TikTok Intercom Integration Guide: Manage TikTok Messages in Intercom

One day, your TikTok business account is calm. The next day, a post goes viral and chaos ensues. Your DMs fill up quickly, and you have endless comments to reply to. Without scaling operations in place, your team will struggle to keep up.

To fix this, you can connect TikTok to your main customer communication channel, Intercom. Intercom’s advanced features will give you smooth operations, and you’ll centralize all TikTok DMs in Intercom inbox.

In this guide, we’ll show you:

• Why managing DMs on TikTok alone is hard
• Why you need Intercom as your system of record
• How TikTok Intercom integration works
• Workflows and use cases for TikTok Intercom integration

Why you shouldn't manage TikTok messages outside Intercom

You can manage TikTok messages inside TikTok alone, but it’s not efficient and has a lot of limitations when it comes to scaling.

Here are some TikTok DM inbox problems that show when you use TikTok alone:

• No centralized customer view: When you reply inside TikTok, conversations stay siloed. Your team can’t see the customer’s past chats, purchases, tickets, or lifecycle stage in Intercom.
• No automation or routing: Intercom lets you assign conversations automatically, trigger workflows, and qualify leads. TikTok’s native inbox doesn’t offer advanced routing or automation built for support and sales teams.
• No collaboration features: Inside Intercom, agents can leave internal notes, mention colleagues, and collaborate without the customer seeing it. TikTok DMs don’t support structured team collaboration.
• No reporting or performance tracking: TikTok doesn’t offer detailed reporting on direct messages like response times, SLA metrics, or agent performance, the kind of reporting you need to improve.

Why Intercom must be the main inbox

Managing all customer conversations on Intercom makes more sense than managing each channel on its own.

Suppose you manage TikTok on its own. Most of your customers will come through Intercom, but your team will still have to open TikTok to reply to DMs there. It’s a waste of time and resources, especially considering you can manage everything inside Intercom if you integrate both tools.

Meanwhile, integrating both tools gives you access to Intercom's key features:

• Customer profiles: Intercom has structured customer profiles that keep a record of personal info, channels used, and conversation history.
• Conversation history: Intercom keeps conversation history from all channels, email, and live chat inside its inbox. Instead of switching tools to get context, you’ll get access to all history in one place.
• Assignment & routing: Intercom has advanced assignment workflows that let you automate conversation routing to specific agents or teams based on rules you set beforehand.
• Automation: If you need automated workflows to reply to customers or qualify leads, you can build custom ones using Intercom’s workflow builder.
• Performance tracking: Intercom’s AI-based reporting gives you insights into your team performance and shows you how you can improve.

How TikTok Intercom integration works

If you connect TikTok to Intercom, how will the integration work? The integration will route TikTok DMs to Intercom as native inbox conversations.

Here’s how it works out:

1. You connect your TikTok business account to Intercom workspace
2. TikTok DMs sync to Intercom inbox
3. Incoming conversations match to Intercom contacts so that you have a clean record
4. Your assignment rules and automated workflows on Intercom start working across TikTok
5. Your team can now manage everything inside Intercom

Since Intercom doesn't have a native integration for TikTok, you'll need to use third-party integration tools, like Octopods.

What you can do after Integrating TikTok with Intercom

After you integrate TikTok with Intercom, you can build automated workflows that make your operations smoother.

Here are some TikTok Intercom workflows you can build:

Automatically assign TikTok messages to the right team

Intercom lets you set automatic conversation routing up using its assignment rules. Based on language, time, intent, or any rules you choose, Intercom will assign each incoming conversation to a specific team or agent.

This makes ownership clear and makes it easier for managers to track individual performance.

Filter and prioritize TikTok DMs in your Intercom inbox

Intercom inbox has different views & filters that you can use to organize your conversations. For example, you can filter according to urgency, customer type, channel, or more.

This makes it easier to prioritize customers with the highest intent.

Trigger workflows from TikTok inquiries

If you need automated workflows based on TikTok triggers, you can use Intercom’s workflow builder. You get to choose the triggers that start the workflow, and you can control assignment and scheduling. For instance, you can trigger a lead qualification bot based on keywords the customer uses.

Collaborate across sales and support on TikTok conversations

Intercom inbox works as a shared inbox where teams can collaborate. For instance, sales can hand a conversation over to support after onboarding. Agents can even leave each other internal notes inside conversations that customers can’t see.

Real use cases for TikTok & Intercom

If you’re wondering how teams use the TikTok Intercom integration in their everyday tasks, here’s an overview of the most common use cases.

Customer support from viral content

When your TikTok content goes viral, support questions start flooding DMs and comments. The integration routes DMs into Intercom inbox, and teams get to use filters and tags to flag these conversations and prioritize them.

Automation features also help manage the sudden high volume of conversations.

Lead qualification from TikTok DMs

When prospects see a TikTok ad or even organic content, they send DMs to ask questions. Teams use AI bots to ask qualification questions and thus qualify automatically.

Only high-intent prospects reach human agents, which saves a ton of time and resources.

Managing high volume campaign traffic

When teams launch paid ads on TikTok, traffic goes up, and it becomes a challenge to deal with all incoming inquiries.

That’s when Intercom’s AI bots and automation features help. They handle first responses, and automatic assignment rules route conversations after that.

Handling multiple TikTok accounts across regions

If a team manages different TikTok accounts in US, MENA, and EU, they can use Intercom inbox filters and assignments to segment by region.

Conversations coming from US can route to an English-speaking team, while those from MENA can route to an Arabic-speaking team.

Track TikTok performance in Intercom

Since TikTok DMs reach Intercom inbox as native conversations, Intercom considers them in reports & analytics. This means you can use Intercom’s AI-powered reporting to track your team’s performance across TikTok and other channels.

You can monitor response rate, open rate, and other sales & support KPIs.

FAQs about TikTok Intercom integration