Intercom vs Zendesk: Which Is Better?

In addition to its service features, Zendesk offers a fully integrated CRM solution, Zendesk Sell, available for an additional cost, starting at $19/agent/month. It includes tools for lead management, sales forecasting, and workflow management and automation. Its customer data platform lets you manage customer data, segmentation, and automated reminders. However, this may be sufficient for smaller businesses or those using an existing CRM that integrates with Intercom.

For instance, when you need to access specific features or information, Zendesk’s organized interface ensures that everything is easily locatable, reducing search time and user frustration. When comparing the pricing of Zendesk and Intercom, there are significant differences to take into account. Zendesk’s pricing offers a range of plans, including a tiered model with different levels of features and capabilities.

Zendesk vs Intercom: functionality

Both Zendesk and Intercom offer robust solutions, but the choice ultimately depends on specific business needs. 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. Intercom built additional tools to aid in marketing and engagement to supplement its customer service solution.

• After all, most businesses find it easier to use one solution for all of their needs rather than parceling duties out to different tools.
• Intercom and Zendesk both offer comprehensive customer support solutions.
• It’s highly customizable, too, so you can adjust it according to your website or product’s style.
• This breadth of options ensures that businesses can effectively engage with their customers through their preferred communication method.

By doing so, you can make an informed decision that best aligns with your business goals and enhances your customer support efforts. While Zendesk is a widely used and versatile customer support and engagement platform, it’s important to consider whether there might be a better software solution tailored to your specific needs. In contrast, Intercom follows a pricing structure that can be straightforward for businesses looking for specific functionalities. However, it’s important to note that Intercom’s pricing can vary depending on factors such as the number of users, conversations, and additional features you require. Zendesk, on the other hand, specializes in comprehensive support solutions, catering to businesses of varying sizes. Its suite of tools goes beyond chatbots, encompassing a wide range of customer service functionalities to streamline operations and elevate customer experiences.

Zendesk vs Intercom

Customers can search the help center by query keywords and sort through articles in 40 languages. In an omnichannel contact center, agents can manage customer interactions across channels, no matter which channel a customer uses to contact the company. Front is typically used by multiple customer-facing organizations, so its integrations are designed to be used within the Front application to minimize context and window switching. This requires two-way data sync between Front and the integration partner. Front is a multi-channel solution, so you can reply to customers using multiple channels but can only respond on the channel the inbound message was received. These campaigns are designed to be highly contextual and personalized.

While both Zendesk and Intercom offer ways to track your sales pipeline, each platform handles the process a bit differently. Each platform — Intercom, Zendesk, and BotPenguin — brings its own strengths to the table. Intercom excels in personalized interactions, Zendesk in comprehensive support solutions, and BotPenguin in innovation and versatile solutions. The choice among these platforms hinges on specific business requirements, whether it’s tailored interactions, comprehensive support, or innovative technology integration.

Services such as CallHippo, Ozonetel, Toky, Aircall Now are just a few of many more add-ons in lieu of call center tools built into the help desk software. Knowledge Base is one of the self-service sections that includes articles or documents providing technical help to customers and employees. To make a comparison of Zendesk vs Intercom knowledge base features is quite tricky. So, Intercom Articles will be opposed to Zendesk Suite – in that way the contrast is (more or less) fair. It’s an opportunity for Zendesk to differentiate itself, but unfortunately it didn’t get very high marks from users, either.

Here’s a side-by-side comparison of Zendesk and Intercom’s pricing tiers. 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. 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?

You could technically consider Intercom a CRM, but it’s really more of a customer-focused communication product. It isn’t as adept at purer sales tasks like lead management, list engagement, advanced reporting, forecasting, and workflow management as you’d expect a more complete CRM to be. Intercom’s chatbot feels a little more robust than Zendesk’s (though it’s worth noting that some features are only available at the Engage and Convert tiers).

However, you can browse their respective sites to find which tools each platform supports. Zendesk also offers a sales pipeline feature through its Zendesk Sell product. You can set up email sequences that specify how and when leads and contacts are engaged. With Zendesk Sell, you can also customize how deals move through your pipeline intercom vs zendesk by setting pipeline stages that reflect your sales cycle. Using Zendesk, you can create community forums where customers can connect, comment, and collaborate, creating a way to harness customers’ expertise and promote feedback. Community managers can also escalate posts to support agents when one-on-one help is needed.

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. This can be a bummer for many as they can always stumble upon an issue. Intercom has flexible prices that can change based on what your business needs, and they offer a 14-day free trial. 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.

As a result, companies can identify trends and areas for improvement, allowing them to continuously improve their support processes and provide better service to their customers. 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. Today, both companies offer a broad range of customer support features, making them both strong contenders in the market. Zendesk offers more advanced automation capabilities than Intercom, which may be a deciding factor for businesses that require complex workflows. Apps and integrations are critical to creating a 360 view of the customer across the company and ensuring agents have easy access to key customer context.

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. You can create dozens of articles in a simple, intuitive WYSIWYG text editor, divide them by categories and sections, and customize with your custom themes. All customer questions, be it via phone, chat, email, social media, or any other channel, are landing in one dashboard, where your agents can solve them quickly and efficiently. It guarantees continuous omnichannel support that meets customer expectations. We’re big fans of Zendesk’s dashboard with built-in collaboration tools, but we wish the Agent Workspace came with the Team or Growth plans–not just Professional.

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. Zendesk on the other hand offers tools that support a wide variety of customer service functions including robust ticket management capabilities. However, if you are looking for a robust messaging solution with customer support features, go for Intercom. Its intuitive messenger can help your business boost engagement and improve sales and marketing efforts.

This means that you can send targeted messages to different groups of users based on how they interact with your product. Intercom also offers a suite of tools for customer support, including a knowledge base, a help center, and a community forum. The platform also integrates with some third-party apps to help businesses increase its capabilities. Drift allows for handoffs between chatbots and human agents in relevant situations. Customers can skip the self-service options and get routed to a live agent through customizable routing rules, templates, and response timers.

Intercom also excels in real-time chat solutions, making it a strong contender for businesses seeking dynamic customer interaction. This unpredictability in pricing might lead to higher costs, especially for larger companies. While it offers a range of advanced features, the overall costs and potential inconsistencies in support could be a concern for some businesses​​​​.

Apart from team conversations, it integrates with the ticketing system. Thus, the inbox is used to refer tickets to other agents who can solve them. Therefore, a helpdesk with a good inbox can make your team efficient in solving problems. Zendesk is another popular customer service, support, and sales platform that enables clients to connect and engage with their customers in seconds.

Consider the tools and platforms you currently use in your business and ensure that the chosen tool integrates seamlessly with them. 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. For those of you who have been waiting for the big showdown between these two customer support heavyweights, we are glad to present the ultimate Zendesk vs Intercom comparison article.

But, if you just need a secure and quick data transfer, opt for Help Desk Migration. Pricing starts at $39 and varies based on the number of records you want to migrate. Our team is experienced in consolidating Zendesk instances and merging instances of other help desk and service desk systems. But Intercom’s friendliness for growing companies is something you can’t afford to ignore. If your business is established and you need to cut down on those ticket resolution times, Zendesk may be worth it.

Broken down into custom, resolution, and task bots, these can go a long way in taking repetitive tasks off agents’ plates. 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. 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.

Contact Center of the Future: Empower Agents with AI…

Efficiently manage customer inquiries and empower customers to find answers independently. A lot can be gleaned from a customer support tool’s ticketing features. These features help support reps manage and organize support requests and ongoing communications so they are vital tools that will be used every day. While both tools offer top-of-field feature sets that can simplify your customer support processes dramatically, identifying which is right for you can take time and effort.

Create personalized messages for specific customer segments, driving engagement and satisfaction. You get a dashboard that makes creating, tracking, and organizing tickets easy. Designed for all kinds of businesses, from small startups to giant enterprises, it’s the secret weapon that keeps customers happy. Founded in 2011, Intercom has quickly become one of the most versatile and comprehensive customer support tools on the market and they are showing no signs of slowing down. Zendesk’s Help Center and Intercom’s Articles both offer features to easily embed help centers into your website or product using their web widgets, SDKs, and APIs. With help centers in place, it’s easier for your customers to reliably find answers, tips, and other important information in a self-service manner.

It will really help you get up faster and understand the product deeper, and not waste time. ActiveCampaign is difficult to learn on your own since it is so full featured. Sign up for a trial through a salesperson and then ask if it is possible to get in the class for less money. Therefore, to gauge if your chosen help desk is effective or not, you use analytics.

The HubSpot Customer Platform

Agents can choose if the message is private or public, upon which a group thread is initiated in the ticket’s sidebar, where participants can chat and add files. Intercom wins the automation and AI category because its chatbots have some impressive capabilities, like lead qualification and advanced routing. Zendesk wins the ticketing system category due to its easy-to-use interface and side conversations tool. The Agent Workspace highlights tickets based on the issue and urgency, assigning each one a priority–agents can also tag tickets based on recency, hold-vs-open status, and urgency. 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. Therefore, in order to carry a fair comparison, it is important to first figure out the criteria on which we can weigh the different tools.

Zendesk also includes built-in CSAT and NPS (Net Promoter Score) surveys and even allows you to track the effectiveness of your knowledge base articles and self-service resources. Reporting tools are essential to helping support leaders analyze and improve their customer support operations. When it comes to customer support software, Zendesk is #1 in popularity and brand recognition. Zendesk and Intercom each have their own marketplace/app store where users can find all the integrations for each platform. Learn more about the differences between leading chat support solutions Intercom and Zendesk so that you can choose the right tool for your needs. In the world of customer service, setting clear expectations is key to maintaining customer satisfaction and loyalty.

This makes it easy for agents to manage requests and communicate with customers more efficiently. They also offer features that enhance collaboration amongst employees if you have a bigger team. It ensures that as your business grows, you won’t outgrow your CRM system. Both platforms offer compatibility with various third-party applications. However, SugarCRM often stands out due to its open architecture and extensive integration possibilities. Intercom’s custom bots are smart enough to prioritize urgent issues and connect your customers automatically to the right team members.

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If I had to describe Intercom’s helpdesk, I would say it’s rather a complementary tool to their chat tools. Just like Zendesk, Intercom also offers its Operator bot, which will automatically suggest relevant articles to clients right in a chat widget. You can publish your self-service resources, divide them by categories, and integrate them with your messenger to accelerate the whole chat experience.

It really depends on what features you need and what type of customer service strategy you plan to implement. 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.

Also, its chatbots give live status updates to your customers, like order status, payment status, etc. Agents can use basic automation (like auto-closing tickets or setting auto-responses), apply list organization to stay on top of their tasks, or set up triggers to keep tickets moving automatically. 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. It has a direct integration with Shopify and other tools including powerful B2B customer handling. It also satisfies all the requirements you’ve outlined including order history, interaction history, notes, tickets etc.

While Zendesk’s emphasis is entirely on customer support, Intercom’s features extend into marketing and sales. Zendesk started as a customer support request SaaS, a legacy that continues today with its robust ticketing and customer messaging solutions. In contrast, Intercom aims to provide an all-in-one business communication platform to support, engage, and convert customers with sales and marketing functions. An example of the platforms’ different focus is that Intercom includes an email marketing feature, whereas Zendesk doesn’t. Determining whether Zendesk is better than Intercom hinges on your unique customer support and engagement requirements.

With its user-friendly interface and advanced functionalities, Intercom offers a comprehensive suite of tools designed to effectively communicate and engage with customers. 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. In today’s digital world, providing exceptional customer support is crucial for businesses to stand out from their competitors. One way to achieve this is through the use of customer support tools like Intercom and Zendesk.

While Zendesk incorporates live chat and messaging functionalities to facilitate proactive customer engagement, it falls short of matching Intercom’s level of personalization. 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. It really shines in its modern messenger interface, making real-time chat a breeze. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. Its multichannel support is more focused on engaging customers through its chat and messaging systems, including mobile carousels and interactive communication tools. However, compared to Zendesk, Intercom might not offer the same breadth in terms of integrating a wide range of external channels.

Because there could be a thousand customers complaining at any given hour to all your staff having problems with business protocols. Generally, humans can’t handle this volume of exchange, that’s why help desk software was made. Both Intercom and Zendesk have proven to be valuable tools for businesses looking to provide excellent customer support.

You can also add apps to your Intercom Messenger home to help users and visitors get what they need, without having to start a conversation. Hivers offers round-the-clock proactive support across all its plans, ensuring that no matter the time or issue, expert assistance is always available. This 24/7 support model is designed to provide continuous, real-time solutions to clients, enhancing the overall reliability and responsiveness of Hivers’ services. 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.

• However, the right fit for your business will depend on your particular needs and budget.
• Both Zendesk Messaging and Intercom Messenger offer live chat features and AI-enabled chatbots for 24/7 support to customers.
• Intercom offers a simplistic dashboard with a detailed view of all customer details in one place.
• Track customer service metrics to gain valuable insights and improve customer service processes and agent performance.
• Intercom’s Messenger lets users schedule timely, targeted, and personal messages sent based on triggers and customer actions, and is automatically translatable into over 30 languages.
• You can also set up interactive product tours to highlight new features in-product and explain how they work.

While Zendesk offers a wide array of support features, many more than Intercom, there are a couple of major features it lacks that Intercom has. The first is proactive, in-app messaging, and the second is email marketing capabilities. Both Intercom and Zendesk provide you with their own Operator bot, which immediately suggests relevant material to clients via the chat widget. When it comes to creating an optimum knowledge base experience, both Intercom and Zendesk are excellent choices with similar capabilities for your needs. 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.

One of the most significant downsides of Intercom is its customer support. Existing customers have complained consistently about how they aren’t available at the right time to offer support to customers. There are even instances where customers don’t receive the first response in more than seven days.