Find how much you have
In Intercom, open Reports and create a report from the Conversations template. You need the Can access Reports permission plus the permission to create and edit reports, and Intercom lists the template on its Essential, Advanced and Expert plans.
Read New conversations for a date range. By default it counts conversations from the date of the customer's first message, so it leaves out outbound conversations the customer never answered. To include them, switch the metric to the Conversation created at timestamp and add the Has user reply attribute. One report covers at most a year at a time, so add up several ranges.
Intercom says reporting data reaches back up to two years and that the underlying conversation records are retained separately. For anything older, ask a developer to count through the API. The Search conversations endpoint returns a total_count for a created_at filter, and List conversations returns one too. Intercom's articles do not say how far back the API can read, so have your developer test an early date.
Cross-check with a file. Go to Reports, then Dataset export, choose the Conversations dataset, set the period, pick your columns and click Export CSV. A browser download stops at 10,000 rows, and larger exports are emailed and can take up to an hour. Count the rows.
If you use tickets, count them separately. The same Dataset export covers tickets, and Intercom dates a ticket by the day its conversation started.
For the start date, sort the export by its conversation created column and read the earliest date. Remember the two-year reporting window, so if your help desk went live earlier, ask your longest-serving support lead when Intercom was switched on.
What to put on your intake
Your intake has five boxes for each system. Here is what goes in each one for Intercom.
- What does it hold?
- Customer conversations from the Messenger, email and other channels, with replies, hand-offs between bot and teammates, tags and outcomes, plus tickets if you use them. Say which channels carry the most traffic and whether an AI agent handles some of it.
- Data types
- Text for the message threads and structured records for the conversation details. Add Audio only if you turned on Intercom Phone recordings and want to license them.
- How big is it?
- Choose Conversations and enter the all-time count. Say in the description whether it includes outbound conversations that got no reply, tickets and conversations handled by an AI agent.
- Verified or estimated
- Verified when the count comes from a Dataset export or an API total_count that covers your whole history. Estimated when it comes from one report window, a single year or an older figure.
- Records start
- The date of the first conversation. Reporting reaches back only two years, so confirm the true first date with the API or your support lead. If you used another help desk before Intercom, add that system separately.
Exporting the full history
If a buyer licenses your records, this is how the full history comes out of Intercom.
A full-history export happens only after a license is signed and the scope is agreed: the date range, which channels, whether tickets and AI-agent conversations are in, and whether call recordings are included.
CSV files are a map of what exists, not the content. Intercom says the Dataset export holds reporting metadata such as conversation IDs, timestamps, attributes and metrics, and no message content. A saved Inbox View export holds the columns visible in that view plus a link to each conversation. Dataset export needs Can export CSV and Can access Chart drill-in. A saved View export needs the Can export conversation data permission and an Inbox seat, is refused above 100,000 rows, and only two can run at once in a workspace.
Message text through the API. A developer lists conversations, up to 150 per page with a starting_after cursor, then retrieves each one by ID to get its conversation parts. One retrieved conversation returns at most its 500 most recent parts. Intercom's separate Data Export API covers outbound message delivery and engagement data and, by Intercom's own description, not conversation content, so it is not the route for transcripts. Intercom's default limit for a private app is 10,000 calls a minute per app and 25,000 per workspace, spread across 10-second windows. Workspaces are hosted in the US, the EU or Australia, and Intercom routes calls to its main API address to the right region, though each region also has its own address.
Cloud storage export. An Intercom administrator opens Settings, then Data, then Imports & exports, then Export data, and starts a new data export. The choices are the data API version, JSON or JSONL, whether to include attachments, and an Amazon S3 or Google Cloud Storage destination. A historical option exports the last two years, and a periodic option then sends new and updated conversations hourly or daily in files of at most 200 conversations. Intercom emails a verification link that an administrator has to confirm.
Samples and spot checks. In the Inbox you can export one conversation or ticket as text or PDF, or export 200 to 300 conversations at a time. Internal notes are left out of conversation transcripts, and payment card numbers are redacted.
Under the license, names, email addresses, phone numbers, company names and account identifiers are removed from message text and metadata before delivery, and attachments are excluded unless a specific package is agreed.
We only ask for an export after you sign a license and agree the scope. Sizing your data for the intake never needs one.
Limits to know
- Intercom's own articles disagree about transcripts in cloud storage exports. One says S3 data will not contain a transcript and points to the UI export or the REST API, while the cloud storage article describes each exported object as the entire conversation with all of its parts. Test a small export before you rely on either.
- Exports and report data reach back up to two years, and a single report covers at most one year. Intercom says the underlying conversation records are retained separately, so your history may be longer than what the exports show.
- Reports can count conversations whose content is gone. Deleting a conversation through the API keeps its reporting metrics by default, and historic conversations from deleted contacts still show in reporting. A CSV total can therefore be higher than what the API can return.
- Deleting a contact deletes all of their conversations and tickets from the workspace. Intercom says it can retrieve a mistakenly deleted contact within 7 days, after which the data is permanently destroyed.
- Call recordings and transcripts can be set to delete automatically after a number of days under Settings, Channels, Phone, in the Recording and transcript section. Ask your administrator whether that box is ticked.
- Intercom deletes workspaces with no subscription after 180 days of inactivity, and says you need an active subscription to export your data. Export before you downgrade or cancel.
- Exported conversation data cannot be imported into a new Intercom workspace, so a cloud storage export is a copy and not a migration.
- Saved View exports leave out conversations the exporting person cannot see and mask contact details unless that person may reveal them. Run exports from a role that can see everything in scope.
- User data in a Dataset export is captured at the start of the conversation, so contact details reflect how they looked then.
- If your workspace handles support for other brands, those conversations usually belong to those brands under your contracts. Leave them out unless the brand agrees in writing. This is not legal advice.
This guide isn't legal advice. Check your contracts, and any recording-consent rules that apply, with your own lawyer.
Why buyers value it
Intercom conversations hold both sides of support in plain language: the customer's question in their own words, the bot's answer, the hand-off to a person, and how it ended. Every thread has an outcome, and the tags and ratings show which ones went well.
For AI buyers building support agents, triage and routing tools, several years of resolved threads from a real software product are hard to find anywhere public. The value rises with unbroken history, with the full message text and with a clear line between conversations a person handled and ones a bot closed.
What stays private
Customer names, email addresses, phone numbers, company names, account and user IDs, and links that carry identifiers are removed or replaced before delivery under the license. Anything a customer pasted into a thread, such as passwords, API keys, card numbers or screenshots, is excluded or removed, and teammate names are replaced.
Internal notes are excluded. Attachments are excluded by default, and conversations that belong to other brands you support are left out. Your logins, API tokens, workspace settings and teammate list are not part of the license.
Common questions
Sources
Vendor documentation, checked . Screens and plans change, so if a step looks different in your account, check with Intercom.
- Intercom Help: Export your conversation data (opens in a new tab)
- Intercom Help: Export conversations data to cloud storage (opens in a new tab)
- Intercom Help: Export your tickets data (opens in a new tab)
- Intercom Help: Conversations reporting (opens in a new tab)
- Intercom Help: Deleting a conversation (opens in a new tab)
- Intercom Help: Contacts FAQs (opens in a new tab)
- Intercom Help: Call recordings and transcripts (opens in a new tab)
- Intercom Help: Inactive workspace deletion process (opens in a new tab)
- Intercom Developers: List all conversations (opens in a new tab)
- Intercom Developers: Retrieve a conversation (opens in a new tab)
- Intercom Developers: Search conversations (opens in a new tab)
- Intercom Developers: Rate limiting (opens in a new tab)
- Intercom Developers: Data export (opens in a new tab)
- Intercom Developers: REST APIs (regional hosting) (opens in a new tab)