If your support team is bigger than a handful of folks, managing tickets in Intercom can get messy, fast. Maybe you’ve got dozens of agents, multiple shifts, and a backlog that’s always threatening to spiral. This guide is for support leads, ops folks, and team managers who need to actually keep things moving—not just check some “best practices” box.
Let’s get into the nitty-gritty of running support tickets in Intercom when your team is too big for sticky notes and Slack threads.
1. Get Your Inbox Structure Right (Don’t Skip This)
When you’ve got a large team, a single chaotic inbox is a recipe for missed tickets and finger-pointing. Intercom’s “inboxes” (think: shared folders) are your first line of defense.
How to set it up: - Split by function, not just product. For example, one inbox for “Billing,” another for “Technical Issues,” and one for “VIP Customers.” Don’t try to squeeze everything into one place. - Use rules, not manual sorting. Set up Intercom’s assignment rules so tickets land in the right inbox automatically. Don’t rely on humans to drag stuff around—nobody has time for that. - Limit the number of inboxes. Too many, and your team gets lost. Too few, and you’re back to chaos. Aim for 3–8, max.
Pro tip:
If you find yourself with an inbox called “Miscellaneous” that’s always full, that’s a sign your categories aren’t specific enough.
2. Assignment Rules: Automate the Mundane
Manual ticket triage doesn’t scale. The bigger your team, the more critical it is to automate as much as possible.
What works: - Autoresponders for common questions. Use Intercom’s bots to handle FAQs or gather basic info before a human jumps in. - Round-robin assignments. Set up rules so tickets are distributed evenly among available agents, not just whoever’s online at the moment. - Skills-based routing. If your team has specialists (e.g., billing pros vs. tech support), set assignment rules by topic or tag.
What doesn’t: - Relying on “first come, first serve.” This always ends with some agents drowning and others twiddling their thumbs. - Overcomplicating with too many rules. Keep it simple. If you need a flowchart to explain it, you’ve gone too far.
3. Use Tags and Custom Fields (But Don’t Overdo It)
Tags and custom fields can help you slice and dice your tickets for reporting, trend-spotting, or follow-up. But too many, and nobody uses them well.
Best practices: - Agree on a shortlist of tags. Make a shared doc. Stick to it. Examples: “bug,” “feature-request,” “refund.” - Use custom fields for structured data. E.g., “Urgency,” “Product Area,” or “Customer Tier.” This makes reporting less painful later. - Automate tagging where possible. Use bots or rules to tag tickets based on keywords or customer data.
What to ignore: - Don’t tag everything. If a tag isn’t driving a process or report, drop it.
4. Set (and Actually Use) SLAs
If you don’t have clear service level agreements (SLAs), tickets will rot in the inbox and everyone gets grumpy.
How to do it in Intercom: - Set up SLA timers. For example, “First response within 2 hours for VIPs, 8 hours for everyone else.” - Make SLAs visible. Use Intercom’s features or internal dashboards to show which tickets are about to breach. - Hold the team accountable. Not in a “Big Brother” way, but do call out patterns and fix the root causes.
What doesn’t work: - Secret SLAs. If agents don’t know the target, they can’t hit it. - SLAs nobody believes in. If your “one-hour response” promise is fiction, fix your staffing or change the SLA.
5. Triage: The Forgotten Superpower
Triage isn’t glamorous, but it’s critical. Have a dedicated person or group sort incoming tickets before they hit the main team.
How to make it work: - Rotate triage duty. Don’t burn out your best people. Rotate daily or weekly. - Triage in the morning and after lunch. Don’t let the queue pile up for hours. - Empower triagers. They should be able to assign tickets, send quick responses, or escalate urgent stuff.
Pro tip:
If your triage person is always overloaded, you probably need more of them, or better automation.
6. Don’t Treat All Tickets Equally
Some requests are urgent; most aren’t. But if everything’s “high priority,” nothing is.
How to prioritize: - Use customer data. Intercom lets you pull in info like account value, plan type, or past issues. - Mark urgent tickets clearly. Use tags, custom fields, or color codes. - Set up “VIP” alerts. Make it obvious when a big customer needs help.
Ignore: - The urge to make every ticket a fire drill. It’s not sustainable, and your team will tune out.
7. Collaboration Features: Use (But Don’t Abuse) Notes and Mentions
Intercom lets agents leave notes or @-mention teammates for help. This is great—until it turns into a chat room.
What works: - Use notes for context only. E.g., “Customer has tried rebooting twice.” - @-mention rarely. Only loop in others when you need their input, not just to pass the buck. - Summarize before escalating. Don’t make the next agent read the whole thread—leave a quick TL;DR.
What doesn’t: - Chit-chat or venting in ticket notes. Keep it actionable.
8. Reporting: Track What Matters (And Ignore Vanity Metrics)
Intercom’s reporting is pretty good, but don’t get seduced by dashboards for their own sake.
Focus on these: - Response and resolution times. Are you hitting your SLAs? - Reopen rates. Do customers have to come back for the same issue? - Top issues by tag or type. Where are you spending the most effort?
Skip or limit: - “Number of tickets handled.” It rewards speed over quality. - “Customer satisfaction” on its own. Dig into the why, not just the score.
9. Training: Document Everything, Then Keep It Updated
Big teams mean lots of turnover and new folks. Written processes keep things running when you’re not in the room.
Best practices: - Create one source of truth. Store guides, macros, and policies somewhere everyone can access. - Keep canned replies relevant. Review them monthly. Outdated responses waste everyone’s time. - Make it easy to ask for help. New hires should know who to ping, and how.
10. Don’t Be Afraid to Change What’s Not Working
Here’s the honest truth: what works for 10 agents probably won’t work for 30. Intercom adds new features, your team changes, and your customers’ needs shift.
How to iterate: - Review your setup quarterly. What’s causing confusion? Where are tickets getting stuck? - Ask the team for feedback. They know where the pain is. - Don’t wait for disaster. Tweak things before they break.
Keep It Simple, Ship It, and Tweak As You Go
Managing support tickets in Intercom for a big team is never “set and forget.” The best setups are simple enough to survive real-world chaos, but flexible enough to evolve. Don’t waste time chasing the perfect workflow—get the basics right, keep talking to your team, and change what isn’t working. That’s how you keep the inbox (and your sanity) under control.