Intercom Streamlines Product Documentation Process with Automation

Intercom is a customer messaging platform that offers a range of services from live chat to help centers. The company has a dedicated Product Education team that manages the product documentation. This team collaborates with the support team to identify articles that need updating. As the product portfolio grew, the process of updating the knowledge base became increasingly labor-intensive, prompting the need for a more efficient process. Zara Burke, who manages Intercom's product documentation, led the initiative to automate the process using Zapier.

Intercom, a customer messaging platform, had a robust product documentation process managed by their Product Education team. However, the process of updating and maintaining the knowledge base was becoming increasingly cumbersome. The support team would identify articles that needed updates and make a request in a Slack channel. This request would then be reviewed and added to the Product Education team's Trello board. Following this, a team member would liaise with the requester for further clarification and details. As Intercom's product portfolio expanded, this process became too labor-intensive and time-consuming, prompting the need for automation.

To streamline the process, Zara Burke, who manages Intercom's product documentation, turned to Zapier, an app automation tool. With Zapier, Zara was able to build efficient workflows and foster better collaboration between teams. Using Zapier for Teams' Shared Folders, the Product Education team could collaborate with the support team and other teams within Zapier. To simplify the change request process, the team created a form with Typeform. Whenever a customer reported an outdated document or the support team identified one, they filled out this form with the details. Zara then built a Zap that automatically created a new task in Trello whenever a support request came through Typeform. This task contained all the relevant information, allowing the Product Education team to prioritize and correct it.

• The automation of the product documentation process has significantly improved Intercom's operational efficiency. The Product Education team now gets automatically notified when a new update is added to their Trello board, with all the necessary information readily available. This has eliminated the need for manual copying and pasting of form responses, saving the team valuable time. The automation has also allowed the team to ask for more detail when an update is submitted, leading to improvements in the quality of help articles. Furthermore, the use of Shared Folders in Zapier for Teams has enhanced collaboration across different teams within the company.

• Saved four hours every week by automating the process of updating product documentation

• Reduced the time taken to process update requests

• Enabled the team to ask for more detail when someone submits an update, improving the quality of help articles