Zendesk vs Intercom: Which is better?

This additional cost can be a considerable factor for businesses to consider when evaluating their customer support needs against their budget constraints. Understanding the unique attributes of zendesk and intercom is crucial in this comparison. Zendesk is renowned for its comprehensive range of functionalities, including advanced email ticketing, live chat, phone support, and a vast knowledge base.

There are even automations to help with things like SLAs, or service level agreements, to do things like send out notifications when headlights are due. The best help desks are also ticketing systems, which lets support reps create a support ticket out of issues that can then be tracked. Ticket routing helps to send the ticket to the best support team agent. When it comes to self-service portals for things like knowledgebases, Intercom has a useful set of resources. Intercom also has a community forum where users can help one another with questions and solutions. Personalized messaging, in-app messaging, product tours, and chatbot capabilities set Intercom apart from Zendesk.

• Intercom also excels in real-time chat solutions, making it a strong contender for businesses seeking dynamic customer interaction.
• Intercom’s integration capabilities are limited, and some apps don’t integrate well with third-party customer service technology.
• Premiere Zendesk plans have 24/7 proactive support with faster response times.
• Discover customer and product issues with instant replays, in-app cobrowsing, and console logs.

In addition, the costs of Zendesk’s services are slightly easier to calculate. However, regardless of whether your choice is Zendesk or Intercom, you will be spending some time trying to figure out how much you will pay for the services. Intercom also offers reporting features, but they aren’t as extensive as Zendesk’s. They are, however, adequate for most users, providing essential insights into customer service operations. Intercom can function as a standalone CRM, allowing businesses to track and manage customer interactions efficiently. However, larger businesses might need to supplement it with additional services for a more comprehensive solution.

For example, you can read in many Zendesk Sell reviews how adding sales tools benefits Zendesk Support users. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. You can contact the sales team if you’re just looking around, but you will not receive decent customer support unless you buy their service. Overall, Zendesk empowers businesses to deliver exceptional customer support experiences across channels, making it a popular choice for enhancing support operations.

The best way, however, to maximize their potential is through Intercom Zendesk integrations on Appy Pie Connect. Intercom is a customer messaging platform that enables businesses to engage with customers through personalized and real-time communication. Zendesk is renowned for its comprehensive toolset that aids in automating customer service workflows and fine-tuning chatbot interactions. Its strengths are prominently seen in multi-channel support, with effective email, social media, and live chat integrations, coupled with a robust internal knowledge base for agent support. On the contrary, Intercom is far less predictable when it comes to pricing and can cost hundreds/thousands of dollars per month.

Zendesk vs Intercom: Help Desk Software Comparison

Intercom wins the sales pipeline tools category because its campaigning and sequencing tools integrate all channels and unique services, like carousels and product tours. This article will compare Intercom vs Zendesk, outlining each tool’s features, ease-of-use, pricing and plans, pros and cons, and user-support options. Intercom and Zendesk are two of the most popular customer service platforms, each with its own set of distinct advantages and drawbacks.

Track key metrics, measure campaign success, and optimize customer engagement strategies. Experience targeted communication with Intercom’s automation and segmentation features. Create personalized messages for specific customer segments, driving engagement and satisfaction. So, whether you’re a startup or a global giant, Zendesk’s got your back for top-notch customer support.

The lack of transparency can make it harder for businesses to determine the actual costs and compare different plans. Intercom’s help center, while not as customizable, still provides a user-friendly platform for content creation, helping customers self-serve their queries effectively. Messagely also provides you with a shared inbox so anyone from your team can follow up with your users, regardless of who the user was in contact with first. Both Zendesk and Intercom have their own “app stores” where users can find all of the integrations for each platform. With a very streamlined design, Intercom’s interface is far better than many alternatives, including Zendesk. It has a very intuitive design that goes far beyond its platform and into its articles, product guides, and even its illustrations.

Subscribe to receive news and updates from Zendesk.

It’s divided into about 20 topics with dozens of articles each, so navigating through it can be complicated. Since Intercom is so intuitive, the time you’ll need to spend training new users on how to interact with the platform is greatly reduced. Users also point out that it can take a couple of hours to get used to the flow of tickets, which doesn’t happen in CRM, and they aren’t pleased with the product’s downtime. Although Zendesk isn’t hard to use, it’s not a perfectly smooth experience either. Users report feeling as though the interface is outdated and cluttered and complain about how long it takes to set up new features and customize existing ones.

Zendesk’s messaging system makes it easier for customers to ask questions and get help, and it makes sure that every question is properly recorded and handled. A messenger platform that helps engage customers on your website or app. It provides bots and chats automation features to make communication with clients more efficient. Zendesk’s ‘Explore’ feature offers robust reporting capabilities, providing insights into various aspects of customer service operations. This allows businesses to identify trends, monitor agent performance, and make data-driven decisions. The Zendesk Help Center allows for the easy creation and grouping of resources, offering customizability to match your brand.

With ThriveDesk, you can supercharge your website’s growth and streamline customer interactions like never before. Rated 5 stars out of 5 on G2, ThriveDesk is highly regarded by users. Rest assured, ThriveDesk’s lightweight design and speed won’t impact the performance of your Wix-powered eCommerce website. The optimized agent interface ensures rapid responses for maximum efficiency, all while keeping your website running smoothly.

Surveys turn customer insights into action, with triggers and campaign response adjustments depending on customer responses. The Sell dashboard’s Tasks page sorts all of an agent’s tasks by due date. Agents can prioritize overdue tasks, today’s tasks, or future tasks. Set triggers to target particular audiences at the right time, utilize carousels as part of a communication campaign, and compare carousels with A/B testing. Keeping this general theme in mind, I’ll dive deeper into how each software’s features compare, so you can decide which use case might best fit your needs. Easily track your service team’s performance and unlock coaching opportunities with AI-powered insights.

Intercom also does not offer a free trial period for users to examine the software prior to joining up for their services. That being said, in your search for the best customer support tool, you must have come across Zendesk and Intercom. In today’s hyper-competitive, hyper-connected globalized economy, customer experience has become a fundamental differentiator. As customers’ needs are constantly evolving, businesses must adapt and keep up to guarantee the best customer experience and satisfaction. Pricing for both services varies based on the specific needs and scale of your business.

What’s really nice about this is that even within a ticket, you can switch between communication modes without changing views. So if an agent needs to switch from chat to phone to email (or vice versa) with a customer, it’s all on the same ticketing page. There’s even on-the-spot translation built right in, which is extremely helpful. However, as Monese grew and eyed a European expansion, it became clear that the company needed to centralize data in a single solution that would scale along with them. As you can imagine, banking from anywhere requires a flexible, robust customer service experience. Monese is another fintech company that provides a banking app, account, and debit card to make settling in a new country easier.

It caters to a wide range of industries, particularly excelling in e-commerce, SaaS, technology, and telecommunications. It is favored by customer support, helpdesk, IT service management, and contact center teams. To select the ideal fit for your business, it is crucial to compare these industry giants and assess which aligns best with your specific requirements. Did you know that integrations between Zendesk and Intercom are possible?

This will provide live data on who your users are and what they do in your app. This means you can use the Help Desk Migration product to import data from a variety of source tools (e.g. Zendesk, ZOHOdesk, Freshdesk, SFDC etc) to Intercom tickets. If you thought Zendesk prices were confusing, let me introduce you to the Intercom charges. It’s virtually impossible to predict what you’ll pay for Intercom at the end of the day. They charge for customer service representative seats and people reached, don’t reveal their prices, and offer tons of custom add-ons at additional cost. If you create a new chat with the team, land on a page with no widget, and go back to the browser for some reason, your chat will go puff.

Intercom has a unique pricing structure, offering three separate solutions, each intended for a distinct use case. We wish some of their great features were offered in multiple plans, but none features overlap among plans. Zendesk wins the self-service tools category because it provides extensive help center customization options. Users with light access–such as knowledgeable agents and supervisors–can be added to tickets for browsing and feedback. While light agents cannot interact with the customer on the ticket, they can make notes and interact privately with other team members and agents involved with the ticket.

Using this, agents can chat across teams within a ticket via email, Slack, or Zendesk’s ticketing system. This packs all resolution information into a single ticket, so there’s no extra searching or backtracking needed to bring a ticket through to resolution, even if it involves multiple agents. In 2023, conversational messaging will play an essential role in customer service.

Their users can create a knowledge repository to create articles or edit existing ones as per the changes in the services or product. It also provides detailed reports on how each self-help article performs in your knowledge base and helps you identify how each piece can be improved further. They offer an omnichannel live chat solution that integrates with multiple messaging platforms and marketing channels and even automates incoming support processes with bots.

Even better, it’s the most cost-effective, lightweight, and speedy live chat solution available for Shopify business owners. Both Zendesk and Intercom have AI capabilities that deserve special mention. Zendesk’s AI (Fin) helps with automated responses, ensuring your customers get quick answers. On the other hand, Intercom’s AI-powered chatbots and messaging are designed to enhance your marketing and sales efforts, giving you an edge in the competitive market.

Intercom’s Pricing

Yes, you can integrate the Intercom solution into your Zendesk account. It will allow you to leverage some Intercom capabilities while keeping your account at the time-tested platform. What can be really inconvenient about Zendesk is how their tools integrate with each other when you need to use them simultaneously. Well, I must admit, the tool is gradually transforming from a platform for communicating with users to a tool that helps you automate every aspect of your routine. You could say something similar for Zendesk’s standard service offering, so it’s at least good to know they have Zendesk Sell, a capable CRM option to supplement it. You can use Zendesk Sell to track tasks, streamline workflows, improve engagement, nurture leads, and much more.

There are even instances where customers don’t receive the first response in more than seven days. Compared to Intercom, Zendesk’s pricing starts at $49/month, which is still understandable but not meant for startups looking for affordable pricing plans. These plans are not inclusive of the add-ons or access to all integrations. Once you add them all to the picture, their existing plans can turn out to be quite expensive. It’s where customers ask the questions that may result in the largest sales in your company’s history. Zendesk has more pricing options, which means you’re free to choose your tier from the get-go.

Zendesk vs Intercom: Which is Better for Customer Care

However, compared to Zendesk, Intercom might not offer the same breadth in terms of integrating a wide range of external channels. Ultimately, it’s important to consider what features each platform offers before making a decision, as well as their pricing options and customer support policies. Since both are such well-established market leader companies, you can rest assured that whichever one you choose will offer a quality customer service solution. Zendesk is a customer service software company that provides businesses with a suite of tools to manage customer interactions.

Very rarely do they understand the issue (mostly with Explore) that I am trying to communicate to them. Intercom, on the other hand, is ideal for those focusing on CRM capabilities and personalized customer interactions. Discover customer and product issues with instant replays, in-app cobrowsing, and console logs. Zendesk for Service sells three plans, ranging from $49 to $99 monthly per user, with a 30-day free trial available for each plan. Intercom wins the reporting and analytics category due to its unique visualization and display formats for contact center and article data.

Understanding these fundamental differences should go a long way in helping you pick between the two, but does that mean you can’t use one platform to do what the other does better? These are both still very versatile products, so don’t think you have to get too siloed into a single use case. Yes—as your business’s needs grow, you will require a more sophisticated case management system. But that doesn’t mean you have to completely switch from your current provider if you’re not quite ready. As customers come closer to purchasing, they often find themselves weighing the same pros and cons. In our experience, when future clients start thinking about the advantages and disadvantages of Intercom vs. Zendesk, these are the questions they want answers to.

• This 24/7 support model is designed to provide continuous, real-time solutions to clients, enhancing the overall reliability and responsiveness of Hivers’ services.
• When you combine the help desk with Intercom Messenger, you get added channels for customer engagement.
• Messagely’s live chat platform is smooth, effective, and easy to set up.

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption is used by Intercom, a customer communication tool, to keep data sent between users and the platform safe. SSL encryption is a standard form of security that creates a safe and encrypted connection between a user’s computer and the Intercom servers. This keeps any data sent private and stops people from getting to it without permission.

– Analysis of conversation trends; track conversation trends with tagging and reporting. We are going to overview only their helpdesk/communication features to make the two systems comparable. Before you make your choice, check out Messagely’s features and compare them to discover which platform is best for you. This way, your clients will never have to repeat themselves or get frustrated because their new representative doesn’t know their background. Zendesk, on the other hand, has revamped its security since its security breach in 2016.

In today’s world of fast-paced customer service and high customer expectations, it’s essential for business leaders to equip their teams with the best support tools available. Zendesk and Intercom both offer noteworthy tools, but if you’re looking for a full-service solution, there is one clear winner. If you are looking for more integration options and budget is not an issue, Intercom can be the perfect live chat solution for your business. It is also ideal for businesses who are searching for conversational chatbot functionality.

Thunderpop Sox is a small business on Etsy that sells pop culture socks. Each pair costs the business $3 to make, and the list price is $10 per pair. Our free sales forecast templates can help you see where your business might be in a month, year, or a decade from now. Forecasting sales also enables you to track performance, make data-driven predictions, and achieve sales goals.

Customer service systems like Zendesk and Intercom should provide a simple workflow builder as well as many pre-built automations which can be used right out of the box. Intercom’s dashboards may not be as aesthetically pleasing as Zendesk’s, but they still allow users to navigate their tools with few distractions. Zendesk has more pricing options, and its most affordable plan is likely cheaper than Intercom’s, although without exact Intercom numbers, it is not easy to truly know the cost. As for Intercom’s general pricing structure, there are three plans, but you’ll have to contact them to get exact prices. Lastly, Intercom offers an academy that offers concise courses to help users make the most out of their Intercom experience.

This method helps offer more personalized support as well as get faster response and resolution times. Zendesk wins the major category of help desk and ticketing system software. It lets customers reach out via messaging, a live chat tool, voice, and social media. Zendesk supports teams that can then field these issues from a nice unified dashboard. Zendesk has great intelligent routing and escalation protocols as well.

How easy it is to program a chatbot and how effective a chatbot is at assisting human reps is an important factor for this category. They have a dedicated help section that provides instructions on how to set up and effectively use Intercom. While in Intercom, advanced chatbots, a modern and well-developed chat widget, email marketing services, product demonstrations, and in-app messaging all contribute to a better customer experience. Zendesk provides limited customer support for its basic plan users, along with costly premium assistance options. On the other hand, Intercom is generally praised for its support features, despite facing challenges with its AI chatbot and the complexity of its help articles.

HubSpot helps seamlessly integrate customer service tools that you and your team already leverage. Picking customer service software to run your business is not a decision you make lightly. Intercom’s solution offers several use cases, meaning the product’s investments and success resources have a broad focus.

As a Zendesk user, you’re familiar with tickets – you’ll be able to continue using these in Intercom. Intercom is more for improving sales cycle and customer relationships, while Zendesk has everything a customer support representative can dream about, but it does lack wide email functionality. On the other hand, it provides call center functionalities, unlike Intercom. Basically, if you have a complicated support process, go with Zendesk, an excellent Intercom alternative, for its help desk functionality. If you’re a sales-oriented corporation, use Intercom for its automation options. Both tools can be quite heavy on your budget since they mainly target big enterprises and don’t offer their full toolset at an affordable price.

It is now trusted by multiple Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 companies. With this kind of organization, you will not only find your favorite apps but also discover new ones to meet your needs. However, the Intercom app store is far more intuitive and is much easier to navigate.

Intercom’s advanced chatbots, coupled with customizability, give it an edge over Zendesk in this category. Zendesk’s dashboard is responsive and has a sleek interface, which facilitates smoother interactions. On the other hand, Intercom’s dark mode is a noteworthy aesthetic feature, providing a visually appealing interface for users who prefer darker hues. Zendesk’s omnichannel dashboard and streamlined resolution processes give it a significant advantage over Intercom in the ticketing category. While both Zendesk and Intercom are great and robust platforms, none of them are able to provide you with the same value Messagely gives you at such an  affordable price.

Connect with customers wherever they are for timely assistance and personalized experiences. Designed for all kinds of businesses, from small startups to giant enterprises, it’s the secret weapon that keeps customers happy. There are pre-built workflows to help with things like ticket sharing, as well as conversation routing based on metrics like agent skill set or availability.