Intercom · Product sense · Mid · 45 to 60 minutes

How should Messenger ask for attention?

Intercom makes software that helps businesses communicate with customers inside websites and apps. Answer this product management case and get it graded line by line against a weighted rubric.

product sense
user empathy
trade off judgment
metrics
experimentation

The situation

The Messenger team lead has asked you, the PM for in product messaging, to recommend a product direction for the next version of Intercom Messenger. Customer feedback says many in app messages feel intrusive, and in usability sessions people often close pop up messages immediately without reading them. At the same time, many paying customers believe interruptive messages are the best way to make sure important announcements, prompts, or support messages are seen. Intercom's mission is to help businesses send relevant messages to targeted customers, but the team is worried the current experience may be training end users to ignore messages altogether. A broader Messenger redesign is underway, so this decision matters now. It will shape how messages appear inside products, what control businesses have, and how much control end users feel they have over their own attention. Your job is to recommend how Messenger should balance business visibility against end user focus, and how Intercom should judge whether that balance is working.

What to produce

Write a 1 to 2 page product strategy memo.

Your answer must

State the core product problem, including the tension between the business sending the message and the person receiving it.
Describe a decision framework for balancing message visibility against user focus across different message situations, with 2 to 3 concrete examples.
Recommend a product approach for Messenger that covers both sender behavior and recipient experience, including how user control should work.
Define success metrics and guardrails that measure both business outcomes and end user experience.
List the biggest risks or open questions and propose a validation plan for the first release.

Constraints

Stay within Intercom's in product Messenger experience, not email, SMS, push notifications, pricing, or sales process changes.
Your recommendation must work for both websites and mobile apps.
Do not assume Intercom can manually review or hand tune every message a customer sends.

Format

Use short section headers. Bullets and a simple table for trade offs or metrics are fine.

How Intercom actually played it

Intercom admits it contributed to pop-up overload and explains how its new Messenger aims for the right kind of disruption. The post shows how the team thought about interruptions from the user's side. A useful read for anyone designing in-product messaging.

Interruptions should match what the user wants to do.
Own your category's bad patterns when designing a better one.
Respect attention as a product principle.

Built from Behind the messenger: the right kind of disruption by Brian Donohue.