Topic
17 facts from 1 episode, in date order. These are what speakers said on the shows, each linked to the moment it was said. They aren't independently verified.
2011
Intercom was founded in 2011 and, according to the episode introduction, its products operate within 25,000 businesses including Amazon, Lyft and Atlassian.
“The business was founded in 2011 and their products operate with 25,000 businesses, including the likes of Amazon, Lyft, and Atlassian.”
2011
Intercom's stated mission since 2011 has been to 'make internet business personal'.
“Our mission from 2011 has been make internet business personal, and that's really what we're about.”
2016
Des Traynor says Intercom began experimenting with AI in 2016 and has had AI products on the market since.
“We have dabbled in AI since 2016. We've had AI products live in market.”
2022
Intercom released its first ChatGPT-era AI feature in beta in December and announced it publicly in January; it assisted human support agents.
“Well, we had our first release in beta in December, and then we talked about it publicly in January.”
2022
Des Traynor says Intercom began working on its AI response about fourteen hours after ChatGPT was released.
“I think, like fourteen hours after ChatGPT dropped, we were able to go, and we started working on it.”
2023
Intercom launched the customer-facing Fin bot in beta in March and made it generally available around late May or early June.
“We launched that in beta in March, then we went to general availability, I think, in late May or early June.”
2023
Des Traynor says some Intercom customers saw their support volume fall by 50% after using Fin.
“We've seen customers see 50% of their support volume drop.”
2023
Des Traynor says Intercom handles about 20,000 support conversations a month, roughly a quarter million a year.
“If you take intercom, we do 20,000 support conversations a month, so about a quarter million a year.”
2023
Intercom released a bot buyer's guide to help customers tell apart AI support bots that look similar in simple tests.
“And even yesterday, we released a bot buyer's guide because we're trying to teach customers about these differences.”
2023
Des Traynor says Fin had been available to all Intercom customers for only about eight weeks at the time of recording.
“And then ultimately, we've only really been live to literally everyone, I think about eight weeks.”
2023
Intercom planned a feature in which Fin writes its own knowledge snippets by learning from a company's past conversations.
“We will very shortly have live in market this Fin generated snippets feature where Fin will read your entire conversational context for your business going all the way back.”
2023
Intercom charges 99 cents per resolution for Fin, and Des Traynor attributes the price to the cost of GPT-4.
“So GPT four is expensive, and as a result, Fin is perceived to be expensive. We charge ninety nine cents a resolution.”
2023
Des Traynor says summarizing all of Intercom's roughly 500 million monthly conversations in real time would be unaffordable at current model prices.
“To give you a simple example, summarize every conversation in real time as they happen. We have 500 million conversations a month. That would bankrupt us.”
2023
Intercom offers a separate product called Custom Answers for sensitive topics where exact wording must be controlled.
“I can tell you what we do in Intercom is we have a separate product to Fin called Custom Answers.”
Undated
Before ChatGPT, Intercom had a live automated support product called Resolution Bot.
“We'd been dabbling in AI for years. We had a live product called Resolution Bot, et cetera.”
Undated
Intercom publishes a public changes page showing how frequently its product team releases updates.
“If you go to Intercom dot com slash changes, you'll see the rate of release from our product team.”
Undated
Des Traynor says he met both his wife and Intercom CEO Owen at the same meetup, which Owen had organized.
“I met my wife at the same meetup that own had organized, where I met him for the first time.”
Episodes