Intercom Glossary 101

At Journey Mapper, we’ve been hard at work setting up Intercom’s market-leading AI service agent, Fin, optimising resolutions and trialling new features like Fin Tasks. It works, and it’s amazing! It’s always on, communicates in any language, and dramatically reduces support volume.

As Intercom rapidly develops Fin, new capabilities and naming conventions continue to emerge. So we’ve put together a quick guide to both new and familiar terms.

If you’re preparing for Fin, looking to optimise its resolutions, or just exploring how to ready your business and content for Agentic service, we’re running a “Preparing for Agentic Service and Optimising Fin” webinar later in May. You can pre-register here: https://www.linkedin.com/events/7325441602892554240/ 

General Intercom Terms

Conversations – A conversation begins when a customer sends a message and an agent replies. It can be initiated by a customer, lead, or teammate. You’ll find conversations in your Intercom inbox; users and leads see them in Intercom Messenger.

Tags, Topics, Categories, Attributes - 

• Tags are conversation labels applied manually by agents (or automatically by workflows) that help identify and group conversations by issues, and can route them to specific teams.

• Conversation Topics use defined keywords to categorise conversations. You can retroactively apply these to report on conversation trends. Machine learning will now even suggest which topics to apply. 

• AI Category Detection uses machine learning to automatically categorise conversations based on content. Similar to conversation topics but automatic and still in Beta. 

• Custom Attributes are structured fields you define to track things like priority, user group, or issue type.

Macros – A macro is a saved response to common questions that agents can send with one click. It can also trigger actions like tagging, assigning, snoozing, or closing a conversation. Perfect for repetitive tasks, and agents can personalise them for their workflow.

Copilot – Copilot is your AI assistant in the inbox, generating expert responses from your support content. It helps with training, troubleshooting, and faster replies—making your team more efficient.

Proactive Support – Includes tools like product tours (interactive guides that onboard users), as well as surveys, news, mobile push, and outbound messages—designed to guide users before they need help.

Help Center Terms

Help Center – is your public knowledge base where collections of articles explain your product. Each article is integrated with Intercom Messenger, so customers can get help or start a conversation if the article doesn’t resolve their issue.

Knowledge / Content – A centralized system for managing all support content in Intercom. It powers AI agents, human teams, and self-service resources.

Articles – are core content pieces that answer customer questions, offer product guidance, and share best practices. Articles live in Help Center collections.

Snippets – Small pieces of internal information not meant for public view, but that Fin can use to improve answer quality. Examples: specific bugs or sections of larger documents you don’t want to share fully.

Custom Answers – Short, predefined responses to specific questions. Fin uses your exact wording and prioritises Custom Answers over AI-generated ones, which is ideal for ensuring accuracy and consistency on frequent topics. Likely to be rolled into workflows/tasks at some point. 

Messenger – The Intercom Messenger sits on your website or app, letting users chat in real time and access their conversation history. It includes spaces for messages, tickets, help, news, and tasks.

Fin AI Agent Terms

Fin AI Agent – Fin understands customer questions, searches across your sources, and responds accurately based on your data and rules. It works across all platforms and channels.

Fin Guidance – Custom instructions that coach Fin on tone, policies, and how to respond. While your content provides depth, Guidance fine tunes Fin’s behaviour for your unique business context.

Workflows – Automations that combine customer-facing messages with internal actions (assigning, tagging, etc.). Workflows are your automation control center, including when and how Fin is activated.

Custom Actions / Data Connectors – No-code integrations that allow Fin to fetch live data and trigger processes in tools like Shopify, Salesforce, Stripe, or Jira. Useful for actions like sending order updates or syncing requests to other systems.

Fin Tasks (Coming Soon) – Automates complex workflows with Fin, such as cancelling orders or issuing refunds. Tasks follow natural language definitions and guide Fin step-by-step, providing a conversational and rule-based experience for customers.

Fin Vision – Lets customers show rather than tell. Fin can read and understand images like screenshots, invoices, or error messages, reducing back-and-forth and speeding up issue resolution.

Fin Voice (Coming Soon) – AI-powered phone support designed for natural conversations. Fin Voice can answer calls, resolve complex issues, and route to humans when necessary.