Intercom Fin for BigCommerce: order, stock and points answers
Connectors that let the Intercom Fin chatbot answer "where is my order?" and "how many points do I have?" from live store data.
6
live lookups: orders, shipping, points, stock, restock alerts, shipping eligibility
15 sec
the limit each lookup is built to answer within
Read-only
connectors look things up and cannot change anything
The problem
When we set this up, Intercom had no ready-made connector for BigCommerce. Without one, the Fin chatbot cannot answer "where is my order?", "how many points do I have?" or "when is this back in stock?"
So those chats go to people.
What we built
We set up Intercom and Fin for a multi-brand retailer’s stores, wrote Fin’s training content and procedures, and built the connectors it uses.
- Order status lookup by email and order number.
- Shipping status through AfterShip.
- Rewards points and VIP tier from the retailer’s loyalty program.
- Stock for the product the customer is looking at.
- An offer to email the shopper when an out-of-stock product returns.
- A shipping eligibility check against the store’s location rules.
- Logged-in shoppers are identified to the chat securely. Guests stay anonymous.
- Step-by-step procedures that tell Fin when to use each connector.
How it works
- Each connector is a read-only web address Fin can call. It can look things up, and it cannot change anything.
- Each store has its own address and its own key, so one store’s key cannot read another store’s data.
- The server checks that the email and the order number belong together before it answers.
- Intercom gives a connector 15 seconds, and an order lookup takes several BigCommerce calls, so each connector is built to answer inside that limit.
- Answers are kept small, because Intercom logs them.
Results
- Fin answers order, shipping, stock, points and shipping eligibility questions from live data instead of handing them to staff.
- Fin now handles a lot of the retailer’s routine customer service questions. We do not have a figure we can publish yet.
Could this work for your store?
Every BigCommerce store that uses Intercom Fin is missing these connectors, and the order, shipping and stock lookups carry over as they are.
What changes per store: the loyalty and shipping eligibility connectors depend on which tools you use for those, and the training content is written for your products and policies.
The shipping eligibility answer comes from the same rules that checkout enforces. That single rule list is what the checkout compliance build sets up.
See the checkout compliance offerRelated work
An owned loyalty program for BigCommerce
Points, VIP tiers, rewards and referrals in a program the retailer owns, with redemptions that become working BigCommerce coupons.
Read the caseBlock checkout by state or ZIP on BigCommerce
Stops a shopper before payment when something in the cart cannot ship to their address, and cancels and refunds anything that gets through anyway.
Read the caseSee where your own checkout stands
The first step is the same for every store: a free check of your shipping policy and checkout, sent back as a short video.
BuildPath is run by Ian Mason, a developer with 20 years in ecommerce and search.
- The check is free
- A short video of what we find
- If we find nothing, we tell you that