Community Sauna Baths is a London not-for-profit with sauna and cold-plunge sites. SupportYourApp says they had five locations when this work ran. SupportYourApp published the write-up, updated 3 August 2026. Nick Ryabchenko, Chief Integration Officer, is the author. This is an implementer case study.
Veronica Fernandez, Customer Experience Manager, is the client quote. She said the partnership brought structure and got replies back to customers faster.
If you are looking at the same route, start with the Zendesk → Intercom playbook. Intercom’s historical migration is the generic data path. Community Sauna’s published story is a workflow rebuild that happened to include a Zendesk export.
Why they left Zendesk
SupportYourApp lists the problems as slow replies, unclear ownership, no shared SOPs, and weak reporting. Customers waited too long. Tickets fell through gaps between teams. Quality varied by agent. Leaders could not see how the queue was doing.
The page says Zendesk had robust capabilities. The next stage of the company wanted Intercom for workflows, speed, and clearer reporting. There is no Zendesk or Intercom bill on the page, so I am not quoting a license saving.
They also wanted more deflection through automation and more ways for people to write in.
What they rebuilt
SupportYourApp says it migrated data and then rebuilt the workspace. Saved replies, automations, inboxes, views, and reporting were configured from scratch.
They added a chatbot for common questions. They turned on WhatsApp next to chat, email, and Instagram. Automated replies were standardized so the tone did not depend on who picked up the thread.
That is an operating-model project. Macros, triggers, routing, and SLAs do not become Intercom policies through a ticket dump. The playbook already marks those as manual.
Zendesk will export tickets, users, and organizations. Intercom will take a historical load. Attachments, private notes, custom fields, and help-center articles each have their own fidelity limits. SupportYourApp does not publish ticket counts, article counts, or a failed record. I am not filling those in.
What they gained
The headline is 97% faster responses, from 3 days to 2 hours. Bot interactions are listed as 100% more, meaning a higher deflection rate.
Those percents are SupportYourApp’s. I have not seen the Intercom reports. Veronica’s quote supports “more timely” replies without repeating the 97% figure.
They later asked SupportYourApp to set up a new location in France, with French as a second language. That is a follow-on engagement, not a Zendesk-import result.
What the vendor page skips
There is no failed import, no missing private note, and no rollback. We do not know whether old Zendesk tickets are searchable in Intercom, or whether the help center moved.
Agent roles, SLAs, and macros were rebuilt. If you expected a like-for-like ticket archive, this write-up does not prove you got one.
The playbook’s reverse route is Intercom → Zendesk. Community Sauna did not describe using it.
What I would copy
Write the support problems as ownership and SOPs, not as “we need Intercom.” Their Zendesk pain was a missing system for who answers what. A new help desk without that design will reproduce the same queue.
Rebuild saved replies, views, and routing on purpose. Then import history if you still need it. Do not import first and hope the workflows appear.
Add the extra channel, WhatsApp here, only after the inbox design exists. Otherwise you multiply the same unowned tickets.
Keep Zendesk readable until you can find a known ticket, a known customer, and a known article in Intercom. The page never says they did that. I still would.
The Zendesk → Intercom playbook is the checklist I would run. Use the SupportYourApp write-up for the rebuild-plus-chatbot shape, and remember the 97% is the vendor’s number.