Intercom is Reinventing Themselves (will it work?)
Intercom launched a big reinvention of themselves; new website, new messaging, new disruption... There's been a lot of chatter over the good, the bad, and the ugly. We had to weigh in and in this episode, we share our thoughts.
So one of the things that caught my eye this week was a beloved brand, if I may
community led a company that many of us have looked up to, I would say,
in the marketing community for some time, really reemerge in a new and
different
and modern, awesome way. I'm talking about Intercom.
I don't know if you saw their big launch event that they had this week.
Yeah, SaaS 1.0 heroes coming back. Yeah, I did see it. And I saw a lot of mixed
reactions from the community on whether they thought the Intercom move was good
or bad or otherwise.
Lots of what I thought was unnecessary criticism. I felt like people were kind
of
dunking for no reason. My take was, I thought it was refreshing. I think that
they've done
a really good job of kind of relaunching the company since the original
founders came back.
And I think if you want to sell software in this day and age, you have to have
an opinion. You
have to have a point of view. You can't just be some random chatbot company
anymore.
And so they're kind of taking this approach that I agree with, which is like,
we're going to
differentiate ourselves. We're going to go left when everyone goes right.
And we're going to articulate a vision that's new and unique. Speaking of new
and unique,
I think one of the things people were giving them a lot of flack for us all in
line was
the new website, the homepage, which you haven't seen it. It's kind of like a
painting style
creative in the background, kind of pitching a new world.
I think it's cool. I love it. What's your take on it? I thought it was great.
First of all, the B2B website has sucked since the town of modern time.
Kudos to them for taking a creative risk and doing something that wasn't your
theme forest,
SaaS portfolio download. I saw people on Twitter where they must not care about
conversions anymore.
It's like, dude, come on. First off, no one knows exactly how anyone's site
converts.
It's not the theme forest thing you were describing. It must be bad.
Isn't always the reason to do this sort of thing. They'll probably learn
something from
launching this new site. We have to assume that they're smart people. They're
going to optimize
it from here. I just thought it was funny that they're out here trying to
articulate a vision
for the future of customer service. It's a really big thing. People are like,
wonder what the demo request conversion rate is on the site. Come on. Zoom out
a little bit.
Totally. The internet loves dunking on any rebrand, any major changes. Honestly
, if I'm
intercoms, CMO, or exec team, it's probably a good thing because you've created
noise.
You've got a lot of eyeballs on the work that you're doing. Take the factor in
the criticism
that is likely predictable and show them. Show them proof that what you're
doing is going to work.
It was beautiful. It was very well done. It looks different than what we see
with any other
SaaS websites. I think it's a really great move in general.
I thought it was interesting too. I saw some of the commentary where the
founders of intercom
were engaging with it on social. One thing that I thought was super bold of
them is they're like
openly chatbots sucked. They were crappy. They didn't do what we wanted them to
do. It's
frustrating as hell. Everyone is listening to this. You've been on one of those
experiences
where you're like, let me talk to a person. Let's like rage click this button.
But they're like
readily like, look, that wasn't good. That didn't deliver what we wanted. We're
going somewhere else
now. I think it's pretty cool that they're so willing to reinvent the business.
It shows a lot of
leadership, conviction, etc. I tell my team this all the time, I've always said
this, which is like,
I would rather create a clear choice in the mind of our prospect than be
fighting a
feature comparison war button to button feature. I'd rather say, look, there's
all this other stuff,
then there's us. Maybe we're not for you. If we are, then this is going to be
great. You're
going to have a real good partner. We're going to generate all these results.
But it's possible
that we're not a good fit and all this other stuff is the right thing for you
as well.
I think they're doing a really great thing. They're trying to say, we're
different. We're
zigging when everyone else is zagging. If you vibe with that, let's do business
together. I mean,
much rather be them in that situation than the rest of the chatbot companies
just fighting over
the same small group of customers. Absolutely right. For those that don't know
the history,
Intercom was started about almost 13 years ago. Originally, the founder Owen
McCabe
was the founder and CEO for the first nine years of the company. Then for three
almost four years, he took a chairman role. They brought in basically for lack
of a better term,
professional CEOs or whatever, professional operators to take the company where
it is.
Then a year and a half ago, Owen was reinstated as CEO. I think that's an
interesting
timetable to overlay here because I think the criticism of Intercom was really
in that sort of
inter whatever it is, period where some might have felt they lost their way or
that there's
some challenges to their core product offering. They've always been such a
great product company,
but really around maybe market and go to market. What I saw this week was the
return of the
founder. The founder spirit come back to Intercom. They did this live event
called
what was called Built for You. That was live streaming on LinkedIn. It felt
like
honestly the closest I've seen on an execution side to an Apple keynote,
like this beautiful editorial shot. Owen was right there in front of the camera
I would argue delivered the content in a very authentic, approachable way. You
could tell
again that the founder cares about the reputation of the brand that he's worked
so hard to build.
It was just beautifully executed. They have this other content series that they
're running
as well shot in a pretty similar aesthetic. We talked about the website in
general.
But to me, it's almost this like the comeback moment or the re-emergence of
Owen's Intercom,
which if you're again a member of the community, going back to the point and
the coaching you
gave for your team, it's like we want to buy product from a company that has
conviction behind a
founding team that we stand behind. It feels like they got their soul back a
little bit this week.
That was my take away from it. Especially in this world where there's this
massive paradigm shift
with AI, it's undeniable that there's a bunch of question marks around what AI
is going to mean
for all these different industries. It seems pretty clear that customer service
is going to be
the first major area of exploration as it relates to AI. I think what they're
doing in a very
masterful way is they're recognizing that there's a moment to lead their
customer community through
this massive shift that's going on underneath their feet. Instead of waiting
and seeing or trying
to play it safe, they're like, "Hey, we're just going to take the reins and
lead our customer
community through this paradigm shift." I think it's a really good strategy. I
think that
they're deciding to take their rightful place in the front running position
here as it relates to AI
customer service. I'm on their site right now. I'm looking at it. They're
competing with the likes
of Zendask and Freshdask and Zoho-Dask and all that stuff. We have an
opportunity to be a
different and be a leader. We're just going to grab that and run with it. I
think it's a really
smart move. I imagine that, like you said, they're going to have-- they're
getting their mojo back
here a little bit. I imagine that they're going to have an opportunity to
completely
flip that entire market back in their favor. Similar to they used to have back
in the SAS 1.0
days where Intercom was the number one company out there. It definitely seems
like there's a
really good shot that they have a return to their leadership position among the
broader SAS
community. I'm rooting for them. I think we'll see what happens and what they
can make of the AI
opportunity. It's certainly there and they're grabbing the bull by the horns.
It's kind of cheesy to
maybe a big claim to make. I don't mean to suggest that Intercom is the next
Apple.
I can't think of another example of a company where the founder like left came
back and kind of
brought the company to the next kind of major-- ushered in that new era in a
material way.
Maybe SAS in general, we're a pretty young industry, all things considered.
But I think there's an opportunity for history to really be developed here. I'm
going to be watching
closely. Yeah, for sure. There's something weird. I don't know why this is
necessarily. There's
probably people who are way more qualified to speak on this than me. But there
's something about
the founder energy in the company. It's that sort of vision, combination of
vision and leadership.
It's not always pretty, but it's definitely a force that if you can harness it
the right way,
it can take you pretty far. From a marketing point of view, is maybe one of the
best resources
you have. It's cool to watch them recapture that. I'm thinking about that a lot
lately.
Really thinking about the difference between
even buying product from a company run by a non-founder. There's just something
really
too that I don't have anything bold or incredibly insightful to share. But I'll
just observe along
with you that there's something about that energy that is different and it
impacts the go-to market.
It impacts the work that we do on the marketing end to support the founder and
ultimately to drive
the revenue. There's the broader trend of the brand pages. That's not where
people are engaging
on social. They're engaging with the people behind the brands. That's a well-
understood
phenomenon now. There's nothing more powerful than the founder being the face
out there.
We'll see what happens. I'm excited for them. I am excited for this next phase
of Intercom.
Like I said, root and form.