Skip to main content
Messenger conversations are the primary channel for the Intercom integration. When a customer opens Intercom’s and sends a message, OpenCX picks it up via webhook, generates an AI reply, and posts it back as the AI admin. If the AI can’t resolve, it hands off to your team in the same Intercom thread.

​
Pre-requisites

Connect your Intercom workspace first. The AI has nothing to respond to until the webhook is active — start with Connect Intercom and come back here.

​
How conversations land in Intercom

​
Setting up

1

Confirm the Messenger is live

Open a page where Intercom’s Messenger is installed and send a test message. You should see the AI respond within a few seconds.
2

Confirm the webhook is receiving events

In your Intercom Developer Hub, check the webhook activity log. Recent deliveries should show 2xx responses. If you see failures, re-copy the webhook URL from Settings → Integrations.
3

Trigger a test handoff

Send a message like “I want to talk to a human” in the Messenger. The AI should hand off the conversation — you’ll see an internal handoff note and the conversation moved to your team’s queue.
4

Verify the rep reply loop

Pick up the handed-off conversation in your Intercom inbox. Reply as an agent — the message should land in the visitor’s Messenger within a couple of seconds.
If the AI doesn’t reply, check that the conversation is assigned to the AI admin and that Autopilot is enabled for the web channel.

​
What the rep sees

  • The conversation appears in their Intercom inbox like any other Messenger chat.
  • The full AI-to-visitor transcript is already in the thread — no separate tool to check.
  • An internal handoff note with summary, sentiment, and language.
  • opencx_handed_off tag on the conversation for filtering views and reports.
  • Replies typed in the Intercom inbox land back in the visitor’s Messenger within a couple of seconds.

​
Channel-specific details

OpenCX waits approximately 4 seconds after the first message before processing. This gives Intercom time to finalize the conversation assignment and apply any automation rules. Subsequent messages in the same conversation are processed immediately.
Images customers send in Messenger are extracted from the HTML body, downloaded from Intercom’s CDN, and uploaded to OpenCX storage. The AI can reference them in its reasoning. If an image download fails, a placeholder attachment is added instead.
If your Intercom workflows set custom attributes on conversations after creation (e.g. via bots or rules), configure the custom attribute delay in settings. OpenCX re-fetches attributes after the configured delay to capture values set by your automations. Max 10 seconds.
Conversations initiated by Intercom outbound messages, templates, or bots (where the source is not customer_initiated) are skipped. This prevents the AI from responding to your own marketing automations.

Email channel

Email conversation specifics on top of the shared setup.

Connect Intercom

Credentials, webhook, and admin selection.

Intercom overview

What else the Intercom integration covers.

Troubleshooting

AI not replying, webhook errors, handoff not firing.