The shape of your inbound support demand — how many conversations shoppers started each day over the last 30 days.
At a glance
Conversation Volume Trend is a Conversation Intelligence metric tracked from Intercom data. It plots how many new conversations were created per day across a rolling 30-day window, so the support lead and founder at Blitz can see whether demand is climbing, flat, or spiking. As an area chart it is built to be read at a glance — the curve tells you the trend, not a single number. Pair it with New vs Closed and Open Backlog Trend below to see whether your team is keeping pace with the inbound you see here.
Calculation
Calculated automatically from your Intercom data. Vortex IQ queries theconversations endpoint for every conversation with created_at inside the trailing 30 days, then groups the count by calendar day in your reporting time zone. Each day becomes one point on the area chart. Conversations are counted by creation date only — reopened, merged, or reassigned conversations are not double-counted, and current state (open, closed, snoozed) does not affect the trend. See the worked example below for a typical reading.
Worked example
A representative reading of Conversation Volume Trend for Blitz, a sports retailer running support on Intercom. Across a normal fortnight the curve sits around 40-55 new conversations on weekdays and dips to ~20 on weekends — a healthy, predictable rhythm. Then on a Tuesday it jumps to 130. Reading the slope, the support lead sees this is a one-day spike, not a new baseline. Cross-referencing Volume by Channel shows the surge came in via email, and Top Topics (Tags) shows a cluster ofpayment-failed and order-stuck tags — pointing at a checkout incident rather than organic growth. The founder uses the trend to justify a temporary extra agent for the day, then watches New vs Closed to confirm the team clears the spike rather than letting it roll into backlog. For deeper investigation, use Vortex Mind to trace the spike to its upstream cause; for natural-language exploration, ask Ask Viq “what drove the conversation spike on Tuesday?”.
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard
Where to look in Intercom’s own dashboard: Open Reports → Conversations in Intercom and select the “New conversations” (or “Conversations created”) metric over a custom 30-day range. Intercom’s chart counts by conversationcreated_at, the same anchor Vortex IQ uses, so the daily shape should line up closely. The Inbox views (“All”, “Unassigned”) show current state, not created-per-day, so they will not match this trend — use the Reports surface to reconcile.
Why the Vortex IQ value may legitimately differ:
Cross-connector reconciliation: when a spike looks payment- or stock-driven, line this trend up against the Adyen and commerce sibling cards (see Support Spike on Failed Payments). For divergence investigations, use Vortex Mind.
Known limitations / merchant FAQs
Q: How often does Conversation Volume Trend update? The card refreshes on the standard data refresh (typically every 30-60 minutes for live integrations). The most recent day’s bar will keep growing until the day closes. Q: Why does my Intercom dashboard show a different number? The most common reasons are time-zone alignment (day boundaries near midnight), period-boundary differences (rolling 30 days vs a fixed range), and whether bot-only conversations are included. Match these settings in Reports → Conversations before assuming a real divergence. Q: Does a reopened conversation count again? No. The trend counts each conversation once, on its originalcreated_at day. Reopens show up in Reopen Rate, not here.
Q: Can I customise the alert threshold?
This card itself has no threshold — it is a read-only trend. Use Volume Spike for the anomaly alert, which is configurable per profile in the Alert Rules tab.