Introduction

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In today's fast-paced business environment, efficient customer engagement and support are crucial. Enter Intercom, a versatile customer messaging platform designed to help businesses better interact with their customers. A standout feature of Intercom is Intercom Articles, a powerful tool that allows businesses to create and manage an extensive knowledge base. With Intercom Articles, you can write, organize, and publish self-service help articles, enabling customers to find answers to their questions quickly. This not only reduces support ticket volume but also enhances the customer experience by delivering relevant content when and where it’s needed.

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Who is Intercom for

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Intercom is ideal for businesses looking to streamline their customer support processes and improve customer engagement. The platform is particularly beneficial for:

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• Customer Support Teams: Looking to provide efficient and effective self-service options for customers.
• Customer Success Managers: Aiming to enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty through timely information dissemination.
• Product Managers: Wanting to offer comprehensive product documentation that users can easily access.
• Marketing Teams: Needing a platform to engage with customers and provide valuable content.
• Small to Medium Enterprises (SMEs): That require an affordable and scalable solution to manage customer interactions.

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Key features

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Intercom is packed with features that enhance its functionality and user experience:

• Intercom Articles: Easily create, manage, and publish help articles to build a robust knowledge base.
• Customizable and Searchable Content: Organize articles using tags and categories, making content easily searchable for users.
• Widgets and In-App Messaging: Deploy in-app messages and widgets to guide users directly to relevant articles.
• Analytics: Track the performance of articles to understand what content is resonating with your audience and where improvements are needed.
• Multi-Language Support: Provide help articles in multiple languages to support a global customer base.
• User Feedback Collection: Integrated tools to collect user feedback on articles, allowing for continuous content improvement.
• Seamless Integration with Other Intercom Tools: Enhance functionalities with Intercom’s broader suite of tools such as live chat, automated messaging, and more.

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Best use cases

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Intercom Articles excel in various scenarios across different teams and industries:

• Customer Support: Reducing the volume of support tickets by providing users with a self-service option for common queries and troubleshooting.
• Product Onboarding: Streamlining new user onboarding by offering step-by-step guides and tutorials through articles.
• E-commerce: Helping customers understand products and services better through detailed product descriptions, FAQs, and usage tips.
• SaaS Companies: Offering technical documentation and how-to guides to ensure customers can effectively use the software.
• Healthcare: Providing patients with easily accessible information on common health issues and treatment options.
• Education: Allowing students to access course materials, tutorials, and FAQs to support their learning process.

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Getting started

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1. Sign Up or Log In to Intercom: Visit the Intercom website, sign up for an account, or log in if you already have one.

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1. Navigate to Articles: From the dashboard, access the ‘Articles’ section where you can start creating your knowledge base.

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1. Create Your First Article:

    a. Click on ‘New Article’.

    b. Enter a title and content for your article.

    c. Use the editor to format text, add images, videos, and links.

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1. Organize Your Content:

    a. Categorize and tag your articles for easy navigation.

    b. Create collections to group related articles together.

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1. Publish Your Articles: Once your article is ready, click on ‘Publish’. You can also schedule articles to be published at a later date.

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1. Promote Your Articles:
   • Embed links to your articles in response templates.
   • Use in-app messages to guide users to relevant articles.
   • Share articles via email campaigns.

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1. Analyze Performance: Use the analytics dashboard to monitor the performance of your articles, such as views, helpfulness ratings, and user feedback.

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Tips and best practices

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• Regular Updates: Keep your articles up-to-date to ensure information is current and accurate.
• User-Friendly Titles: Use clear and concise titles that reflect the content of the article.
• SEO Optimization: Optimize articles for search engines by including relevant keywords and meta descriptions.
• Multimedia Use: Enhance articles with images, videos, and other media to make content more engaging and easier to understand.
• Feedback Integration: Regularly review user feedback to improve the quality and usefulness of your articles.
• Consistency: Maintain a consistent tone and style across all your articles to provide a cohesive user experience.

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Integration with Guru

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Integrating Intercom with Guru leverages the strengths of both platforms to further streamline customer support and knowledge management processes. Guru is an Enterprise AI search solution that helps connect scattered company information from various sources.

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• Unified Knowledge Base: Combining Guru’s AI search capabilities with Intercom Articles allows you to create a comprehensive, unified knowledge base.
• Enhanced Search Features: Guru’s AI can understand natural language and context, offering precise and relevant search results from your Intercom Articles.
• Permission Preservation: Guru ensures that only authorized users can access sensitive information, thus preserving source permissions while accessing data from Intercom.
• Proactive Suggestions: Guru’s AI proactively delivers relevant articles from Intercom to users based on their activities and queries, enhancing support efficiency.
• Continuous Learning: Through integrated feedback loops, Guru learns from interactions to continually improve its search accuracy and relevance.

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Conclusion

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Intercom Articles is an indispensable tool for businesses looking to improve their customer support and engagement strategies. By providing a robust knowledge base, Intercom Articles empowers customers to find answers quickly and independently, reducing the strain on support teams and enhancing the overall customer experience.

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Whether you are in customer support, product management, marketing, or are part of a small to medium-sized enterprise, Intercom Articles offers a scalable solution to meet your needs. And with the added integration with Guru’s sophisticated AI search capabilities, the potential to enhance productivity and streamline knowledge access is exponential.

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Consider adopting Intercom Articles today and integrate it with Guru to take your customer engagement and support processes to the next level. Try it out and experience the transformative benefits for yourself.