Fin audiences are reusable customer segments that you define using People and Company data. You can then apply these audiences across various Fin features to deliver personalized experiences.
Key principles of how audiences work:
Define once, reuse everywhere: Build powerful audiences from People and Company attributes (e.g.,
plan = Premium,country = IT,monthly_spend > 10k) to control how Fin uses content, guidance, data connectors, tasks, and workflows.Default to "Everyone": Any content, guidance, data, tasks, or workflows that are not assigned to a specific audience are considered "untargeted." This untargeted material is available by default to all customers, including those who belong to other audiences.
Important: Audience rules are applied at the start of a conversation and cannot change mid-conversation. If a customer's attributes update while a conversation is open, Fin will continue using the audience assigned at conversation start — the new attributes won't take effect until a new conversation begins.
Create and manage audiences
Step 1: Ensure your helpdesk data is synced
Before setting up audiences based on data attributes, ensure the attributes are synced and available in your Fin workspace.
To make the attribute usable in audience targeting rules, you need to:
Create the attribute in your helpdesk (e.g. Zendesk or Salesforce).
Wait a few seconds then refresh your Fin workspace and navigate to Settings > Zendesk / Salesforce integration and click the + icon to see which new fields you can sync over.
Once synced, use the attribute in your audience rules for targeting. 👇
Step 2: Set up audiences for Fin
To define new audiences for Fin's content and guidance or manage existing ones:
Go to Settings > Data > Audiences.
Click New audience and give it a descriptive name.
Add audience rules using Person, Company, or Conversation data attributes you have available.
Save the new audience. Once this audience is saved, you can then reuse it across Fin brand identities, content, guidance, data connectors, tasks, and workflows.
Note:
If you're using synced attributes, you’ll see a live preview of the audience it matches. (Previews are unavailable for conversation data attributes.)
If your attribute isn’t showing in the audience filtering options, it may be because the attribute exists only in your Fin workspace and is not synced from your helpdesk (e.g. Zendesk or Salesforce). Attributes created solely in your Fin workspace are used only for filtering reports.
If the attribute still isn’t showing up after syncing, try a hard refresh. The sync may take a few minutes to complete.
Step 3: Apply audiences
Once you've created a Fin audience, you can use it across various features to provide tailored support to specific groups of customers.
Communication style
Context and clarification
Content and sources
Spam
Other
Escalation Rules
Escalation Guidance
Apply to content:
Go to Train > Content.
Select one or more content items.
Click More actions > Change audience.
Choose the relevant audience(s).
Note:
If no audience is applied, Fin will use the content for Everyone.
Fin will use only content relevant to the audience rules during AI answer generation.
Tip: For web synced content, you can automate audience assignment using URL-based rules — no manual tagging required. Set a default audience and create URL pattern rules during web sync creation, or add them later via sync settings. Learn more about audience rules for website syncs.
Apply to guidance:
Go to Train > Guidance.
Select or create guidance.
Choose the audience from the Audience dropdown.
Apply to escalations:
Go to Train > Escalation.
Select or create an escalation rule or an escalation guidance.
Choose the audience from the Audience dropdown.
Apply to data connectors:
By applying a Fin audience to data connectors, you can choose which external data sources, like your store or CRM, Fin can use for each customer group.
Select or create a data connector.
Choose the audience from the Who it's available for dropdown.
Apply to Fin Tasks:
By applying a Fin audience to tasks, you can choose which tasks are triggered for each customer group.
Go to Train > Procedures.
Select or create a task.
Click on the task trigger (in edit mode).
Choose the audience from the Audience dropdown.
Apply to Fin workflows:
By applying a Fin audience to workflows, you can choose which workflows are triggered for each customer group.
Go to Deploy.
Select or create a workflow.
Click on the workflow trigger (in edit mode).
Choose the audience from the Audience dropdown.
Select multiple audiences
It's possible to select multiple audiences for an individual content item or piece of guidance, in this case they are treated like an “OR” rule - so if Audience A and Audience B were selected for the same piece of content, Fin would be able to use that content for any user that matches Audience A, or Audience B, or both.
Create custom audiences for specific tasks and workflows
You can still create a Custom audience for tasks and workflows using attributes and predicates if you need a specific audience set up for one particular task/workflow. There's also an Everyone option that can be selected to include all users, visitors, and leads.
Improve Fin with audience-segmented AI suggestions
Use your Fin audiences to make AI-powered suggestions more accurate and relevant. By segmenting suggestions, Fin analyzes conversations belonging to specific customer groups to help you identify automation gaps. This allows you to tailor your support content and data to the precise needs of each audience. For a step-by-step guide, see our full article on how to use AI suggestions by audience.
How do I keep internal content separate from public website content in Fin?
Keeping internal content separate from public website content in Fin means applying a Fin audience to each internal content item, so Fin only uses that item in conversations with customers who match the audience. Use this section if you manage Fin content and want to stop internal-only information from reaching customers who shouldn't see it.
Create a Fin audience with restrictive rules, using Person, Company, or Conversation data attributes, so it matches only the customers who should receive the internal content. To create it, go to Settings > Data > Audiences and click New audience.
Go to Train > Content and select the internal content items.
Click More actions > Change audience and choose the audience you created.
Leave public content with no audience, or apply an audience for the group it is intended for.
After you apply the audience, Fin uses the internal content only in conversations with customers who match that audience.
Important: Content with no Fin audience applied is used for Everyone. Internal content left without an audience, or given an audience with no restrictive rules, is available to all customers. Audience rules are also evaluated once, when a conversation starts, so a change to a customer's attributes mid-conversation does not change which content Fin uses in that conversation.
To confirm the setup works, go to Test, select the audience in the Testing as dropdown, and review Fin's answers to your test questions.
Step 4. Review and test your audience setup
You can review your audience configuration before your customers interact with Fin. This allows you to see exactly where an audience is being used.
Review your audience setup
Visit Settings > Audiences and select an audience to see a summary of all items where Fin is using this audience.
Note:
Content is counted at the article, page, or snippet level. This means that if a single website has 1,000 pages, it’ll count as 1,000 articles.
Guidance counts each block of guidance.
Data connectors counts each connector.
Tasks counts each Fin Task.
Workflows counts each workflow.
Items that are not targeted, are accessible to “Everyone”. This means that they will be counted in the “Everyone" bucket, but also in the count of all existing audiences.
Conducting regular audits of audience configurations ensures continued relevance, correctness, and operational effectiveness.
Validate Fin's audience rules
You can use Batch Testing to check Fin's answers for a specific audience.
Go to Test.
Select the Audience you want to test from the "Testing as" dropdown menu.
Review Fin's answers to the test questions to ensure they are accurate for that customer segment.
Note: Batch testing with an audience selected does not apply audience filtering to escalation rules and escalation guidance. All live escalation rules will fire regardless of the audience chosen. To validate audience-targeted escalation behavior, use the Preview panel and set Testing as to a specific User or lead who matches the relevant audience.
You can also use Fin previews to quickly check Fin's answers or behavior in the context of adding new content, guidance, etc.
Troubleshooting
Unrestricted audience causing unintended access
Issue: An article meant for a specific audience appears for other users because the audience is configured as "Everyone" or lacks any restrictive rules.
Resolution:
Create a targeted audience:
Navigate to Settings > Data > Audiences.
Click on New audience, name the audience, and add rules based on attributes such as Person, Company, or Conversation.
Save the audience.
Apply the Audience to Content:
Go to Train > Content.
Open the article’s Details panel.
In the Audience section, select the audience you’ve created with restrictive rules. Note: Avoid using an “Everyone” audience (no rules) for articles that should be visible only to specific users.
Overly broad audience rules
Issue: Content targeted for one audience appears for users outside the intended group because of overly broad rules. For example, an audience rule that matches "Company ID starts with Example" may apply to multiple users whose company IDs include "Example".
Resolution:
Refine the audience rule by using more specific conditions to uniquely define the intended audience. This might involve adding constraints such as exact matches or additional conditions to narrow down eligible users.
Can a conversation match more than one Fin audience at the same time?
Yes. In Fin for Zendesk, audience matching is additive: a single conversation can match more than one audience at once, and there is no priority or ranking between audiences. If a conversation matches two audiences that each have different content assigned, Fin can draw from either one when generating an answer, which can look like Fin mixing up products or audiences.
This differs from the audience list described in Fin Messenger: HubSpot setup, where an audience's position in that list affects matching behavior for that platform. Reordering an audience's position has no effect on matching for Fin for Zendesk.
The most common cause of two audiences matching the same conversation is an overlapping URL rule. "Contains" checks whether a piece of text appears anywhere in the web address, without checking where it starts. For example, a rule set to Contains support.rapidworks.com will also match visualdispatchsupport.rapidworks.com, because the longer address contains that same text partway through it. When both audiences match the one conversation and each has separate content assigned, Fin may use either audience's content, producing inconsistent answers.
Resolution:
Use Starts with when an audience should match every page under one path (for example https://support.rapidworks.com/), and no other audience's URLs start with that same text.
Use Is when an audience should match a single, exact URL only.
Avoid Contains to distinguish between similar URLs — it matches text anywhere within the address, so a shorter URL fragment that happens to appear inside a different address will cause both audiences to match.
Serving different knowledge sets to customers on the same product screen
Issue: You want Fin to switch to a different set of content or guidance mid-conversation — for example, because the customer has moved to a different area of your product or their context has changed.
Why this happens: Audience rules are evaluated once, when a conversation starts. They cannot be re-evaluated mid-conversation, so changing a customer's attributes after a conversation has begun has no effect on that conversation.
Workaround: To target a different content set from the same product screen, use JavaScript to update the customer's attributes and then open a fresh conversation. Because audience rules are applied at conversation start, the new conversation will be evaluated against the updated attributes and Fin will use the appropriate content.
Call
Intercom('update', { attribute_name: 'new_value' })to set the attribute that determines the target audience.Call
Intercom('startConversation')to open a new conversation. Fin will evaluate the updated attributes and apply the correct audience.
Alternative for Procedures: If you're reacting to an attribute change inside a Fin Procedure rather than on a product screen, you don't need to open a new conversation. Add an @Switch step right after the step that updates the attribute, pointing to the procedure built for the new attribute value. @Switch bypasses audience eligibility checks entirely — it transitions directly to the target procedure by ID without re-evaluating audience rules — so the destination procedure runs immediately, in the same conversation, using its own content targeting for the new audience.
Note: This approach requires the Intercom Messenger JavaScript SDK. See the Intercom('update') and Intercom('startConversation') method references for full details.
Need more help? Get support from our Community Forum
Find answers and get help from Intercom Support and Community Experts