Zendesk vs Intercom: Which is better?

With its user-friendly interface and advanced functionalities, Intercom offers a comprehensive suite of tools designed to effectively communicate and engage with customers. 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 At the same time, Zendesk looks slightly outdated and can’t offer some features. Zendesk, unlike Intercom, is a more affordable and predictable customer service platform.

You can also contact Zendesk support 24/7, whereas Intercom support only has live agents during business hours. With ThriveDesk, you can supercharge your website’s growth and streamline customer interactions like never before. In terms of G2 ratings, Zendesk and Intercom Chat PG are both well-rated platforms. Zendesk has a rating of 4.3 out of 5 stars, based on over 5,600 reviews. Intercom has a rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars, based on over 2700 reviews. This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks.

Intercom vs Zendesk: Which Is Better?

Customer experience will be no exception, and AI models that are purpose-built for CX lead to better results at scale. In a nutshell, none of the customer support software companies provide decent assistance for users. The cheapest plan for small businesses – Essential – costs $39 monthly per seat. But that’s not it, if you want to resolve customer common questions with the help of the vendor’s new tool – Fin bot, you will have to pay $0.99 per resolution per month. Their chat widget looks and works great, and they invest a lot of effort to make it a modern, convenient customer communication tool. Basically, if you have a complicated support process, go with Zendesk, an excellent Intercom alternative, for its help desk functionality.

Nevertheless, the platform’s support consistency can be a concern, and the unpredictable pricing structure might lead to increased costs for larger organizations. Zendesk is built to grow alongside your business, resulting in less downtime, better cost savings, and the stability needed to provide exceptional customer support. Many customers start using Zendesk as small or mid-sized businesses (SMBs) and continue to use our software as they scale their operations, hire more staff, and serve more customers. Our robust, no-code integrations enable you to adapt our software to new and growing use cases. Compared to Zendesk, Intercom offers few integrations, which may hinder its scalability. There are many features to help bigger customer service teams collaborate more effectively — like private notes or a real-time view of who’s handling a given ticket at the moment, etc.

The company was founded in 2011 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California. Intercom’s products are used by over 25,000 customers, from small tech startups to large enterprises. Zendesk is a great option for large companies or companies that are looking for a very strong sales and customer service platform.

It is favored by customer support, helpdesk, IT service management, and contact center teams. 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.

I just found Zendesk’s help center to be slightly better integrated into their workflows and more customizable. Learn how top CX leaders are scaling personalized customer service at their companies. You can also follow up with customers after they have left the chat and qualify them based on your answers. Chat agents also get a comprehensive look at their entire customer’s journey, so they will have a better idea of what your customers need, without needing to ask many questions. 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. Intercom users often mention how impressed they are with its ease of use and their ability to quickly create useful tasks and set up automations.

With only the Enterprise tier offering round-the-clock email, phone, and chat help, Zendesk support is sharply separated by tiers. All plans come with a 7-day free trial, and no credit card is required to sign up for the trial. And there’s still no way to know how much you’ll pay for them since the prices are only revealed after you go through a few sale demos with the Intercom team. Zendesk is a ticketing system before anything else, and its ticketing functionality is overwhelming in the best possible way.

It divides all articles into a few main topics so you can quickly find the one you’re looking for. It also includes a list of common questions you can browse through at the bottom of the knowledge base home page so you can find answers to common issues. When making your decision, consider factors such as your budget, the scale of your business, and your specific growth plans. Explore alternative options like ThriveDesk if you’re looking for a more budget-conscious solution that aligns with your customer support needs. Zendesk receives positive feedback for its intuitive interface, wide range of integrations, and robust reporting tools. However, some users find customization challenging, and the platform is considered expensive, requiring careful cost evaluation.

Many businesses choose to work with Intercom because of its focus on personalization and flexibility, allowing companies to completely customize their customer service experience. Intercom is a customer messaging platform that enables businesses to engage with customers through personalized and real-time communication. Unlike Intercom, Zendesk is scalable, intuitively designed for CX, and offers a low total cost of ownership.

Though the Intercom chat window says that their customer success team typically replies in a few hours, don’t expect to receive any real answer in chat for at least a couple of days. Say what you will, but Intercom’s design and overall user experience leave all its competitors far behind. To sum things up, one can get really confused trying to make sense of the Zendesk suite pricing, let alone calculate costs. If I had to describe Intercom’s helpdesk, I would say it’s rather a complementary tool to their chat tools. You can publish your self-service resources, divide them by categories, and integrate them with your messenger to accelerate the whole chat experience. So you see, it’s okay to feel dizzy when comparing Zendesk vs Intercom platforms.

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. In this article, we’ll compare Zendesk vs Intercom to find out which is the right customer support tool for you. So, whether you’re a startup or a global giant, Zendesk’s got your back for top-notch customer support. Easily reply to customer conversations and manage workload in a smart & automated way.

Zendesk features

Their template triggers are fairly limited with only seven options, but they do enable users to create new custom triggers, which can be a game-changer for agents with more complex workflows. 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.

While this may seem like a positive for Zendesk, it’s important to consider that a larger company may not be as agile or responsive to customer needs as a smaller company. Now that we’ve covered a bit of background on both Zendesk and Intercom, let’s dive into the features each platform offers. 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.

Messagely pulls together all of the information about the customer contacting you and gives your representatives information on each interaction they’ve had with them, all within a streamlined platform. This way, your clients will never have to repeat themselves or get frustrated because their new representative doesn’t know their background. And while many other chatbots take forever to set up, you can set up your first chatbot in under five minutes.

Track key metrics, measure campaign success, and optimize customer engagement strategies. You get a dashboard that makes creating, tracking, and organizing tickets easy. 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. Choose Zendesk for a scalable, team-size-based pricing model and Intercom for initial low-cost access with flexibility in adding advanced features. 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.

Zendesk AI is the intelligence layer that infuses CX intelligence into every step of the customer journey. In addition to being pre-trained on billions of real support interactions, our AI powers bots, agent and admin assist, and intelligent workflows that lead to 83 percent lower administrative costs. Customers have also noted that they can implement https://chat.openai.com/ Zendesk AI five times faster than other solutions. Intercom offers just over 450 integrations, which can make it less cost-effective and more complex to customize the software and adapt to new use cases as you scale. The platform also lacks transparency in displaying reviews, install counts, and purpose-built customer service integrations.

Personalized messaging, in-app messaging, product tours, and chatbot capabilities set Intercom apart from Zendesk. It is none other than the modern customer support software of Helpwise. Intercom, on the other hand, is ideal for those focusing on CRM capabilities and personalized customer interactions. If delivering an outstanding customer experience and employee experience is your top priority, Zendesk should be your top pick over Intercom. Zendesk has the CX expertise to help businesses of all sizes scale their service experience without compromise. To sum up this Intercom vs Zendesk battle, the latter is a great support-oriented tool that will be a good choice for big teams with various departments.

Zendesk

You can use Zendesk Sell to track tasks, streamline workflows, improve engagement, nurture leads, and much more. Leave your email below and a member of our team will personally get in touch to show you how Fullview can help you solve support tickets in half the time. Zendesk is a much larger company than Intercom; it has over 170,000 customers, while Intercom has over 25,000.

In terms of pricing, Intercom is considered one of the most expensive tools on the market. 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. If you’d want to test Intercom vs Zendesk before deciding on a tool for good, they both provide free trials for 14 days. But sooner or later, you’ll have to decide on the subscription plan, and here’s what you’ll have to pay.

Since Intercom doesn’t offer a CRM, its pricing is divided into basic messaging and messaging with automations. 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. 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.

Intercom, while differing from Zendesk, offers specialized features aimed at enhancing customer relationships. Founded as a business messenger, it now extends to enabling support, engagement, and conversion. You can also use Intercom as a customer service platform, but given its broad focus, you may not get the same level of specialized expertise. Intercom is the go-to solution for businesses seeking to elevate customer support and sales processes.

This has helped to make Zendesk one of the most popular customer service software platforms on the market. 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.

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 focuses on real-time customer messaging, while Zendesk provides a comprehensive suite for ticketing, knowledge base, and self-service support.

About Intercom

Both Zendesk and Intercom have knowledge bases to help customers get the most out of their platforms. When comparing Zendesk and Intercom, evaluating their core features and functionalities is essential to determine which platform best suits your organization’s customer support needs. Let’s explore how Zendesk and Intercom stack up in terms of basic functionalities required by a helpdesk software. Gain valuable insights with Intercom’s analytics and reporting capabilities.

You can opt for code via JavaScript or Rails or even integrate directly with the likes of Google Tag Manager, WordPress, or Shopify. 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.

Apart from this feature, the customer support options at Zendesk are quite limited. First, you can only talk to the support team if you are a registered user. When comparing the reporting and analytics features of Zendesk and Intercom, both platforms offer robust tools, but with distinct focuses and functionalities. Customer expectations are already high, but with the rise of AI, customers are expecting even more.

Overall, Zendesk empowers businesses to deliver exceptional customer support experiences across channels, making it a popular choice for enhancing support operations. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. On the other hand, Intercom, starting at a lower price point, could be more attractive for very small teams or individual users. However, additional costs for advanced features can quickly increase the total expense.

• To that end, you can import themes or apply your own custom themes to brand your help center the way you want it.
• 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.
• The price levels can even be much higher if we’re talking of a larger company.
• Intercom has a community forum where users can engage with each other and gain insights from their experiences.

Here’s what you need to know about Zendesk vs. Intercom as customer support and relationship management tools. When it comes to which company is the better fit for your business, there’s no clear answer. It really depends on what features you need and what type of customer service strategy you plan to implement. However, you’ll likely end up paying more for Zendesk, and in-app messenger and other advanced customer communication tools will not be included. 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.

You can even improve efficiency and transparency by setting up task sequences, defining sales triggers, and strategizing with advanced forecasting and reporting tools. Starting at $19 per user per month, it’s also on the cheaper end of the spectrum compared to high-end CRMs like ActiveCampaign and HubSpot. 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.

Customer support and security are vital aspects to consider when evaluating helpdesk solutions like Zendesk and Intercom. Let’s examine and compare how each platform addresses these crucial areas to ensure effective support operations and data zendesk vs. intercom protection. Seamlessly integrate Intercom with popular third-party tools and platforms, centralizing customer data and improving workflow efficiency. Experience targeted communication with Intercom’s automation and segmentation features.

This scalability allows organizations to adapt their support operations to their expanding customer base. Higher-tier plans in Zendesk come packed with advanced functionalities such as chatbots, customizable knowledge bases, and performance dashboards. These features can add significant value for businesses aiming to implement more sophisticated support capabilities as they scale. Intercom has a different approach, one that’s all about sales, marketing, and personalized messaging.

Messagely’s live chat platform is smooth, effective, and easy to set up. With Messagely, you can increase your customer satisfaction and solve customers’ issues while they’re still visiting your site. 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. 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.

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 also has an Answer Bot, which instantly takes your knowledge base game to the next level. It can automatically suggest relevant articles for agents during business hours to share with clients, reducing your support agents’ workload.

Zendesk chat allows you to talk with your visitors in real time through a small chat bar at the bottom of your site. When visitors click on it, they’ll be directed to one of your customer service teammates. On the other hand, if you prioritize customer engagement, sales, and personalized messaging, Intercom is a compelling option, especially for startups and rapidly scaling businesses. When choosing between Zendesk and Intercom for your customer support needs, it’s essential to consider various factors that align with your business goals, operational requirements, and budget.

Intercom generally receives positive feedback for its customer support, with users appreciating the comprehensive features and team-oriented tools. However, there are occasional criticisms regarding the effectiveness of its AI chatbot and some interface navigation challenges. The overall sentiment from users indicates a satisfactory level of support, although opinions vary. Intercom’s UI excels in modern design and intuitive functionality, particularly noted for its real-time messaging and advanced features. It is tailored for automation and quick access to insights, offering a user-friendly experience.

Multilingual content and other advanced features come with a $49 price per agent per month. A helpdesk solution’s user experience and interface are crucial in ensuring efficient and intuitive customer support. Let’s evaluate the user experience and interface of both Zendesk and Intercom, considering factors such as ease of navigation, customization options, and overall intuitiveness. We will also consider customer feedback and reviews to provide insights into the usability of each platform.