Intercom · Go-to-market · Mid · 45 to 60 minutes

How should Intercom scale product demos?

Intercom makes software that helps businesses communicate with customers through messaging, support, and engagement tools. Answer this product management case and get it graded line by line against a weighted rubric.

Product strategy
Go to market
Experiment design
Metrics
Stakeholder judgment

The situation

You are the PM supporting customer education for Intercom's trial experience. Intercom now offers multiple products, and new signups often need help understanding which workflows and features matter for their jobs. Internal analysis shows that trial users who attend a product demo are over 6 times more likely to activate and 11% more likely to retain past the two week trial, yet only about 3.5% of new customers attend one today. The current model relies on scheduled demo sessions led by an expert, with some prerecorded material already used to improve quality and reduce presenter burden. That model works reasonably well for attendees, but reach appears capped by time zones, calendar friction, session length, and the effort required to run live events across products. Sales, Support, and Growth all want more customers to see this content, but the team is worried that making demos less live could reduce engagement, weaken the human connection, and leave customers without answers to product questions. The head of customer education wants your recommendation for the next two quarters.

What to produce

Write a 1 to 2 page strategy memo for the head of customer education.

Your answer must

State the goal, the customer problem, and the specific funnel issue you are trying to improve.
Evaluate at least 2 credible approaches for scaling demo reach, with pros and cons for reach, engagement, effort, and consistency.
Recommend one approach and explain what content or interactions, if any, should stay live versus become more repeatable or self serve.
Define success metrics, including both leading indicators and business outcomes, and show how you would measure them.
Outline a rollout or experiment plan for the next two quarters, including key risks and mitigations.
Explain how customers will ask questions or get help after consuming the demo content.

Constraints

Do not assume a large increase in headcount for presenters or manual operations.
The solution must work for trial users across multiple time zones.
Content will need regular updates as Intercom's products evolve, so maintenance burden matters.
Do not rely on one to one sales or support follow up for every trial user who watches demo content.

Format

Use short sections with headings such as objective, options, recommendation, metrics, rollout, and risks.

How Intercom actually played it

Intercom found trial users who watched demos were 11 percent more likely to retain past the two-week trial and over 6 times likelier to activate, yet only about 3.5 percent attended one. The post describes how the team scaled demos to reach more people. A neat case of using retention data to design a go-to-market motion.

Find the behavior that predicts retention, then scale it.
Low attendance of a high-value action is an opportunity.
Convert a live motion into a repeatable one.

Built from How we scaled product demos at Intercom by Ruairi Galavan and Phil Byrne.