How we went from 0% to 13% AI visibility against Intercom, Crisp, and Tawk.to

Ask ChatGPT or Perplexity for the best support tool for a dev managing multiple apps, and you’ll get the same handful of names back every time: Intercom, Crisp, Tawk.to. That’s not surprising, they’ve been around for years. What surprised us was just how total the shutout was for everyone else, including us.

We launched Convot six months ago as a support tool built specifically for developers running multiple apps, including Shopify devs juggling several storefronts and support queues at once. Traction had been decent. But when we ran ourselves through an AI visibility tool, GetIntel, the number came back 0%. Not low, zero. Meanwhile the established players were sitting at 62-68% visibility on the exact same prompts.

How we found out

GetIntel ran a set of buyer-intent prompts against our category, the kind of questions SaaS founders and Shopify developers actually ask when looking for support tooling for a multi-app setup. Across every single one, we didn’t appear. Intercom, Crisp, and Tawk.to did, consistently — the chart above shows exactly where that left us.

What we found

Being new was the whole problem. AI models lean heavily on trust signals when deciding who to recommend, reviews, citations, third-party mentions, and six months in, we had almost none of that built up yet. Two things stood out specifically:

1. No review footprint. Zero G2 reviews meant zero third-party validation for AI to point to. The established players had years of accumulated reviews backing every recommendation, which is the same dynamic we’ve written about before when it comes to getting more Shopify app reviews — AI answer engines aren’t so different from App Store shoppers in that respect.

2. A content gap in exactly the places competitors were getting cited. GetIntel’s analysis showed what kind of blog content Intercom, Crisp, and Tawk.to had that was actually being cited in AI answers: comparison posts, use-case guides, the specific angles buyers were asking about. We had none of that content published yet.

One channel was out of reach for us. Competitors also had an active Reddit presence feeding citations, but we didn’t have that community footprint to draw on. So we focused on the two levers we could actually move.

What we focused on fixing

Based on GetIntel’s breakdown of exactly which topics competitors’ cited content covered, we started publishing blogs aimed at those same gaps instead of guessing. In parallel, we pushed for reviews and picked up around 9 on G2, not a huge number, but enough to give AI something to point to that wasn’t there before.

The result

That combination, real reviews plus content aimed at the actual gaps, took us from 0% to 13% visibility over 8 weeks. Slower than a more established product might move, but we were building this from a standing start with a system that had no track record yet.

13% isn’t 62-68%. We’re still a long way from where Intercom, Crisp, and Tawk.to sit, and closing that gap as a six-month-old product against companies with a decade of head start is going to take a while. But going from a total shutout to actually showing up in the conversation, for SaaS founders and Shopify app developers specifically, is the foundation everything else builds on.

The takeaway

If you’re a new product, AI won’t recommend you until it has something to trust you on. Reviews and the right content aren’t optional extras, they’re the minimum bar to even enter the conversation.

If you’re a newer product fighting for a spot against established players, run your own AI visibility scan with GetIntel to see exactly what’s missing. And if support is part of what’s holding your reviews back, try Convot free, your first app is on us.