Platform Migration
Moving a live support operation from one platform to another
When I joined Teachable in April, I walked into a support operation running on two different systems — a setup that was holding back our team’s ability to deliver consistent, scalable service. We needed to consolidate, and Intercom offered a path to do that while also opening the door to AI-powered support.
What started as a platform migration quickly became an opportunity to reevaluate how we support our users. Moving an active operation from Zendesk to Intercom wasn’t just about transferring data — it was about maintaining service quality while our team learned entirely new workflows and our customers continued reaching out for help. I knew this project would only succeed with careful planning. So I designed a staged rollout strategy, methodically moving plan levels, agent groups, and topics one at a time — testing each phase, catching issues early, and improving as we went.
Migration timeline
Starting fresh gave us the chance to address systemic issues that had been accumulating for years.
Making Priority Visible
I established our first formal SLA framework, ensuring high-priority customers were automatically surfaced and routed to the right agents — no more relying on gut instinct to identify urgent issues.
Data-Driven Insights
New dashboards transformed our “feeling overwhelmed” into concrete data about what was actually driving support volume, giving us clear targets for improvement.
Proactive Problem-Solving
Rather than just responding faster, I focused on reducing volume at the source — expanding AI automation for routine questions, optimizing our Help Center based on real search behavior, and creating workflows that gathered context before conversations reached agents.
Seamless Escalations
I strengthened our cross-functional processes in Slack and Jira, ensuring critical issues reached engineering and product teams without delays or miscommunication.
The result
By the end of July — exactly on schedule — we had successfully migrated every active conversation to Intercom. But more importantly, we had built a support operation that made users feel truly heard, with the data and processes to keep improving. The best migrations aren’t about moving stuff from Point A to Point B — they’re about using that transition as a catalyst to solve deeper challenges and build something better than what came before.
