social
media messages into the inbox .
Instead of your team spending
large chunks of their day frequently
checking social media channels, they
can manage these conversations
right from the inbox too .
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Measure and optimize the success
of your funnel with reporting
Peter Drucker said it best, “If
you can’t measure it, you can’t
improve it .” The same goes for your
Conversational Support Funnel .
Before you implement the funnel,
you’ll want to ensure you have the
right tools and success metrics to
quickly assess how it’s impacting
your team’s productivity, customers’
experience, and company’s bottom
line over time . At a minimum
we recommend tracking:
• Team efficiency metrics, like
conversation volume, response
times, and resolution rates .
• Customer experience metrics,
like CSAT (customer satisfaction)
score and customer retention .
We also highly recommend taking
your reporting one step further and
using it to discover how to optimize
the funnel to work better for your
team and customers . With Intercom,
you can use tag reports to spot trends
in the topics customers are writing in
about most . Then, you can feed these
conversational insights back into your
proactive and self-serve support to
provide your customers with faster,
more personal answers, while freeing
your team up with more time .
Pro tip: With modern support tools, like Intercom, it’s easy to identify what
questions customers are searching for most or frequently writing in with,
but can’t find. Then, you can go ahead and create these knowledge base
articles and bot answers using the exact words your customers typed.
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Empower customers to
help themselves with
self-serve support
Answering repetitive questions like
“How do I update my password?”
and “What’s your cancellation
policy?” can feel like Groundhog Day
for your team . Not only is it time-
consuming, it’s also a heavy drain on
your support team’s resources and
morale . So many support teams find
themselves in this scenario, where
they’re listening to the same customer
pain points and answering the same
simple questions over and over again .
No one wins when your team is
stuck answering simple, repetitive
questions – not even your customers .
The more conversations that pile up
in your support queue the longer all
of your customers will have to wait
for a response . That type of “good
enough” customer experience is no
longer good enough . Today’s modern
customers live in an on-demand
world where their every need and
whim can be met 24/7 – whether
that’s fast food, immediate news
updates, or same day deliveries .
When a customer has a simple query,
they’ll settle for nothing short of a
fast, accurate, personal response .
So, how do you satisfy your
customers’ need for speed and
efficiently manage repetitive
questions that take up so much of
your team’s time? One way to do this
is with automated bots that almost
instantly resolve your customers’
repetitive queries . Our research
shows that 50% of support leaders
plan to invest more in automation,
including chatbots, in the coming
year to increase the efficiency of their
support team . You can also empower
customers to help themselves with
contextual knowledge base content .
Self-serve support allows you to scale
your support and provide customers
with the fast answers they need,
without upping your headcount or
over-stretching your team . Here
are some key ways to automatically
support your customers:
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Instantly resolve simple, frequent
issues with chatbots
When a customer writes in with
a simple question, like “How do I
change my credit card details?”, they
expect a close-to-instant response .
You can use chatbots to automatically
resolve simple, frequent questions –
our data shows that chatbots speed
up response times by an average
of 3X, which significantly boosts
customer satisfaction .
With Intercom, you can use Resolution
Bot to speed up self-service even
further by surfacing relevant answers
based on what customers are typing –
before they even hit the enter key .
“Resolution Bot has been a
tremendous help to our team . Not
only has it helped us save 3,683
hours a month of customer time,
but it also enables rapid response to
unanticipated spikes in duplicative
customer inquiries without requiring
more personnel .”
– Gabriel Madureira, Senior Director of Growth
Operations and Web at MongoDB
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Chatbots are also the perfect way
to gather information about your
customers and triage them to the
right support team or rep based on
what they need . This means that when
customers write in with important,
complex queries they’ll get the right
person the first time around, rather
than being put on hold or passed
from rep to rep . It also speeds up
response times as support reps will
have the critical information they
need to resolve queries faster .
For example, our internal IT support
team recently started using Intercom’s
Custom Bots to ensure the right
types of questions were automatically
routed to the right specialists, so they
could resolve inbound queries faster .
The result? The team’s resolution time
dropped by a whopping 50%, which
translated to 39 minutes saved per
issue . Think of what your team could
do with that kind of extra time .
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Let customers help themselves with
contextual help articles
According to a recent Gartner study,
70% of customers use self-serve on
the path to resolution . It’s a simple
fact that some customers would
rather help themselves than talk to a
support rep at all . A well-crafted, SEO-
optimized knowledge base provides
the perfect solution for customers
who want to get the answers they
need ASAP . Of course, this also has
the added benefit of reducing your
team’s overall conversation volume .
With Intercom, you can take self-
serve one step further and highlight
important pieces of help content
upfront in the Messenger, like FAQs,
to help customers quickly find the
answers they need . Imagine how
grateful they’ll be when they don’t
need to write into support and wait
around for a response after all . For a
truly personal touch, you can even
surface tailored content to relevant
groups of customers, like those who
speak a specific language, who have
amassed a certain level of knowledge
in your product, or who are on a
certain plan . It’s the perfect way to
provide customers with the exact
answers they need at the precise
moment they need them .
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Stay ahead of known
issues with proactive
support
Proactive support is at the top of the
Conversational Support Funnel for a
reason – it’s your first line of defense .
Get it right and it can drastically
reduce the number of conversations
that reach your support team, all
while increasing customer satisfaction
and retention . So not only can you
take pressure off your team but you
can also demonstrate how support is
impacting your business’ bottom line .
The typical reactive support approach
is to let known issues roll in, which
can result in frustrated customers
and an unnecessary stream of
queries . With proactive support, you
can prevent these questions from
arising in the first place by providing
customers with the right help, at
the right moment . For example, you
can send outbound messages to
specific groups of customers to alert
them to known issues, like bugs in
your product or delivery delays, and
provide help upfront . You can also
onboard and educate new customers,
so they’re set up for success with your
product from day one and have all of
the information they need to navigate
known issues .
In many ways proactive support is the
Holy Grail of customer support . So
why do many of us simply accept this
kind of customer interaction should
be the sole domain of marketing or
product teams? Our conversations
with support leaders show there’s a
real appetite for that to change . In a
recent survey we found that 78% of
support leaders want to move from a
reactive to a proactive approach with
their support, but only 26% are sure
they have the knowledge and tools
to do so . Here are our tips for making
proactive support a reality:
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Onboard and educate customers
Acquiring new customers is always a
reason to celebrate . But the reality is
that while new customers are learning
the ropes of how to use your product
or service they can require quite a bit
of handholding . Their questions are
often directed at your busy support
team, which can clog up your support
queue . What if, instead, you could
automatically onboard and educate
your customers in the hundreds and
thousands so they’re empowered to
help themselves right off the bat?
Giving customers proactive guidance
from the outset not only increases
customer satisfaction and retention,
it also helps keep them out of
the support inbox . It’s a win-win!
For example, you could set up a
product tour or mobile carousel to
automatically walk new customers
through how to set up and configure
your product, get value upfront, and
navigate known pain points .
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Alert customers to known problems
No matter how diligent your business
is, day-to-day issues can occur with
your product or service that can
severely affect your customers . Think
product outages, website downtime,
bugs, delays with delivery – all those
mission critical issues that can
frustrate your customers and wipe
out your team’s entire day . Instead of
waiting for a flood of issues to come
rushing in for your team to address,
you can proactively send an outbound
message to flag the issue and provide
help upfront .
At Intercom, we recommend using
mostly in-app messages for your
proactive support, so you can reach
customers in context while they’re
using your product or browsing your
website . You can also send emails
and/or mobile push messages for
critical updates that simply cannot
wait . Whatever message type you
choose, don't message all of your
customers at once . Instead, segment
your customer base and send tailored
messages based on who your
customers are and the actions they’ve
taken . For example, if you’ve recently
experienced a vulnerability with your
Premium product you could message
your Premium customers who logged
in less than 10 days .
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Display key information
in the messenger
Another way to flag important
information is within the messenger
itself . Then, when a customer opens
the messenger they can see any
critical updates that require their
immediate attention, like if delivery
times are delayed or if there’s an issue
with your product . If a customer finds
the answers they need upfront they
won’t need to write in to your support
team after all, saving both themselves
and your support team valuable time .
“Using Intercom apps, we’ve been able
to increase visibility around our uptime
and scheduled maintenance for our
customers . Providing this transparency
reduces inbound conversation volume by
allowing customers to view current issues
we may be experiencing .”
– Diana Ruth, VP of Customer Success and Support at Guru
Pro tip: If you’re using Intercom,
you can use the Featured
Content app to surface important
updates or the Statuspage app
to display your product’s health
status in the Messenger.
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Recap: When to choose
human, self-serve, and
proactive support
To sum up, human, self-serve, and
proactive support excel at different
tasks . Each part of the funnel helps
your team achieve different goals .
As you can see, all levels of the funnel
lead to better team efficiency and
customer relationships .
Where humans win
• Managing complex questions
• Solving technical problems
• Managing high value accounts
• Handling emotionally charged
conversations
• Automatically resolving
common questions
• Reducing hold times
• Quick routing to the right place
• Reducing conversation volume
• Pre-emptively answering known
questions
• Educating customers on your product
• Flagging critical issues and updates
• Reducing conversation volume
Where self-serve support wins
Better team eiciency and customer relationships
Where proactive support wins
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The Conversational Support Funnel Starter Kit
Part 3
Six ways to optimize
your funnel
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PART 3: SIX WAYS TO OPTIMIZE YOUR FUNNEL
1. No support team
is an island: partner
cross-functionally
Providing a great customer
experience shouldn’t lie solely in
the hands of your support team .
You don’t have to implement every
single element of the Conversational
Support Funnel alone . In fact, the
funnel works best when you partner
with and get buy-in from key teams in
your organization . For example:
• If your company has a support ops team make sure
to partner with them, so they can set up and optimize
your bots and automation for maximum efficiency .
Our Support Ops team handles all of our automation
at Intercom . Even as our business has scaled, they’ve
managed to save a ton on support costs, while
maintaining a high satisfaction rating with our customers .
• Send on known issues and bugs to your product team so
they can proactively fix them .
• If another team, like marketing, owns outbound
messaging, join forces with them to proactively reach
customers and address known pain points before they
have questions .
• Align with sales to establish hand-off points for sales
conversations, so you can provide a seamless transition
for your customers . With Intercom’s Custom Bots you
can also route sales conversations to your sales teams,
so they bypass your support team altogether .
Support Ops Sales

















Marketing Prod
uct
Customer
experience
Support
Pro tip: Choose a platform (like Intercom ) that
allows you to build conversational relationships
across the entire customer lifecycle, spanning
marketing, product, and support.
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2. Set meaningful
metrics that move the
needle
In some businesses there’s still a
perception that customer support is
just a “cost center .” Convincing the
powers that be to invest in better,
more efficient customer support
is hard when you’re fighting that
misconception . Even though you
know your support team influences
customer loyalty and retention, it can
be difficult to quantify .
The good news is that the
Conversational Support Funnel helps
you directly influence and prove
bottom-line business results . We
recommend getting together with
key customer-facing teams in your
company, like marketing, product,
and sales, and setting collective
bottom-line goals to work towards –
think customer retention, customer
renewals, and upsells .
– Tom Ronen, Head of Customer Success at monday.com
“We’re seeing a big motion
across all businesses on how
an amazing customer service
experience drives loyalty
overall .”
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3. Identify known
customer pain points
and FAQs
It’s no secret that most support teams
are incredibly busy managing day-to-
day reactive conversations . You may
be wondering how you’ll have time to
identify common customer questions
and pain points, so you can begin
solving them with self-serve and
proactive support . Here are our tips
for the quickest, most effective path
to gaining valuable customer insights:
• Tag customer conversations to
identify known customer pain points
and feature requests . Then, pull this
data into a spreadsheet to create a
voice of customer report and share
it with key teams you’re working
with . For example, you can use these
insights to create your next proactive
outbound message .
• If you’re an Intercom customer you
can use Articles and Resolution Bot
insights to spot trends in what topics
customers are searching for most, but
can’t find . This can help you identify
the most helpful knowledge base
articles and bot answers to write next .
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4. Create relevant
content to help
customers at key
moments
One of the best ways to increase your
team’s efficiency is to create relevant,
engaging help content that addresses
your customers’ most pressing pain
points and frequent questions . To
answer as many of your customers’
questions as possible, we recommend
creating a variety of article types,
including FAQs, getting started
articles, and troubleshooting tips .
Discoverability is also key for helping
customers quickly find the answers
they need, at the exact moment they
need them . These tips will help:
• Optimize your articles to satisfy your
customers’ search intent so they can
easily find an answer with a quick
online search .
• Deliver help content in context . For
example, you can add articles to
your targeted outbound messages
to expand on important instructions,
or send an article through the inbox
when a customer requires a longer
answer .
• Create tailored content and deliver
it to specific types of customers
based on their needs, such as their
language, plan type, or company size .
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5. It’s personal:
embrace bots and
automation
Despite the positive stats, there’s still
a fear among some support teams
that bots and automation could make
their support feel “impersonal .” The
reality is bots and automation can
(and should be) deeply personal –
you just need the right tools and
approach . In the modern era of
automation, the most personal thing
you can do is respect your customers’
time and get them an answer as
quickly as possible, in context . Here
are our tips:
• Provide proactive help in context .
Always help customers based on
who they are and what they need .
For example, you can make your
proactive outbound messages,
product tours, and bots as targeted
as possible using customer data
like plan type, account spend, and
company size .
• Use assignment rules to
automatically route conversations
to the right support team or rep
based on personalized factors, such
as message keywords, page URL,
account spend, and more .
• Use a modern bot, like Resolution
Bot, to resolve customers’ questions
immediately – sometimes before
they even finish typing .
Impersonal support automation
Personal support automation
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6. Set your team up for
success
Optimizing your Conversational
Support Funnel isn’t just about
efficiency gains and keeping your
customers happy . Don’t lose sight
of your team’s job satisfaction and
morale too . None of this would be
possible without them . To set your
modern support team up for success
you’ll need to give them the tools,
training, and support they require to
deliver exceptional customer service
and stay satisfied in their roles . For
example:
• Make sure you have the right
tools to implement and optimize
the funnel in your company . For
maximum efficiency and cost
savings, choose a platform that’s
easy to adopt and allows you to
manage all elements of the funnel
from one place . The good news is
that you can achieve everything in
this guide with Intercom .
• Ask your team what meaningful
work they’d like to do with the extra
time they’ll have . Would they like to
manage the proactive side of your
support, for example?
• Consider dedicating specialized
roles that allow your team to focus
on critical business areas .
• Managing high value, complex
queries requires a specialized
touch . Make sure to provide your
team with the training and support
they need to resolve complex and
commercial conversations .
Traditional customer
support role
Modern customer
support role
• Viewed as a value driver
• Focused primarily on resolving VIP
and complex queries
• Opportunity for career growth and
specialization
• Opportunity to expand to proactive
support and learn new skills
• Partners closely with product,
marketing, and sales
• Viewed as a cost center
• Focused primarily on
answering repetitive queries
• Lack of career growth
opportunities
• Solely focused on reactive
support
• Works as a silo
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The Conversational Support Funnel Starter Kit
Part 4
Worksheet: Manage
every conversation with
efficiency and empathy
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PART 4: ORKSHEET: MANAGE EVERY CONVERSATION WITH EFFICIENCY AND EMPATHY
Many support teams are worried
that by adopting a messenger-
based support approach they’ll
open the support floodgates . The
Conversational Support Funnel allows
you to scale your messenger-based
approach and resolve each customer
question with efficiency, empathy, and
ease .
If you’re experiencing a high volume
of conversations you may be
wondering how to begin addressing
them within the funnel . We’ve created
this Coda worksheet to help you
manage different conversation types
quickly and personally . Here’s a sneak
peek at what the worksheet looks like:
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PART 4: ORKSHEET: MANAGE EVERY CONVERSATION WITH EFFICIENCY AND EMPATHY
Make the most of the
worksheet
We’re aware that every type of
business is unique and so are your
customers’ needs . You can tailor the
worksheet to make it work best for
your team in five simple steps:
1. First make a copy of the worksheet . This is just an
example of how you can manage your different types
of customer questions . Use it as your North Star,
but make sure to tweak it based on your customers’
needs and the tools you have in your tech stack .
2. Appoint a dedicated tiger team to set up the worksheet
and implement your Conversational Support Funnel .
Ideally, this will be a group of people on your team
who have a strong working knowledge of your
customers’ needs and an appetite for career growth .
3. Have your tiger team document your customers’
most common questions and pain points . If in doubt,
reviewing your latest voice of customer report will help .
4. For every customer question, fill in the dedicated
box in each column . You’ll answer these questions:
• Is it a frequent query?
• Is it complex? Remember, complex queries are those
that are emotionally charged, require strong problem-
solving skills, and high priority conversations .
• Where does it belong in the funnel? If in doubt,
section 2 of this guide will help you figure this out .
• What tactic should you use? Again, section 2 of this
guide will help you choose the perfect tactic to address
each question in the most efficient, personal way .
• What are your success metrics?
5. Finally, once you’ve approved the worksheet, you’re
ready to implement your Conversational Support
Funnel . Don’t forget to report back on the success
of the funnel to the powers that be . They’ll be
particularly interested in knowing how your support
team is moving the needle on customer loyalty
and retention, along with any efficiency gains .
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PART 4: ORKSHEET: MANAGE EVERY CONVERSATION WITH EFFICIENCY AND EMPATHY
Scale your conversational
support with Intercom
At this stage you’re probably excited to implement the
Conversational Support Funnel in your company, so
you can start providing customers with the modern,
personal, convenient experience they expect and free
your team up to take on even more meaningful work .
The great news is you can achieve everything
in this guide with Intercom . Interested in trying
Intercom to create the most efficient, personal
support funnel in the business? Learn all about our
Support solution and how to get started here .