Best 3 Use Cases for an Onboarding Assistant Bot for SaaS Companies

Intercom has long been a staple in the SaaS customer engagement ecosystem, offering a combination of live chat, help desk, and marketing automation. The platform’s chatbot feature, known as "Intercom Bots," allows teams to automate responses to common inquiries, qualify leads, and route complex questions to human agents. Intercom’s strength lies in its tight integration with the Intercom Inbox, which unifies chat, email, and support tickets into a single interface, providing a holistic view of the customer journey. The bots can be configured using a visual flow builder, enabling non‑technical users to set up decision trees and trigger actions based on user behavior. For onboarding, Intercom Bots can guide new users through product tours, ask for feedback, and even trigger in‑app messages that prompt users to complete signup steps. The platform’s ability to segment users based on behavior, demographic data, and custom attributes allows bots to tailor their messaging to specific cohorts. Additionally, Intercom’s product tours feature lets teams create guided walkthroughs that can be embedded within the bot’s conversation, giving users a hands‑on introduction to key features. Intercom’s pricing structure is tiered. The "Essential" plan starts at $39/month for up to 2,000 contacts, while the "Pro" plan begins at $99/month and supports unlimited contacts plus advanced automation. The "Premium" plan, which includes additional features such as custom bots and advanced reporting, is priced at $199/month. Intercom also offers a "Team" plan for larger enterprises, but pricing is custom. While Intercom provides robust chat and automation tools, it does not include a dedicated knowledge base or a dual retrieval system. Users must rely on the Intercom Knowledge Base, which is primarily a static FAQ repository. The platform also lacks a built‑in WYSIWYG editor for widget design, meaning customizations often require CSS tweaks.

Drift positions itself as a conversational marketing platform that emphasizes real‑time engagement and lead qualification. Its chatbot, known as the "Drift Bot," is designed to capture visitor intent, schedule meetings, and route conversations to the appropriate sales or support teams. Drift’s conversational flows are built using a visual editor that lets marketers create branching paths based on user responses, time delays, and contextual triggers. The platform also offers a robust scheduling integration with Calendly, Google Calendar, and Outlook, enabling bots to book meetings on the fly. For onboarding, Drift can greet new users, ask for their role or subscription level, and provide contextual help links. The bot can also trigger in‑app messages or email follow‑ups once a user completes certain actions, such as signing up for a trial or uploading documentation. Drift’s integration ecosystem is extensive, covering CRMs like Salesforce, HubSpot, and Pipedrive, which allows the bot to pull customer data and personalize conversations. Drift’s pricing tiers start with the "Starter" plan at $50/month, which includes basic chatbot functionality and limited contacts. The "Growth" plan, priced at $150/month, adds advanced features like custom branding, more contacts, and additional integrations. For large enterprises, the "Scale" plan offers unlimited contacts and premium support, with pricing available upon request. While Drift excels at lead qualification and meeting scheduling, it does not provide a dual knowledge base or a knowledge graph. The bot’s responses are largely script‑based, and although it can pull data from integrated CRMs, it lacks an internal fact‑validation layer. Additionally, Drift’s widget customization options are more limited compared to a dedicated WYSIWYG editor.