Start up the Intercom Respond widget being sure to clear previous user's conversations.

boot-intercom-respond.js

/**
 * Boots up Intercom (intercom.io). This should be run on page load
 * @param {String} APP_ID - Your Intercom app id
 * @param {Function} moment - moment.js
 * @param {Object} [user] - information about the logged in user
 */
startupIntercom(APP_ID, moment, user) {

  // basic settings for all users
  const intercomSettings = {
    app_id: APP_ID,
    custom_launcher_selector: '.js-intercom'
  };

  // Do an initial startup with just the basic settings.
  Intercom('boot', intercomSettings);

  // flush out any previous cookie before starting up to prevent seeing
  // other user's conversations on the same computer this can only be done properly
  // if 'boot' has already been triggered.
  //
  // if this was a single-page app then you could just run this by itself when a user logs out
  Intercom('shutdown');

  // add user specific settings
  if (user) {
      intercomSettings.user_id = user.id;
      intercomSettings.name = user.name;
      intercomSettings.email = user.email;
      intercomSettings.created_at = moment( user.created_at, 'YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm:ss').unix();
  }

  // start up the intercom client for real
  Intercom('boot', intercomSettings);
}

If you use Respond with both anonymous users and authenticated users a person can potentially see someone else's conversations if they use the same computer. Looking through the Intercom docs they state to be sure to run the 'shutdown' method when a user logs out of the app. This is pretty straight-forward if you have a single-page app where JavaScript handles logging out just call Intercom('shutdown') at the same time you log out the user.

However in a traditional application where the browser does a round-trip to the server to handle authentication then it is a bit more difficult. My solution was to manually boot Intercom on page load, call the shutdown method to clear any previous cookies, and then boot up Intercom again to refresh the session.

Lifesaver 👍