Intercom is a next-generation customer service platform, built for an AI-first world. Customer service teams from more than 25,000 global organizations, including Atlassian, Amazon and Lyft Business, rely on Intercom to deliver more efficient and personal customer service.
With about 900 employees distributed across the globe, Intercom’s teams use Clockwise to coordinate their time and be more productive. We spoke with Ashlie Stewart, Intercom’s Manager of Billing Operations, to discover how Clockwise empowers her team to make time for what matters.
Saying goodbye to the daily struggles of scheduling
When Ashlie first joined Intercom, she found it challenging to schedule with her boss and other executive leaders. “Anyone that was at director level or above, their calendars were booked back-to-back, and they didn’t all have their own EAs. We basically had to fight for the calendar slots,” Ashlie recalled. “Clockwise solved a lot of that. We could just enter all of the people that needed to be in the meeting, and Clockwise would find the best time for us to have it.”
To this day, the smart scheduling suggestions feature is Ashlie’s most-used Clockwise functionality — especially since many of her reports are located in Dublin, while she’s based out of Chicago. “I have eight people I need to talk to across four different time zones — I use Clockwise to tell me when we’re actually all going to be online at the same time.”
For distributed teams like Ashlie’s, Clockwise removes the tediousness of scheduling across time zones by using AI to identify the best times to meet. Clockwise considers a range of factors in its calculations, including cost to Focus Time, your meeting hours, and the other attendees’ meeting hours. “Clockwise makes scheduling easier and more reliable. Before, it was hard to get everything lined up and make sure the right people were attending the right calls. Clockwise solved that for us,” said Ashlie.
What’s more, Ashlie found Clockwise easy to integrate into her workflow, so much so that she’s made Clockwise part of the onboarding process for new hires. “It’s also not disruptive. Something that’s challenging with the implementation of other tools that we use is: ‘Well, now I have to change my workflow.’ But for Clockwise, you just turn it on, and you can have it do as much or as little as you want it to.”
Solving problems more quickly for their customers
Not only does Clockwise help Intercom employees schedule their meetings; It also optimizes their day for greater productivity and less stress. It does so by scheduling meetings to their least disruptive times, while creating more space for uninterrupted Focus Time.
Ashlie’s team is responsible for handling inquiries about invoicing, an activity they refer to as “inboxing.” This type of work requires focused attention, something that was difficult to achieve without Focus Time.
“Before I was using Clockwise, there would be a lot of 15-, 20-, 30-minute gaps in my calendar, and all of that context switching was really difficult,” shared Ashlie. Now, Ashlie and her team are able to batch their meetings, then block off the rest of the day for time-intensive work such as inboxing. This minimizes the disruptiveness and mental load caused by context switching. “It allows all of us who are using it to set up the day to be the most efficient day possible.”
The benefits of using Clockwise also extend to Intercom’s customers. Ashlie said, “Getting rid of those gaps makes our Focus Time more valuable. For my team doing inboxing, if they’re in and out of there every 30 minutes, it’s really difficult to solve whatever problem the customer is having. You end up saying, ‘I have to step away for a minute and then I’ll start looking back into this.’ That makes the problem take much longer to solve.” Thanks to Clockwise, Intercom’s finance team is better able to support their customers, something that aligns with their own mission of strengthening customer relationships.
Try the all-new Clockwise today for free.
