Migrating Gorgias to Intercom is a double paradigm shift — losing e-commerce-native tooling and moving to a messenger-first CDP. Plan 4–8 weeks, test timestamps early, and budget time for macro rewrites and Fin AI article setup.
Complete guide to migrating from Gorgias to Intercom — Shopify gap, Fin AI setup, macro rewrite, API rate limits, history import, and what can't be moved.
Read this first
Pair-specific gotchas that catch teams out. Each one has cost somebody a weekend.
Quick answer
Gorgias's API rate limit (40–80 requests per 20-second window via leaky bucket) creates an extraction bottleneck. Intercom's Conversations API accepts a created_at timestamp for historical imports, but this must be tested on your specific plan before committing. The hard parts beyond data: the Shopify integration gap, the macro rewrite (Gorgias macros using e-commerce variables break in Intercom), the Tickets-vs-Conversations routing decision, and email channel DNS cutover. The payoff is substantial — Intercom's Messenger, Fin AI agent, Workflows, and unified CDP are a major capability upgrade. Realistic timeline for a 20-agent team with 100K tickets: 4–8 weeks. (developers.gorgias.com)
The Timestamp Test
Before building the full ETL pipeline, run a batch test of 10–50 conversations against the Intercom API. Verify that created_at timestamps are preserved on your specific plan. Also verify that the first message renders correctly after HTML stripping — the opening body does not support HTML. If timestamps revert to the current date, store original dates in a custom attribute or pivot to a clean-break strategy. (developers.intercom.com)
Build a Shopify parity checklist before go-live
view order, resend tracking, edit shipping address, full refund, partial refund, cancel, draft order, duplicate order, and any custom metadata lookup. Do not sign off on the migration until every one of these actions has an owner and a documented path — native Shopify app, Workflow custom action, or manual agent step. (intercom.com)
Image handling
Embedded images in Gorgias FAQ articles must be downloaded and re-uploaded to Intercom. Gorgias-hosted image URLs will break once your legacy account is closed.
The runbook
Work top to bottom. Tick steps as you go — your progress is saved in this browser.
01 Discovery Establish why you are moving, what "done" means, and who signs off.
Objective A written scope with agreed success criteria, a named owner per workstream, and a budget approved by finance.
Keep these open
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Pull the real numbers out of Gorgias
Export counts for tickets (open and closed separately), contacts, organisations, attachments, macros, triggers, automations, views and SLA policies. Note the oldest ticket date — history depth drives the whole timeline. Estimating from memory is the single most common cause of a blown migration window.
Data Profiler Get real record counts instead of estimating from memory -
Decide what history actually moves
Agree a cut-off with the support lead: all history, last 24 months, or open tickets plus a read-only archive. Every extra year of closed tickets adds API time and cost without adding much agent value. Get this in writing — it is the decision people relitigate mid-cutover.
A "move everything" default is what turns a two-week migration into a two-month one.
COI & ROI Calculator Build the 36-month business case you will need for sign-off -
Confirm Intercom can hold your support model
Walk your current workflow through Intercom: multi-brand, business hours, SLA targets, CSAT, side conversations, public vs internal notes, and any channel you depend on (voice, chat, WhatsApp, social). List anything with no native equivalent — those are project risks, not configuration details.
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Build the business case
Model licence delta, migration effort, agent retraining, and the cost of staying put (Cost of Inaction). Executives approve a number, not a plan, and you will be asked for it again at the go/no-go.
Helpdesk Migration Planner Turn ticket volume into a dated Gorgias → Intercom timeline -
Name owners and set the go/no-go date
One named owner each for data, configuration, integrations, and agent enablement, plus a decision-maker who can call a rollback. Put the go/no-go meeting in calendars now, 48 hours before the freeze.
Gorgias → Intercom specifics
- Fin AI agent
- for automated resolution — an LLM-powered agent that understands natural language, far more capable than Gorgias's rule-based autoresponders. Well-configured Fin deployments with high-quality knowledge bases typically target 25–40% autonomous resolution within the first 90 days.
- Intercom Messenger
- for in-product communication, onboarding flows, product tours, and rich message types (carousels, buttons, forms)
- Proactive messaging
- for customer lifecycle engagement — outbound messages triggered by behavior, not just support requests
- Unified CDP
- a single customer view across support, marketing, and product, with roles (user/lead), company associations, custom events, and segments
- Workflows
- visual, multi-step automations with branching, Fin AI integration, and custom actions that far exceed Gorgias's rules engine
Don't move on until
- Record counts confirmed for tickets, contacts, organisations and macros
- Success criteria signed off by the support lead
- Freeze window provisionally booked with the business
02 Data Audit Find out what is actually in the data before you try to move it.
Objective A profiled, cleaned export with every quality defect either fixed at source or explicitly accepted.
Keep these open
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Take a full Gorgias export and profile it
Export to CSV or JSON and profile every file: row counts, null rates per column, distinct values, and type consistency. Compare row counts against the API totals from Discovery — a gap here means your export is silently truncated, usually by pagination.
Data Profiler Profile the Gorgias export for nulls, outliers and type drift -
Validate file structure before anyone writes a transform
Check delimiters, quoting, encoding (expect UTF-8, watch for BOMs and Latin-1), duplicate headers, and embedded newlines in ticket bodies. Ticket descriptions with raw newlines and commas break naive CSV parsers and silently shift columns.
A single unescaped quote in one ticket body can shift every subsequent column without any error.
CSV Validator Catch broken headers and ragged rows in the raw export -
Inventory PII and set retention
Scan for emails, phone numbers, payment card fragments, national IDs and anything else regulated in ticket bodies and custom fields — support tickets are where customers paste things they should not. Decide what gets migrated, masked, or dropped, and record the legal basis.
Ticket bodies and attachments routinely contain card and ID data that never appears in a structured field.
PII & Compliance Scanner Find regulated fields before they land in a new system -
Quantify duplicates, orphans and dead references
Count duplicate contacts (same email, different casing), tickets whose requester no longer exists, organisations with no members, and attachments whose parent ticket is gone. Fix these in Gorgias where you can — migrating them just moves the mess.
Data Cleaner Strip empty rows, stray whitespace and dead columns -
Clean and normalise the export
Trim whitespace, drop empty rows and columns, normalise casing on emails and tags, and standardise every timestamp to UTC ISO 8601. Timezone drift is invisible at load time and shows up weeks later as SLA reports nobody can reconcile.
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Produce a masked copy for sandbox work
Generate a realistic but fake version of the export for testing and for any vendor who needs sample data. Loading real customer PII into a sandbox is a breach in most jurisdictions, and sandboxes are rarely covered by your DPA.
PII Masker Generate a safe copy for sandbox and vendor testing
Don't move on until
- Export parses cleanly with no ragged rows or encoding errors
- PII inventory complete and retention decisions recorded
- Duplicate and orphan records quantified and triaged
03 Field Mapping Turn two schemas into one signed-off mapping spec.
Objective A reviewed field-level mapping covering every object, with an explicit decision for every field that has no target.
Keep these open
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Generate the first-pass Gorgias → Intercom field map
Start from an automated match on both schemas, then review every row by hand. Automated matching gets the obvious 70% right and is confidently wrong on the rest — especially anything named "type", "status" or "custom_field_1".
Schema Mapper Opens pre-loaded with the Gorgias → Intercom field pair -
Map status, priority and channel values, not just field names
Enumerate every value in each picklist on both sides and map them explicitly. Value-level mismatches are the defect class that survives all the way to production because the field itself mapped fine — a ticket that should be "Pending" arriving as "Open" reopens SLA clocks.
Statuses with no target equivalent (on-hold, pending-customer) need a policy decision, not a best guess.
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Decide how custom fields land
Create the target custom fields first, matching type exactly (a dropdown mapped to free text can never be mapped back). Where Intercom has no equivalent, decide between a new custom field, a tag, or a note appended to the ticket body — and record which.
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Resolve identity and threading
Decide how source IDs are preserved — most platforms will not let you set the primary key, so keep the original ID in a custom field. Without it, reconciliation becomes fuzzy matching and every future support question about an old ticket is unanswerable.
Losing the original ticket ID makes reconciliation and rollback effectively impossible.
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Plan attachments, inline images and threading order
Confirm size limits, allowed MIME types, and whether inline images survive as attachments or need rehosting. Decide the comment ordering and author attribution rules: comments loaded out of order, or all attributed to the API user, destroy the conversation history agents rely on.
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Freeze and sign off the mapping spec
Version the spec, walk the support lead through it row by row, and get explicit sign-off. Any change after this point goes through change control — mid-flight mapping edits are how partial loads happen.
Gorgias → Intercom specifics
- Gorgias Tickets → Intercom Conversations AND/OR Intercom Tickets
- Intercom has two distinct objects: Conversations (real-time, messenger-style) and Tickets (tracked, async issues with status fields and a required ticket_type_id). Each Gorgias ticket must be routed to one during migration. See the Tickets-vs-Conversations routing decision tree below. (developers.intercom.com)
- Gorgias Ticket Messages → Intercom Conversation Parts
- Each message becomes a conversation part with correct author attribution (admin vs. contact), public/private flag (comment for replies, note for internal notes), and HTML body. The opening conversation body does not support HTML — sanitize first-message content instead of copying raw Gorgias HTML. Subsequent replies and notes support some HTML. Intercom caps conversations at 500 parts; tickets with extremely long message threads must be truncated or split. (developers.intercom.com)
- Gorgias Customers → Intercom Contacts
- (role = "user" for known customers, role = "lead" for anonymous visitors). Core fields (name, email, phone) map directly. E-commerce data (order history, LTV, Shopify customer ID) must be stored in Intercom custom attributes — Intercom has no native fields for these. Contacts are unique by external_id or email. Standardize on a stable external ID early: Intercom CSV imports that contain both email and user_id can create duplicates if the existing record has no user_id. (intercom.com)
- Gorgias Companies → Intercom Companies
- Intercom's model is richer (monthly_spend, plan, user_count, segments). Map core data; leave Intercom-native fields for future population. Intercom's CSV import does not support company data — use the API. Company records only become visible in Intercom once they have at least one associated user. (intercom.com)
- Gorgias Tags → Intercom Tags
- Intercom maintains separate namespaces for conversation and contact tags. Gorgias tag names are case-sensitive — normalize before import.
Don't move on until
- Every source field is mapped, deliberately dropped, or parked in a custom field
- Status, priority and channel value maps agreed with the support lead
- Mapping spec version-controlled and signed off
04 Test Migration Prove the pipeline on a small, representative slice.
Objective A pilot load into a Intercom sandbox that reconciles cleanly and has been reviewed by real agents.
Keep these open
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Stand up a Intercom sandbox that matches production config
Create the custom fields, groups, brands, business hours and SLA policies first. A pilot into a default sandbox tests nothing, because the failures you care about are all configuration mismatches.
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Pick a deliberately nasty pilot sample
Take 500-1000 records chosen for difficulty, not convenience: the longest ticket threads, tickets with the most attachments, non-Latin character sets, merged and split tickets, deleted requesters, and every status value. A clean random sample proves only that easy records are easy.
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Run the load with masked data and instrument everything
Log every API request and response with its source record ID. When 40 records fail out of 10,000 you need to know exactly which ones and why, without re-running the whole batch.
PII Masker Never load real customer PII into a sandbox -
Measure real throughput against the rate limit
Record achieved records-per-hour under Intercom's actual rate limits, including retries and backoff. Extrapolate to the full volume: if the maths says the full load exceeds your freeze window, you fix that now, not on cutover night.
Published rate limits are ceilings, not throughput. Assume real-world rates are meaningfully lower once retries and backoff are counted.
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Reconcile the pilot and triage every failure
Diff source against target on record counts and field-level values. Every discrepancy gets a root cause and a fix — "probably fine" at pilot scale becomes thousands of broken records at full scale.
Migration Validation Tool Diff the pilot batch against source before scaling up -
Put real agents in front of the pilot data
Have two or three agents work sample tickets end to end in the sandbox. They find the things reconciliation cannot see: unreadable threading, missing context, macros that no longer make sense. Fix the mapping, then re-run.
Gorgias → Intercom specifics
- Author attribution
- Verify customer messages map to contacts and agent replies map to admins. Check at least 5 conversations per agent.
- First-message rendering
- Spot-check that the opening message of imported conversations renders correctly after HTML stripping.
- Email deliverability
- Send test emails from external accounts to every support address. Verify they arrive in Intercom Inbox, not spam. Check SPF/DKIM alignment with email header analysis.
- Macro testing
- Verify rebuilt macros work against real Shopify scenarios. Test all Type B rewrites specifically.
- Fin AI testing
- Submit the 10 most common WISMO, refund, and product queries to verify Fin's resolution accuracy against migrated articles. Document resolution rate vs. handoff rate.
Don't move on until
- Pilot batch reconciles to 100% on record counts
- Agents have reviewed sample tickets and confirmed they are workable
- Measured throughput extrapolates to a viable full-load window
05 Cutover Execute the switch inside a controlled, reversible window.
Objective All in-scope data live in Intercom, agents working in the new system, and a rollback path that stayed available throughout.
Keep these open
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Pre-load history before the freeze
Load closed tickets and contacts days or weeks ahead while Gorgias stays live. Only open tickets and the final delta need to move inside the freeze — this is the single biggest lever on window length.
Helpdesk Migration Planner Size the freeze window from Intercom's real API limits -
Publish the runbook with times, owners and abort criteria
A timed sequence: freeze start, final export, delta load, channel switch, smoke test, go/no-go, agent switch. Name who does each step and the explicit condition that triggers a rollback. Decide the abort criteria before the night, when nobody wants to be the one to call it.
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Freeze Gorgias and take the final delta
Stop new ticket creation, let agents finish in-flight replies, then export everything changed since the pre-load. Announce the freeze to the whole business, not just support — someone always tries to raise a ticket during it.
Tickets created during an unenforced freeze land in the old system and are the most common source of permanently lost data.
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Load the delta and open tickets
Run the delta load, then reconcile counts before touching any channel. Do not repoint email until the delta has verified — an inbound ticket arriving mid-load is far harder to untangle than a few extra minutes of freeze.
Migration Validation Tool Confirm the final delta landed before you reopen -
Repoint channels and verify with live traffic
Switch email forwarding and MX or connector settings, update chat widgets and web forms, and re-authorise integrations. Then send real test tickets through every channel and confirm each lands, routes and triggers the right automation.
Email forwarding changes can take up to a full DNS TTL to propagate — check the TTL days in advance and lower it if needed.
Cron Expression Builder Schedule the delta syncs that run through the freeze -
Run the go/no-go and switch the agents
Walk the exit criteria with the decision-maker, call it explicitly, then move agents over with a named person on hand for the first few hours. Keep Gorgias read-only rather than cancelled — cancelling the old contract on day one removes your only fallback.
Gorgias → Intercom specifics
- Partial refunds
- Intercom's refund flow is full-refund only as of this writing. Partial refunds are in development.
- Macro variables with order data
- Gorgias macros like {{last_order.tracking_url}} have no direct Intercom equivalent. Agents reference order data from the sidebar, or you build Workflow custom actions to fetch and populate order data into conversation custom attributes.
- Revenue attribution
- No native Intercom equivalent. Must be replaced with custom event-based tracking (send order.completed events to Intercom via API with order value as metadata) or accepted as a lost metric.
- Proactive chat campaigns with Shopify triggers
- Gorgias triggers messages based on cart value or checkout page. Intercom supports URL-based and event-based targeting, but Shopify-specific events (cart update, checkout initiation) must be sent to Intercom as custom events via Shopify webhooks → your backend → Intercom Events API.
- Email rollback
- If email deliverability fails, revert DNS forwarding rules to Gorgias within 24–48 hours (DNS propagation delay applies).
Don't move on until
- Full historical load complete and counts matched
- Inbound channels repointed and verified with live test tickets
- Rollback decision point passed explicitly, not by default
06 Validation Prove the migration is complete, then close it out.
Objective Documented evidence that data, workflow and reporting all survived, and a signed acceptance.
Keep these open
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Run the full reconciliation
Compare source and target on every object: total counts, counts by status, counts by group, attachment counts, and field-level spot checks on a random sample. Produce one report you can hand to an auditor.
Migration Validation Tool Reconcile Gorgias and Intercom record-for-record -
Verify field completeness, not just record counts
Re-profile the loaded data and compare null rates per field against the source profile. Matching record counts with a field that silently arrived empty is the failure mode counts alone will never catch.
Data Profiler Prove field completeness held up through the load -
Rebuild reporting and compare against baselines
Recreate your core dashboards — volume, first response time, resolution time, CSAT — and compare to pre-migration figures for the same period. Explain every variance; a changed SLA calculation is a real finding, not a rounding error.
SLA and first-response metrics are usually recalculated from the loaded timestamps, so they will differ if any timestamp mapping was approximate.
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Test the workflow layer end to end
Fire every trigger, automation, SLA escalation, macro and notification with a live ticket. Workflow does not migrate — it gets rebuilt — so it is untested until someone has actually watched it run.
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Confirm compliance and produce the audit trail
Re-scan the loaded data for regulated fields, confirm retention and deletion policies are configured in Intercom, and file the evidence with your PII decisions from the audit phase.
PII & Compliance Scanner Produce the compliance evidence your auditor will ask for -
Sign off, then decommission on a schedule
Get written acceptance against the Discovery success criteria. Keep Gorgias read-only for an agreed period (30-90 days is typical), take a final archive export, and only then cancel. Diarise the decommission date so it does not quietly renew.
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Set Fin's persona and tone
Intercom allows you to define Fin's name, tone (professional, friendly, etc.), and length preference for responses.
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Configure custom answers
For questions where your articles don't cover the exact answer, create custom Fin answers — these are explicit question-answer pairs that override article-based responses. Prioritize your top 20 ticket topics from Gorgias analytics.
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Set confidence thresholds
Fin can be configured to only auto-resolve when confidence is high. Start conservative — set to "only when very confident" for the first 2 weeks, then relax as you review Fin's performance.
Gorgias → Intercom specifics
- Channel-specific behavior
- Fin can behave differently on Messenger (chat) vs. email. On chat, Fin responds in real-time. On email, Fin can draft responses for agent review instead of auto-sending. Configure per channel based on your risk tolerance.
- Timestamp verification
- Confirm imported conversations display original Gorgias dates, not import dates. Spot-check at least 20 conversations across different date ranges.
- Shopify app validation
- Confirm agents can view order data in the sidebar for migrated contacts. Test with 3–5 real customer profiles.
Don't move on until
- Full reconciliation report attached to the project record
- Reporting baselines match pre-migration figures within agreed tolerance
- Formal acceptance signed and archive retention scheduled
Field mapping reference
The field-by-field mapping for each object. Use this as the starting point for your mapping spec.
Capability Required Intercom Plan
| Gorgias field | Intercom field | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Basic inbox, macros, Messenger | Essential ($29/seat/mo) | Core support functionality |
| Workflows (automation) | Advanced ($85/seat/mo) | Visual workflow builder |
| Fin AI agent | Advanced + Fin add-on | Per-resolution pricing |
| SLAs | Advanced | Configurable in Inbox settings |
| Custom reports & dashboards | Advanced | Gorgias reporting rebuilds here |
| Workload management, team-level routing | Expert ($132/seat/mo) | Advanced assignment rules |
| Multiple help centers | Expert | Multi-brand requires this |
| HIPAA compliance | Expert | If applicable |
Integration Gorgias Native?
| Gorgias field | Intercom field | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Recharge (subscriptions) | Yes | Verify feature parity; may require custom API integration for full subscription management |
| Loop Returns | Yes | Build via Intercom Webhooks + Loop API, or use a third-party connector (e.g., Zapier) |
| Klaviyo | Yes | Intercom has native outbound messaging that partially replaces Klaviyo triggers |
| Yotpo (reviews) | Yes | Display review data via custom attributes or external app panel |
| ShipBob / ShipStation | Yes | Tracking data can flow through Shopify's native integration; direct actions may require custom work |
What breaks
Known failure modes. Have a recovery plan for each before you cut over.
Duplicate customers:
Gorgias allows duplicate customers by email across different channels. Intercom contacts are unique by external_id or email. Deduplicate before import.
Conversation part limit:
Intercom caps at 500 parts per conversation. Gorgias tickets with extremely long message threads must be truncated or split.
Gorgias system messages
("Rule X applied," "Ticket merged"): Decide per type — import as internal note parts (preserving audit trails but adding noise) or discard.
Attachment expiry:
Gorgias-hosted attachment URLs may become inaccessible after account closure. Download all attachments during extraction and re-upload to Intercom.
Contact role assignment:
All Gorgias customers who have placed orders should be imported as Intercom contacts with role = "user", not "lead". This affects segmentation and targeting.
Account-wide rate limit sharing:
Gorgias rate limits are per-account, not per-key. Your migration script shares the budget with every other live integration on the same account. Consider temporarily disabling non-critical integrations during the extraction window.
Social conversation history:
Facebook/Instagram tickets migrated from Gorgias appear as standard Intercom conversations — they won't reconnect to original social threads.
Deprecated endpoints:
Gorgias's per-ticket messages endpoint has been marked deprecated in their docs. Verify the current message-listing flow before building extraction logic. (developers.gorgias.com)
Attachment limits per call:
If a single message has more than 10 attachments, split across API calls — both conversation creation and reply APIs cap attachment payloads per request.
Company CSV limitation:
Intercom's CSV import does not support company data. Any hybrid migration plan must use the API for companies. (intercom.com)
Tools used in this playbook
All free, all run entirely in your browser — nothing is uploaded.
FAQ
How long does a Gorgias to Intercom migration take?
A typical mid-market migration with 20 agents and 100K tickets takes 4–8 weeks, including planning, data migration, macro rewrite, Workflow build, and Fin AI setup. Clean-break migrations that skip historical conversation import can be completed in 2–4 weeks.
Can Gorgias ticket history be imported into Intercom?
Yes. Intercom's Conversations API accepts a created_at timestamp field for migrating past conversations. However, you must test this on your specific plan in a sandbox before committing to a full import. If timestamps aren't preserved correctly, store original dates in a custom attribute as a fallback.
What happens to my Shopify integration when I switch from Gorgias to Intercom?
As of mid-2026, Intercom's Shopify integration supports full order management including refunds, cancellations, and shipping address edits from the Inbox. Macro e-commerce variables like {{last_order.tracking_url}} don't carry over — agents reference order data from the sidebar or you build Workflow custom actions. Partial refunds are still in development.
Does Intercom's Fin AI replace Gorgias autoresponders?
Fin AI is significantly more capable than Gorgias's rule-based autoresponders, using natural language understanding to resolve conversations autonomously via Articles. However, WISMO autoresponders that send tracking info require a Workflow custom action to fetch Shopify order data, since Fin doesn't have native Shopify awareness without the Data Connector setup.
What data is lost when migrating from Gorgias to Intercom?
Revenue statistics, macro e-commerce variables, Gorgias Convert data, the intent/sentiment AI model, and the Lite Agent role have no native Intercom equivalent. E-commerce stack integration configs (Recharge, Klaviyo, Yotpo) must also be reconfigured. Historical CSAT scores can be stored as custom attributes but won't appear in native Intercom reporting.