---
title: Buy Your Customers a Coffee
teaser: Use customer support products like Intercom to meet your customers face-to-face.
tags: playbook
author: Bernerd Schaefer
published_on: 2015-12-20
---

We run [a][upcase] [few][FormKeep] [products][hound] and like to periodically
reach out to users in cities where we have offices.

  [upcase]: https://thoughtbot.com/upcase/join
  [FormKeep]: https://formkeep.com
  [hound]: https://houndci.com

We typically use [Intercom] for customer support of our products and our
clients' products. We use it to segment users and send automated messages to
keep our users engaged.

  [Intercom]: https://intercom.io

But those same tools can be used for other purposes, like sending the following
email to [FormKeep] users in Portland:

> Subject: Meet in Portland?
>
> Hey there!
>
> It looks like you're a FormKeep user, and you might be based in Portland?
>
> I'd love to meet you for coffee or lunch. My treat!
>
> My name is Bernerd, and I'm a developer at thoughtbot. We make FormKeep, and
> we're always excited to talk to people about how to make our work and their
> work more fulfilling.
>
> If you're interested, please fill out the form here to help us manage our schedule:
>
> https://thoughtbot.com/portland
>
> Thanks!

It's a nice complement to our overall strategy of lifecycle emails, and gives
us the chance to learn about our customers in a direct way, like over a coffee.
It also lets us meet with other designers, developers, and product owners to
learn about their products and share with them a bit about thoughtbot.

We typically use audience segments in Intercom to select for:

  * Users who signed up at least a month ago.

    We want to engage with users who have had some time to use the product,
    and a month is a nice number.

  * Users in the city and state of an office.

    There are some false positives in the location data collected, but we've
    otherwise had good success in reaching users in a particular location.

We've loved the chances these emails provide to meet with our customers
face-to-face, and think you will too.

Oh, and if you find yourself in [Portland] or [anywhere else we have an
office][thoughtbot-locations] we'd love to meet for coffee or lunch. Our treat!

  [Portland]: https://thoughtbot.com/portland
  [thoughtbot-locations]: https://thoughtbot.com/locations