Zendesk vs Intercom: Which is Better for Customer Care

Users can benefit from using Intercom’s CX platform and AI software as a standalone tool for business messaging. Why don’t you try something equally powerful yet more affordable, like HelpCrunch?. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. Intercom has a wider range of uses out of the box than Zendesk, though by adding Zendesk Sell, you could more than make up for it.

Additionally, the platform allows for customizations such as customized user flows and onboarding experiences. Zendesk’s user face is quite intuitive and easy to use, allowing customers to quickly find what they are looking for. Additionally, the platform allows users to customize their experience by setting up automation workflows, creating ticket rules, and utilizing analytics.

• Zendesk, on the other hand, is another top customer service platform that uses strong security steps to keep customer data safe.
• After this live chat software comparison, you’ll get a better picture of what’s better for your business.
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Zendesk is designed to fit your business needs whether you’re a fast-growing startup or a well-established company. If that’s not detailed enough, then surely their visitor browsing details will leave you surprised. Zendesk maps out each activity a visitor performs on your website. This enables your operators to understand visitor intent faster and provide them with a personalized experience. All plans come with a 7-day free trial, and no credit card is required to sign up for the trial.

Intercom has more customization features for features like bots, themes, triggers, and funnels. For standard reporting like response times, leads generated by source, bot performance, messages sent, and email deliverability, you’ll easily find all the metrics you need. Beyond that, you can create custom reports that combine all of the stats listed above (and many more) and present them as counts, columns, lines, or tables. Community boards make the support ecosystem even better by creating a place where people can work together and share their experiences, tips, and ask for help from their peers. These forums are helpful for fixing problems and learning from other people’s mistakes.

In addition to Intercom vs Zendesk, alternative helpdesk solutions are available in the market. ThriveDesk is a feature-rich helpdesk solution that offers a comprehensive set of tools to manage customer support effectively. Intercom has a different approach, one that’s all about sales, marketing, and personalized messaging. Intercom has your back if you’re looking to supercharge your sales efforts.

Platform

Zendesk’s ticketing system allows for support tickets to be generated, tracked effectively, and routed to the most appropriate support team agent. 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.

Which means it’s rather a customer relationship management platform than anything else. The cheapest plan for small businesses – Starter – costs $89 monthly, including 2 seats and 1,000 people reached/mo. Each additional 1,000 contacts on a Starter plan will cost you $25/mo. Pro plan is rather a team plan that costs $395/mo and includes 5 seats.

However, if you’re looking for a streamlined, all-in-one messaging platform, there is no better option than Messagely. It’s divided into about 20 topics with dozens of articles each, so navigating through it can be complicated. Both Zendesk and Intercom have their own “app stores” where users can find all of the integrations for each platform.

Intercom wins the automation and AI category because its chatbots have some impressive capabilities, like lead qualification and advanced routing. Pre-selected assignment rules customize each ticket’s destination, assigning routing paths to agents or departments based on customer priority status, query type, or issue details. As you can imagine, banking from anywhere requires a flexible, robust customer service experience.

Efficiently manage customer inquiries and empower customers to find answers independently. You get a dashboard that makes creating, tracking, and organizing tickets easy. So, get ready for an insightful journey through the landscapes of Zendesk and Intercom, where support excellence converges with AI innovation.

Zendesk Pros and Cons

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. The company’s products include a ticketing system, live chat software, knowledge base software, and a customer satisfaction survey tool.

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. While they like the ease of use this product offers its users, they’ve indeed rated them low in terms of services. Zendesk’s per-agent pricing structure makes it a budget-friendly option for smaller teams, allowing costs to scale with team growth.

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. Zendesk also offers a straightforward interface to operators that helps them identify the entire interaction pathway with the customers. Compared to being detailed, Zendesk gives a tough competition to Intercom.

Intercom isn’t as great with sales, but it allows for better communication. With Intercom, you can keep track of your customers and what they do on your website in real time. Like Zendesk, Intercom allows you to chat with online visitors and assist with their issues. For basic chat and messaging, Intercom charges a flat fee of $39 per month for its basic plan with one user and $99 per month for its team plan with up to 5 users. If you want automated options, Intercom starts at either $499 or $999 per month for up to ten users, depending on the level of automation you’re looking for. Its $99 bracket includes advanced options, such as customer satisfaction prediction and multi-brand support, and in the $199 bracket, you also get advanced security and other very advanced features.

If you want both customer support and CRM, you can choose between paying $79 or $125 per month per user, depending on how many advanced features you require. In an omnichannel contact center, agents can manage customer interactions across channels, no matter which channel a customer uses to contact the company. Advanced workflows are useful to customer service teams because they automate processes that make it easier for agents to provide great customer service. Intercom’s integration capabilities are limited, and some apps don’t integrate well with third-party customer service technology.

Zendesk, less user-friendly and with higher costs for quality vendor support, might not suit budget-conscious or smaller businesses. When comparing the user interfaces (UI) of Zendesk and Intercom, both platforms exhibit distinct characteristics and strengths catering to different user preferences and needs. Intercom, on the other hand, is ideal for those focusing on CRM capabilities and personalized customer interactions.

Zendesk is a customer service software offering a comprehensive solution for managing customer interactions. It integrates customer support, sales, and marketing communications, aiming to improve client relationships. Known for its scalability, Zendesk is suitable for various business sizes, from startups to large corporations. Intercom is better for smaller companies that are looking for a simple and capable customer service platform. Instead, using it and setting it up is very easy, and very advanced chatbots and predictive tools are included to boost your customer service. With a multi-channel ticketing system, Zendesk Support helps you and your team to know exactly who you’re talking to and keep track of tickets throughout all channels without losing context.

We hope this list has provided you with a better grasp of each platform and its features. Remember that there is no one-size-fits-all solution, and the optimal platform for you will be determined by your individual demands. While both offer a wide number of integration options, Zendesk wins the top spot in this category. They have a 2-day SLA, no phone support, and the times I have had to work with them they have been incredibly difficult to work with.

The platform is evolving from a platform for engaging with consumers to a tool that assists you in automating every element of your daily routine. Just like Intercom, Zendesk’s customer service zendesk vs intercom is quite disappointing. The only relief is that they do reach out to customers, but it gets too late. In terms of customer service, Zendesk fails to deliver an exceptional experience.

Founded as a business messenger, it now extends to enabling support, engagement, and conversion. Zendesk and Intercom offer help desk management solutions to their users. On the contrary, Intercom is far less predictable when it comes to pricing and can cost hundreds/thousands of dollars per month. But this solution is great because it’s an all-in-one tool with a modern live chat widget, allowing you to easily improve your customer experiences. At the same time, Zendesk looks slightly outdated and can’t offer some features.

Different Criteria Used to Differentiate Zendesk & Intercom

This site does not include all companies or all available Vendors. Many use cases call for different approaches, and Zendesk and Intercom are but two software solutions for each case. One more thing to add, there are ways to integrate Intercom to Zendesk. Visit either of their app marketplaces and look up the Intercom Zendesk integration.

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. Erika is Groove’s Customer Success Manager, committed to helping you find the right software solution for your business needs.

Every single bit of business SaaS in the world needs to leverage the efficiency power of workflows and automation. 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. You get call recording, muting and holding, conference calling, and call blocking. Zendesk also offers callback requests, call monitoring and call quality notifications, among other telephone tools.

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. After signing up and creating your account, you can start filling in your information, such as your company name and branding and your agents’ profiles and information. Then, you can begin filling in details such as your account’s name and icon and your agents’ profiles and security features. The setup can be so complex that there are tutorials by third parties to teach new users how to do it right.

Zendesk is renowned for its comprehensive range of functionalities, including advanced email ticketing, live chat, phone support, and a vast knowledge base. Its ability to seamlessly integrate with various applications further amplifies its versatility. Did you know that integrations between Zendesk and Intercom are possible? With the integrations provided through each product, you can make use of both platforms to provide your customers with comprehensive customer service. While Intercom Zendesk integration is uncommon, as they both offer very similar products, it can be useful for unique use cases or during migrations from one platform to the other. Intercom’s user interface is also quite straightforward and easy to understand; it includes a range of features such as live chat, messaging campaigns, and automation workflows.

Intercom User Assistance and Support

Zendesk’s help center tools should also come in handy for helping customers help themselves—something Zendesk claims eight out of 10 customers would rather do than contact support. To that end, you can import themes or apply your own custom themes to brand your help center the way you want it. From there, you can include FAQs, announcements, and article guides and then save them into pre-set lists for your customers to explore. You can even moderate user content to leverage your customer community. Triggers should prove especially useful for agents, allowing them to do things like automate notifications for actions like ticket assignments, ticket closing/reopening, or new ticket creation.

Both platforms have their unique strengths in multichannel support, with Zendesk offering a more comprehensive range of integrated channels and Intercom focusing on a dynamic, chat-centric experience. Its sales CRM software starts at $19 per month per user, but you’ll have to pay $49 to get Zapier integrations and $99 for Hubspot integrations. Finally, you can pay $199 per month per user for unlimited sales pipelines and advanced reporting along with other features. Zendesk pricing is divided between a customer support product called “Zendesk for support”, and a fully-fledged CRM called “Zendesk for sales”. After this, you’ll have to set up your workflows, personalizing your tickets and storing them by topic. You can then add automations and triggers, such as automatically closing a ticket or sending a message to a user.

However, compared to the more contemporary designs like Intercom’s, Zendesk’s UI may appear outdated, particularly in aspects such as chat widget and customization options. This could impact user experience and efficiency for new users grappling with its complexity​​​​​​. Intercom’s solution aims to streamline high-volume ticket influx and provide personalized, conversational support. It also includes extensive integrations with over 350 CRM, email, ticketing, and reporting tools.

Zendesk offers various pricing tiers depending on the functionalities needed, with plans ranging from $49 to $215 per agent per month. This gives businesses the flexibility to choose a plan that best suits their needs and budget. Zendesk provides a good set of tools for managing customer relationships, but it requires additional enrollment in ‘Sell’ for a comprehensive CRM solution. Both Zendesk and Intercom provide omnichannel messaging dashboards, which allow companies to communicate with customers through various channels in a seamless manner. Zendesk has many amazing team collaboration and communication features, like whisper mode, which lets multiple agents chime in to help each other without the customer knowing. There is also something called warm transfers, which let one rep add contextual notes to a ticket before transferring it to another rep. You also get a side conversation tool.

Test any of HelpCrunch pricing plans for free for 14 days and see our tools in action right away. What can be really inconvenient about Zendesk is how their tools integrate with each other when you need to use them simultaneously. So yeah, all the features talk actually brings us to the most sacred question — the question of pricing. You’d probably want to know how much it costs to get each of the platforms for your business, so let’s talk money now.

Zendesk’s chatbots are simple to deploy and are highly effective in providing automated customer support. They can handle simple queries, freeing up your support agents to deal with more complex issues. As stories of AI chatbots replacing entire customer support teams… Zendesk is another popular customer service, support, and sales platform that enables clients to connect and engage with their customers in seconds. Just like Intercom, Zendesk can also integrate with multiple messaging platforms and ensure that your business never misses out on a support opportunity. The strength of Zendesk’s UI lies in its structured and comprehensive environment, adept at managing numerous customer interactions and integrating various channels seamlessly.

Intercom also offers scalability within its pricing plans, enabling businesses to upgrade to higher tiers as their support needs grow. With its integrated suite of applications, Intercom provides a comprehensive solution that caters to businesses seeking a unified ecosystem to manage customer interactions. This scalability ensures businesses can align their support infrastructure with their evolving requirements, ensuring a seamless customer experience. Both Zendesk and Intercom are customer support management solutions that offer features like ticket management, live chat and messaging, automation workflows, knowledge centers, and analytics.

The availability of this variety enables users to link Zendesk with a wide range of applications and services in a seamless manner, which results in a workflow that is more streamlined and efficient. Considering the huge number of connectors that Zendesk provides, it appears that the company takes a holistic approach to meeting the varied requirements of businesses. Zendesk offers more flexibility with its pricing options and also has free services. 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. Has live chat analytics to monitor customer satisfaction, employee performance. Overall, Zendesk’s Chat is less customizable than Intercom’s but still has all the essentials. To sum things up, Zendesk is a great customer support oriented tool which will be a great choice for big teams with various departments. Intercom feels more wholesome and is more customer success oriented, but can be too costly for smaller companies. Intercom is 4 years younger than Zendesk and has fancied itself as a messaging platform right from the beginning.

They have a dedicated help section that provides instructions on how to set up and effectively use Intercom. 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. From the inbox, live agents and chatbots can refer to and link knowledge base articles, to elaborate on replies and help customers locate answers. Zendesk, on the other hand, is known for its powerful ticketing system and smart analytics tools. Zendesk might be a better choice if your company puts a lot of value on full customer help, keeping track of issues, and making decisions based on data.

You can even save custom dashboards for a more tailored reporting experience. You can create articles, share them internally, group them for users, and assign them as responses for bots—all pretty standard fare. Intercom can even integrate with Zendesk and other sources to import past help center content. I just found Zendesk’s help center to be slightly better integrated into their workflows and more customizable. Broken down into custom, resolution, and task bots, these can go a long way in taking repetitive tasks off agents’ plates.

This is especially helpful for smaller businesses that may not need a lot of features. One of the things that sets Zendesk apart from other customer service software providers is its focus on design. The company’s products are built with an emphasis on simplicity and usability. This has helped to make Zendesk one of the most popular customer service software platforms on the market. Create a help center combining knowledge base articles and a customer contact request form, embeddable into any webpage or mobile app. Customers can search the help center by query keywords and sort through articles in 40 languages.