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How Intercom leveraged strategic gifting to delight customers and nurture client relationships

Learn how Intercom is increasing customer satisfaction scores and retention rates, while driving sales, through a thoughtful and impactful gifting program.

The &Open Client Success team6 min2023-03-20

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Intercom case study recipient platform

Customer happiness is key for Intercom, a leader in the CS space with a platform that helps businesses build trusted customer connections. We stepped in to help them create a client gifting program that felt impactful, exciting and genuinely rewarding, with an end goal of increasing customer satisfaction scores and retention rates.

Intercom Case Study Gifting Image

Case Study

Target audience:

Existing Intercom customers.

About Intercom:

Intercom is the only complete Customer Service solution that provides a seamless customer experience across automation and human support, delivering increased customer satisfaction while reducing costs. Their platform connects businesses directly to customers using powerful messaging and automation, and they enable teams to scale support without investing more resources — leading to happier customers and more efficient Customer Support teams.

It was so great to see &Open in action, how they worked with us during our exploration phase — really taking the time to get to know us, what our values were, and creating a gifting proposal that really made them extensions of our brand and values to deliver on the goals we'd defined.

Kate Sugrue, Principal Customer Advocacy Manager, Intercom

The objective:

To create a gifting plan that rewards and delights Intercom’s existing customers by celebrating key milestones and contributions, while also empowering their Sales team to find strategic opportunities and continue strengthening relationships.

Intercom monitored several key indicators, including NPS, CSAT and account spend to help understand if their gifting campaigns were working.

Intercom Case Study Platform Imagery

The approach:

The Intercom Sales and Customer Advocacy teams collaborated to identify three gifting moments in their customer journey:

  • When a customer completes their onboarding process
  • When a customer has demonstrated an act of advocacy
  • When there is an opportunity to strengthen a customer relationship

The Intercom Brand Studio team then partnered with &Open’s team of designers to curate a special gift for each scenario. Gifts were sent out to customers once they reached these milestones.

Intercom Case Study Gifting Image

Learnings

1. Have clarity on your gifting program’s purpose.

There are a lot of different corporate gifting providers to choose from. So first, decide on and define the exact experience you want to deliver and why. Know what the non-negotiable aspects of your specific program are. Having a detailed strategy going into those conversations will make your decision a lot easier and, in the end, more successful.

I love the ability to close off a project and send along a gift to mark the occasion. It shows our gratitude, it's a definite relationship booster, and something our customers won't forget easily!

Jeff McLoughlin, Associate Customer Onboarding Specialist, Intercom

2. Think about the customer.

Intercom decided to choose &Open based on the truly considered customer experience the &Open platform and team could provide. This ranged from the gift sourcing to the bespoke redemption experience to the capabilities for recipients to forgo a physical gift in place of a charitable donation. Intercom customers were the focus every step of the way. To date, over 50% of customers have opted for the donation option, showing that this choice really resonated with the audience.

3. Create excitement within your team.

One of the most memorable experiences of the campaign was presenting final gift designs to the entire company at Intercom’s weekly Show & Tell. The reaction from everyone was incredible! The Intercom team loved the gifts and was eager and excited to start sending them to customers. There were even multiple queries as to how team members could get their hands on the gifts for themselves (which means we did our job correctly).

Intercom Case Study Gifting Image

Impact

Feedback was overwhelmingly positive from both the Intercom team and their customers. Gift redemption rates were higher than they had expected and the satisfaction survey allowed the customers to send direct feedback, with some even including photos of their gifts, like in this tweet.

12 months after the launch of the gifting program, Intercom has seen an increase in CSAT and NPS scores amongst customers who received a gift, as well as positive a correlation with revenue health.

I personally have found it a great way to thank customers I work with and keep our interactions from feeling like an impersonal transaction and more like a friendly and appreciative collaboration.

Kate Sugrue, Principal Customer Advocacy Manager, Intercom

Intercom is just one example of how better gifting has transformed business relationships into ones that last. Want to learn more about getting started on your own customer gifting journey? Book a demo today.

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