Support Stack: How Tettra Saved $ with Smarter Fin Rules in Intercom | Ep.2 with Jen Weaver
When you open Intercom's Fin AI Agent to every visitor on your website, you are opening it to everyone — including people with no interest in your product who are simply looking for a free AI assistant.
In this episode of Support Stack, Conor Pendergrast is joined by Jen Weaver, a customer support specialist at Supportman who manages Intercom for Tettra, to explore how one simple configuration change cut unnecessary Fin costs while keeping genuine leads fully supported.
Jen explains how Tettra discovered that anonymous visitors were using their public-facing Fin as a general-purpose ChatGPT replacement — asking unrelated questions that each triggered a resolved conversation charge of around one dollar. The fix was straightforward: inside the Fin AI Agent settings under Deploy, then Chat, Jen changed the audience from visitors to users only, so that only people already logged in to a Tettra account could interact with Fin.
The conversation goes deeper than the quick fix, though. Conor and Jen discuss the return on investment question that every support leader running Intercom should ask: are the visitors coming through your public chat asking questions that are genuinely related to your product? If so, leaving Fin enabled for visitors may still be worthwhile. If not, restricting access to logged-in users is a sensible cost-control measure that does not turn away real leads — it simply routes them to your support team instead.
They also explore a more nuanced middle ground using Intercom's advanced workflows. Rather than turning Fin off entirely for visitors, you can enable it selectively — for example, only on your pricing page, where visitors are far more likely to have genuine product questions. This approach lets you provide 24/7 AI support where it matters most without exposing yourself to off-topic usage elsewhere on the site.
If you are working with Intercom, Fin, or exploring AI in customer support, this episode provides a practical framework for thinking about access control, cost management, and where Fin genuinely adds value for your users and your business.
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Episode transcript
Conor (0:00)
Hi, I'm Conor Pendergrast from CustomerSuccess.cx
Jen (0:04)
I'm Jen from Supportman.
Conor (0:07)
And this is episode two of Support Stack. Welcome.
Conor (0:17)
So Jen, we are talking about a really interesting topic today. And so I think this is one that's going to have people's brains really going on a return on investment sort of brain, which is where our heads go a lot as support leaders. So give us some background. What happened?
Jen (0:34)
Yeah, we had Intercom enabled for anyone who came to our website and found that people were using it as ChatGPT — so asking Fin not questions about our product, but just asking it what they might want to ask ChatGPT, but for free for them, but it cost us a dollar every time. So we wanted to cut that out and I can show you how we did that.
Conor (1:03)
Absolutely. This was people who would just come to your website, had no intention of purchasing your services or products, had no intention of ever using them, even free versions or anything like that. Were just coming on and saying, hey, what's the capital city of Madagascar? Or can you design me a marketing plan? Please Fin.
Jen (1:27)
Yeah, I don't see how you could get a lot out of that, but it was happening. And that was — for context for people — like that costs a buck every time you have a resolved conversation.
Conor (1:40)
So yeah, Jen, like what did you do? What did you and your team do?
Jen (1:51)
Right, so going into Fin we, so you go over here to Fin AI agent, and then to deploy, and then chat, because the chat, they're not doing it over email, right? It's the chat on the website. And it's the first thing at the top. So customers see Fin when they have whatever value, right? Whatever audience they are. So the way you change that is by clicking here, and you can just choose — you can also add other filters, but all we did was change it from visitors to users. So if someone goes to our website and they are logged in to their account with us, then they can interact with Fin. But if they're just a stranger, if they don't have an account or if they're not logged in, they will send a message to our support team.
Conor (2:42)
Yeah. Which is ironic, I guess, because it theoretically costs more for someone to get help from your support team. Practically, though, it just means that people are not asking Fin for ChatGPT style questions. They're not asking your version of Fin to design a marketing plan for them.
Jen (3:08)
Mm-hmm, exactly.
Conor (3:10)
And so this is a really interesting question for people to ask themselves — for support leaders who are using Intercom — to say, okay, well, is it worth the return on investment for maybe a small portion of people to perhaps come to your website, come to your public website, not be signed in users, never have any intention of using your products and services, but to use Fin and cost you a dollar every time. So if that is worth it, because maybe your leads are coming to the website and asking questions that are relevant to your products and services, then you can just carte blanche, leave it enabled for everyone. But if that's not happening, then you can disable it here, and this is where you would do so. And you're not turning people away. Leads can get through to a support person. It just means then a support person has to handle that. It decreases the percentage of conversations Fin is handling for you.
Jen (4:08)
Yeah, that's a good point. I guess another approach you could do would be to, if you have the advanced workflows that Intercom has, could set up more granular permissions or more granular ways of accessing Fin. So one example would be like, we often see that the pricing page of a SaaS business is where you get a lot of confusion or questions. So enabling Fin on your pricing page through Intercom, through the advanced workflows could be one approach you could take. Or if you do a proactive message that asks people for questions they have on your pricing page, again, that could be another way of identifying the right people and then making sure that Fin can interact with them at that point. So it's not an all or nothing thing even. Even with this, even with turning it off, there are still options to keep it available for people and to make, give them 24/7 support when they need it for the questions that they have as well.
Conor (5:02)
And it's reasonable to assume if someone is on your pricing page, they are probably generally interested in the product. They're not trying to design a marketing plan through your version of Fin. Unless they have figured out this hack — that we just — maybe we shouldn't publish this.
Jen (5:36)
Don't tell anyone.
Conor (5:38)
Dear watcher, don't share this one. Don't — see down there there's the share button. Don't click it. Whatever you do, don't click it. If you get the most shares from this one, then we'll know that reverse psychology aspect works.
Conor (5:58)
Jen, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and experience here. How can people keep up with you? What would you like people to do? What would be helpful for you?
Jen (6:07)
Connect with me on LinkedIn. And subscribe to all my things too, but I'd just love to have more connections on LinkedIn.
Conor (6:15)
Absolutely. Is there something in particular that you do that would be that maybe inspired this video series that I'm doing? A podcast, perhaps?
Jen (6:23)
I do have a podcast and what's great is if you connect with me on LinkedIn, you'll automatically be invited, I think, to my newsletter where my podcast comes out and my Friday Support Snapshot, which is the roll up of the podcasts of the week. So you'll get all of that just by connecting with me.
Conor (6:41)
So amazing. You can be found as Jen Weaver on LinkedIn. What's the name of your podcast? Just to really promote it.
Jen (6:49)
Yeah, Live Chat with Jen.
Conor (6:53)
Brilliant, I have been a guest, I really enjoyed it, it's a really good show. So if you, dear watcher, liked this video and you want to get future videos, you can subscribe at CustomerSuccess.cx/daily and you'll get my week daily email. You can also do slash weekdaily in case you want to do weekdaily instead. You can get my week daily email, it's all about Intercom and leading customer support teams and I will email you whenever there's a new episode of this, of Support Stack. Thank you very much, Jen. Thank you very much. See ya!