Intercom Ticket Escalation to Slack

Listens for new Intercom conversations and tag events via webhook. Automatically evaluates each conversation for escalation signals (VIP tags, priority tags, SLA breach), then posts a formatted alert to #cs-escalations. Optionally uses OpenAI GPT-4o-mini to generate a 2–3 sentence AI summary so CSMs can act without reading the full thread.

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Prerequisites

• n8n instance with a public URL (required for webhooks — use ngrok for local testing)
• Intercom workspace with webhook permissions
• Slack workspace with bot token
• OpenAI API key (optional — workflow includes a fallback without AI)
• n8n Intercom credential — setup guide
• n8n Slack credential — setup guide
• n8n OpenAI credential — setup guide (optional)

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Setup Steps

1. Import the workflow

In n8n, go to Workflows → Import from File and select workflow.json. Do not activate yet.

2. Get your webhook URL

• Open the "Intercom Webhook" trigger node
• Copy the webhook URL (format: https://your-n8n.com/webhook/...)

3. Configure Intercom webhook

1. Go to Intercom → Settings → Integrations → Webhooks

2. Click Add webhook URL and paste the n8n URL

3. Subscribe to these topics:

- conversation.created

- conversation.tag.created

4. Save — Intercom will send a test verification automatically

4. Configure Intercom credentials

• In the "Intercom Webhook" node, create a new Intercom credential
• Use an Intercom Access Token (Settings → Developers → Your App → Authentication)

5. Customize escalation tags

Open the "Extract and Evaluate" Code node and update ESCALATION_TAGS and VIP_TAGS:

const ESCALATION_TAGS = ['urgent', 'vip', 'escalation', 'p1', 'critical', 'at-risk', 'churn-risk'];
const VIP_TAGS = ['vip', 'enterprise', 'key-account'];

Change these to match the tag names you actually use in Intercom. Tag names are case-insensitive in this workflow.

6. Update the Intercom app URL

In the Code node, find this line:

const conversationLink = https://app.intercom.com/a/apps/YOUR_APP_ID/conversations/${conversationId};

Replace YOUR_APP_ID with your Intercom app ID (visible in your Intercom URL, e.g., app.intercom.com/a/apps/abc12345/).

7. Configure Slack

• In both Slack nodes ("Post to Slack (with AI)" and "Post to Slack (no AI)"), change #cs-escalations to your channel
• Create or select a Slack credential (bot token xoxb-...)
• Invite the bot to the channel: /invite @your-bot-name

8. Configure OpenAI (optional)

• In the "Summarize with OpenAI" node, create or select your OpenAI credential
• Default model: gpt-4o-mini (cheap and fast, ~$0.0001 per escalation)
• To use GPT-4o instead, change the model field to gpt-4o

9. Skip OpenAI (optional)

If you don't want AI summaries:

1. Delete the "Summarize with OpenAI" and "Add Summary to Data" nodes

2. Connect the "Is Escalation?" IF node's true output directly to "Post to Slack (no AI)"

10. Activate the workflow

Toggle to Active. All new Intercom conversations will now be evaluated in real-time.

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Escalation Logic

Condition

Result

Conversation tagged with a priority tag	Escalate
Conversation tagged with a VIP tag	Escalate
Conversation > 2 hours old with no assignee	Escalate (SLA breach)
VIP + priority tag	Priority = P1 (highest)

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Slack Message Format (with AI)

🚨 *Escalation Alert*

*Customer:* Jane Smith (Acme Corp)
*Priority:* 🔴 P1 — VIP + Priority Tag
*SLA:* ⚠️ 145 min (breaching)

*AI Summary:*
The customer is reporting that their API integration stopped working after a recent update. They're unable to process transactions and estimate $50k/hour in lost revenue. They've already tried re-authenticating with no success.

*Tags:* vip, urgent, enterprise
*Conversation:* https://app.intercom.com/...

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Troubleshooting

Webhook not receiving events

• Ensure your n8n instance is accessible from the internet (Intercom cannot reach localhost)
• For local testing, use ngrok: ngrok http 5678 and use the ngrok URL as your webhook

$('Is Escalation?').first() returns error in the merge node

• This is the Add Summary to Data node referencing a previous node by name
• If you renamed the IF node, update the reference in the Code node accordingly

Intercom credentials failing

• Intercom API tokens are workspace-specific. Make sure you're using a token from the correct workspace
• Required scope: Read conversations

OpenAI returning empty summary

• Check that your API key has credits remaining at platform.openai.com/usage
• The gpt-4o-mini model sometimes returns empty for very short conversations — add a fallback: summary || lastMessageExcerpt