In this episode, we explore how Intercom has evolved from a traditional customer support platform into an AI-first company, with its AI assistant, Fin.

Fin AI is now resolving 65% of customer queries without human intervention. Intercom’s Chief AI Officer, Fergal Reid, discusses the company’s journey from natural language understanding (NLU) systems to their current retrieval augmented generation (RAG) approach, explaining how they’ve optimised every component of their AI pipeline with custom-built models.

The conversation covers Intercom’s unique approach to AI product development, emphasising standardisation and continuous improvement rather than customisation for individual clients. Fin AI is opinionated about what it does and how it does it, leaving room for end user input on the form, the AI components.

Fergal explains Intercom’s outcome-based pricing model, where clients pay for successful resolutions rather than consumption or licences, and how this aligns incentives across the business.

We also discuss Intercom’s early approach to agentic AI, and Fergal shares never-before-revealed insights on the models used behind the scenes, approaches to testing, the balance between customisation and standardisation, and the challenges of building AI products in a rapidly evolving technological landscape.

Finally, Fergal shares what excites and honestly freaks him out a bit about where AI is heading next!