The Intercom Inbox Problem

You use Intercom. You like Intercom. But your inbox is flooded with routine questions that do not need a human: password resets, pricing questions, feature inquiries, order status checks. Each one costs you time to read and respond, and each one costs you money on Intercom's per-seat pricing.

What if you could filter those out before they ever reached your Intercom inbox?

What Screener Does

Screener sits in front of your Intercom Messenger. When a customer starts a conversation, Screener classifies the intent of their message first. If it can handle the request automatically (with high confidence), it does. If it cannot, it passes the conversation through to your normal Intercom inbox.

The result: your Intercom inbox only shows conversations that actually need a human.

The Setup

Step 1: Install Screener alongside your existing Intercom widget. The setup takes a few minutes and does not require removing Intercom.

Step 2: Configure which intents Screener handles automatically. Start with the easy wins:

• Password resets: auto-reply with reset link
• Pricing questions: auto-reply with pricing summary
• Basic product questions: auto-reply with relevant docs link
• Order tracking: auto-reply with tracking info

Step 3: Set your confidence threshold. Start at 85%. This means Screener only handles messages it is very confident about. Everything else goes to Intercom as normal.

Step 4: Monitor and adjust. After a week, review what Screener handled and what it passed through. Adjust thresholds and add more intents as you gain confidence.

What This Looks Like in Practice

Before Screener:

• 100 Intercom conversations per week
• Your team handles all 100
• Average response time: 2 hours
• Intercom cost: $89+/month base + per-seat for your team

After Screener:

• 100 conversations per week
• Screener auto-resolves 60 to 80
• Your team handles 20 to 40 in Intercom
• Average response time for auto-resolved: 3 seconds
• Average response time for human-handled: 30 minutes (less volume = faster response)
• Screener cost: ~$20 to $30/month at $0.25/resolution

Your team's Intercom workload drops by 60 to 80%. Your customers get faster answers. Your Intercom per-seat cost might drop if you can reduce the number of agents who need active seats.

What Screener Does Not Do

Screener is not a replacement for Intercom. It is a pre-filter. It does not:

• Replace Intercom's Messenger UI (your customers still see Intercom)
• Handle multi-turn conversations (it classifies and responds to single messages)
• Replace Fin (if you use Intercom's AI agent, Screener handles the intent classification layer, Fin handles the conversational layer)
• Remove the need for humans (complex issues still flow to your team)

Think of it as the bouncer at the door. It handles the simple requests at the entrance so your team inside can focus on the guests who need real attention.

Cost Comparison

For a team handling 400 Intercom conversations/month:

Without Screener:

• All 400 hit your inbox
• Team needs full Intercom plan + enough seats to handle volume
• Total: $200 to $500/month depending on plan and seats

With Screener:

• 280 auto-resolved by Screener (70%): 280 * $0.25 = $70/month
• 120 flow to Intercom
• Possibly reduce Intercom seats since volume is lower
• Total: $70 + reduced Intercom cost

The math works especially well if Screener lets you drop an Intercom seat or downgrade your plan.