What do you do when you’ve heard the same feature requests from customers time and time again? Do you just build the darned thing to appease them? In these situations, we’re all probably trained to deeply understand the user’s problem first. But just how far should we go down this rabbit hole, and what good does it actually do? What results does it yield? In this talk, Cindy will explain how her team designed and built key features in Intercom’s Respond product that began as simple customer requests yet ended up far beyond their origins.

1. How we built stuff
nobody asked for
Cindy Chang

2. Cindy Chang
Senior Product Designer at Intercom
@cindyjchang

4. Our mission is to make
internet business personal

5. You Your customer

6. You Your customer

7. You Your customer

10. Support teams need a simple and
consistent way to understand
how well they’re helping their
customers
PROBLEM

11. Automated invitation at the end
of a conversation asking customer
to rate how it went
Messenger & email, multichannel
Ratings / teammate over time
SOLUTION

12. Automated invitation at the end
of a conversation asking customer
to rate how it went
Messenger & email, multichannel
Ratings / teammate over time
SOLUTION

13. Automated invitation at the end
of a conversation asking customer
to rate how it went
Messenger & email, multichannel
Ratings / teammate over time
SOLUTION

14. Automated invitation at the end
of a conversation asking customer
to rate how it went
Messenger & email, multichannel
Ratings / teammate over time
SOLUTION

15. Automated invitation at the end
of a conversation asking customer
to rate how it went
Messenger & email, multichannel
Ratings / teammate over time
SOLUTION

16. Automated invitation at the end
of a conversation asking customer
to rate how it went
Messenger & email, multichannel
Ratings / teammate over time
SOLUTION

17. Automated invitation at the end
of a conversation asking customer
to rate how it went
Messenger & email, multichannel
Ratings / teammate over time
SOLUTION

18. Positive adoption and
continuous growth since release
Messenger engagement rate
54% vs 30% target
Email engagement rate
20% vs 20% target
RESULTS

21. Hi - Do you have
customer
surveys?
Can you enable
ratings on your
chats?
hello, do you support an
nps style measurement on
intercom
Do you have
any suggestions to measure
whether customers were
satisfied with our response?
Can users who spoke with us receive a last
question, if they were happy with the way they
were helped? Like thumbs up/ down or with smileys
Can we send a message
like "Please click the
emoji that best describes
your support experience”
I want to set up automatic
feedback survey to have
our members rate their
satisfaction with our
support team.
Why is
not possible
to have Users
leave a score for the chat
they just had, 1-10,
smiley or similar...?
How do I activate the option to
rate your response
inside our
Intercom?
Do you have a CSAT
rating feature to
measure customer
satisfaction?

22. What does it mean to
look beyond the request
and really understand
the problem?

23. What does it mean to
look beyond the request
and really understand
the problem?

24. What does it mean to
look beyond the request
and really understand
the problem?

27. ways we work

28. Design from first principles
Think big, start small
Ship to learn
Build the team on open and over communication
Design for emotions to win hearts and minds

29. Design from first principles

35. Think big, start small

47. ship to learn

55. *Other support tools
*

56. *

57. *

63. Help Intercom understand
how they’re doing.
Rate your conversation.

64. Help Intercom understand
how they’re doing.
Rate your conversation.

65. Help Intercom understand
how they’re doing.
Rate your conversation.

69. Build the team on
open and over
communication

78. Design for emotions to
win hearts and minds

84. How might we deliver
positive feedback to teammates
in an immediate way and
celebrate their successes?

86. Lightweight and ephemeral. Fun and unexpected.
Don’t distract or get in the way of work.
No counters. Be positive and celebratory, not stressful.
PRINCIPLES

95. Design from first principles
Think big, start small
Ship to learn
Build the team on open and over communication
Design for emotions to win hearts and minds

98. Thanks!
@cindyjchang