In 2011, Heittokangas et al. (Complex Var Ellipt Equat 56(1–4):81–92, 2011) proved that if a non-constant finite order entire function f(z) and $$f(z+\eta )$$ share a, b, c IM, where $$\eta $$ is a finite non-zero complex number, while a, b, c are three distinct finite complex values, then $$f(z)=f(z+\eta )$$ for all $$z\in \mathbb {C}$$ . We prove that if a non-constant finite order entire function f and its n-th difference operator $$\Delta ^n_{\eta }f$$ share $$a_1$$ , $$a_2$$ , $$a_3$$ IM, where n is a positive integer, $$\eta \ne 0$$ is a finite complex value, while $$a_1$$ , $$a_2$$ , $$a_3$$ are three distinct finite complex values, then $$f=\Delta ^n_{\eta }f$$ . The main results in this paper also improve Theorems 1.1 and 1.2 from Li and Yi (Bull Korean Math Soc 53(4):1213–1235, 2016).