Zendesk vs Intercom: Which One Is Better?

Customers have also noted that they can implement 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. And that’s why it offers a long list of customization options like workflow automation, ticket management system, and layouts.

Intercom also offers a suite of tools for customer support, including a knowledge base, a help center, and a community forum. Zendesk offers simple chatbots and provides businesses with straightforward chatbot creation tools, allowing them to set up automated responses and assist customers with common queries. Zendesk may be unable to give the agents more advanced features or customization options for chatbots. Zendesk has a strong customer support reputation, a helpful community, and extensive resources.

We’d also recommend checking out this blog on suspended ticket management in ZenDesk. For large-scale businesses, the budget for such investments is usually higher than for startups, but they need to analyze if the investment is worth it. They need to comprehensively analyze if they are getting the value of the invested money.

Zendesk offers more advanced automation capabilities than Intercom, which may be a deciding factor for businesses that require complex workflows. Ultimately, the choice between Intercom and Zendesk depends on your specific needs and priorities. If you prioritize real-time messaging and customer engagement, Intercom may be the better option for you. On the other hand, if you require robust ticketing and support management features, Zendesk might be the more suitable choice.

Intercom or Zendesk: Pros and Cons Face-Off

The Intercom versus Zendesk conundrum is probably the greatest problem in the customer service software world. They both offer some state-of-the-art core functionality and numerous unusual features. Whether you’ve just started searching for a customer support tool or have been using one for a while, chances are you know about Zendesk and Intercom. The former is one of the oldest and most reliable solutions on the market, while the latter sets the bar high in terms of innovative and out-of-the-box features. Zendesk is billed more as a customer support and ticketing solution, while Intercom includes more native CRM functionality. Intercom isn’t quite as strong as Zendesk in comparison to some of Zendesk’s customer support strengths, but it has more features for sales and lead nurturing.

On the other hand, Intercom has all its (fewer) tools and features integrated with each other way better, which makes your experience with the tool as smooth as silk. 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.

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. For Intercom’s pricing plan, on the other hand, there is much less information on their website.

This eventually adds to overall business costs, so they carefully need to consider all plans and budgets before making a decision. The Essential customer support plan for individuals, startups, and businsses costs $39. This plan includes a shared inbox, unlimited articles, proactive support, and basic automation. Zendesk offers fast time to value, especially at the enterprise level.

Zendesk excels as a robust and versatile customer support platform, offering comprehensive tools for managing customer inquiries and support operations across various channels. If your business values a feature-rich and customizable solution for customer interactions, Zendesk may be the better choice. On the contrary, Intercom is far less predictable when it comes to pricing and can cost hundreds/thousands of dollars per month.

Zendesk and Intercom both have an editor preview feature that makes it easier to add images, videos, call-to-action buttons, and interactive guides to your help articles. The three tiers—Suite Team, Suite Growth, and Suite Professional—also give you more options outside of Intercom’s static structure. Suite Team is more affordable than Intercom’s $79/month tier; Suite Professional is more expensive. Overall, Zendesk wins out on plan flexibility, especially given that it has a lower price plan for dipping your toes in the water. We give the edge to Zendesk here, as it’s typically aimed for more complex environments.

Why customers choose Zendesk over Intercom

Here’s a list of criteria we’ve used to differentiate the two for you. In terms of G2 ratings, Zendesk and Intercom 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. See how leading multi-channel consumer brands solve E2E customer data challenges with a real-time customer data platform.

Help desk SaaS is how you manage general customer communication and for handling customer questions. Sure, Intercom allows you to create articles and deliver a bot that answers customer questions with specific articles and resolves issues faster. Zendesk chat vs Intercom offers similar chat features but still has a couple of differences.

Two leading contenders in the customer service platform space, Zendesk and Intercom, have transformed businesses’ customer engagement by offering powerful software solutions that enhance support systems. To select the ideal fit for your business, it is intercom versus zendesk crucial to compare these industry giants and assess which aligns best with your specific requirements. As a conversational relationship platform, Zendesk gives you the option of live chatting with customers via your website, mobile, and messaging.

Zendesk’s pricing is very competitive for the market and is presented in a straightforward way that makes predicting costs simple and accurate. This approach aligns well with Intercom’s emphasis on direct customer communication. Zendesk’s tried and true approach to ticketing is both familiar and effective. While Zendesk features are plenty, someone using it for the first time can find it overwhelming. With only the Enterprise tier offering round-the-clock email, phone, and chat help, Zendesk support is sharply separated by tiers.

Evaluate factors such as scalability, user-friendliness, integration capabilities, and the type of customer experience you aim to provide before making a decision. Gathering insights from customer reviews and testimonials offers a comprehensive understanding of the first-hand experiences of businesses using Zendesk and Intercom. The feedback and recommendations from existing users serve as valuable guidance for businesses considering either platform. Real-world case studies illustrate how businesses leverage Zendesk and Intercom to enhance their customer support operations and drive business growth. Analyzing these case studies provides practical insights into the tangible benefits and outcomes achieved by implementing either platform. While both platforms share the common goal of improving customer support, they differ in their approach and specialized functionalities.

Also, it’s the pioneer in the support and communication tools market. You can always count on it if you need a reliable customer support platform to process tickets, support users, and get advanced reporting. 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.

Let’s explore these unique offerings and see how they can benefit your business. Now that we’ve discussed the customer service-focused features of Zendesk and Intercom, let’s turn our attention to how these platforms can support sales and marketing efforts. Research by Zoho reports that customer relationship management (CRM) systems can help companies triple lead conversion rates. Those same tools also increase customer retention by 27% while saving 23% on sales and marketing costs. Efficient customer service and support capabilities are fundamental for maintaining high customer satisfaction levels.

This integration enables you to access live customer data from Intercom within Zendesk, customize the information displayed, and sync user tags between the two platforms. Additionally, you can forward Intercom conversations to Zendesk as tickets. Intercom calculates the price based on the number of seats (users) you request.

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’s an opportunity for Zendesk to differentiate itself, but unfortunately it didn’t get very high marks from users, either. Reviewers were frustrated by how long it took for their tickets to get resolved, as well as the complexity with which they were tossed around from department to department. Given that these are two services predicated on making you better at customer support, you’d think they’d be able to handle it better themselves.

Integrations are the best way to enhance the toolkit of your apps by connecting them for interoperable actions and features. Both Zendesk and Intercom have integration libraries, and you can also use a connecting tool like Zapier for added integrations and add-ons. Intercom’s large series of bots obviously run on automations as well. As mentioned before, the bot builder is a visual drag-and-drop system that requires no coding knowledge; this is also how other basic workflows are designed. The more expensive Intercom plans offer AI-powered content cues, triage, and conversation insights.

Zendesk’s dashboard ties together your customer interactions from every possible channel. 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. Intercom, of course, allows its customer support team to collaborate and communicate too, but overall, Zendesk wins this group. Yes, Zendesk offers an integration with Intercom available through the Zendesk Marketplace.

It also includes extensive integrations with over 350 CRM, email, ticketing, and reporting tools. The platform is recognized for its ability to resolve a significant portion of common questions automatically, ensuring faster response times. This exploration aims to provide a detailed comparison, aiding businesses in making an informed decision that aligns with their customer service goals.

Its user-friendly interface, robust ticketing system, and extensive integration options make it popular for businesses seeking efficient customer service solutions. With its robust ticketing system, versatile automation capabilities, and extensive reporting tools, Zendesk empowers businesses to handle customer inquiries effectively and improve support efficiency. It’s best used when you need a centralized platform to manage customer support operations, whether through email, chat, social media, or phone. Zendesk is ideal for businesses seeking to enhance their customer service processes and maintain a high level of customer satisfaction across all communication channels. Zendesk and Intercom are tailored to enhance your customer support and engagement, providing robust tools for managing customer inquiries, automating responses, and facilitating communication.

Compare Zendesk vs Intercom

You can publish your self-service resources, divide them by categories, and integrate them with your messenger to accelerate the whole chat experience. 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. What’s really nice about this is that even within a ticket, you can switch between communication modes without changing views.

Moving on, Dominic delves into the features offered by Zendesk and Intercom. He highlights the strengths and weaknesses of each, shedding light on the key functionalities that set them apart. From automation and knowledge base management Chat GPT to integrations and analytics, Dominic gives viewers a comprehensive overview of what these platforms bring to the table. In the world of customer support and communication platforms, two heavyweights stand out – Zendesk and Intercom.

For smaller teams that have to handle multiple tasks, do not forget to check JustReply.ai, which is a user-friendly customer support tool. It will seamlessly integrate with Slack and offers everything you need for your favorite communication platform. Integrating AI in the help center helps agents find answers to customer inquiries, providing a seamless customer experience. Zendesk’s AI offers automated responses to customer inquiries, increasing the team’s productivity, as they can spend time on the most crucial things.

There are four different subscription packages you can choose from, all of which also have Essential, Pro, and Premium options for businesses of different sizes. You’d need to chat with Intercom https://chat.openai.com/ sales team for get the costs for the Premium subscription, though. It’s much easier if you decide to go with the Zendesk Suite, which includes Support, Chat, Talk, and Guide tools.

While doing my research for this article, I’ve not only tested both Intercom and Zendesk myself, but also read a pile of different articles, comparisons, guides, showdowns and all this kind of stuff. What really struck me though is that people seemed to like Zendesk more. Struck not in a bad way, more like in a very neutral ‘huh, this may be interesting’ way. 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. Check out our chart that compares the capabilities of Zendesk vs. Intercom.

• We will also consider customer feedback and reviews to provide insights into the usability of each platform.
• The feedback and recommendations from existing users serve as valuable guidance for businesses considering either platform.
• Still, considering that such companies do not have a large budget for investing in CRM software, they should carefully consider all plans.
• From in-app chat to personalized autoresponders, Intercom provides a unified experience across multiple channels, creating a support ecosystem that nurtures and converts leads.
• Nevertheless, the platform’s support consistency can be a concern, and the unpredictable pricing structure might lead to increased costs for larger organizations.

It’s modern, it’s smooth, it looks great and it has so many advanced features. Basically, you can create new articles, divide them by categories and sections — make it a high end destination for customers when they have questions or issues. But I don’t want to sell their chat tool short as it still has most of necessary features like shortcuts (saved responses), automated triggers and live chat analytics.

The Zendesk marketplace is also where you can get a lot of great add-ons. There are also several different Shopify integrations to choose from, as well as CRM integrations like HubSpot and Salesforce. No matter what Zendesk Suite plan you are on, you get workflow triggers, which are simple business rules-based actions to streamline many tasks. 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.

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. Whether Intercom is cheaper than Zendesk depends on your specific usage, feature requirements, and the number of users in your organization. Use HubSpot Service Hub to provide seamless, fast, and delightful customer service.

When it comes to customer support software, Zendesk is #1 in popularity and brand recognition. It is none other than the modern customer support software of Helpwise. Customers of Zendesk can purchase priority assistance at the enterprise tier, which includes a 99.9% uptime service level agreement and a 1-hour service level goal. At all tiers, there is an additional fee to work with a member of the Zendesk success team on unique engagements. Both these options can be a bit expensive for startup or SMB brands.

Customers won’t need to leave your app or website to find the help they need.Zendesk, on the other hand, will redirect the customer to a new web page. 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. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. Intercom does not offer a native call center tool, so it cannot handle calls through a cloud-based phone system or calling app on its own.

It is also ideal for businesses who are searching for conversational chatbot functionality. Their AI-powered chatbot can enable your business to boost engagement and improve marketing efforts in real-time. Intercom offers an integrated knowledge base functionality to its user base.

Assessing how Zendesk and Intercom integrate with other systems and tools used within the organization is critical for achieving operational synergy and efficiency. Customers rated Intercom 4.4 on G2 Crowd, while Zendesk scored 4.3. This is not a huge difference; however, it does indicate that customers are generally more satisfied with Intercom’s offerings than Zendesk’s. Honestly, when it comes to Zendesk, it is not the most modern tool out there. Intercom doesn’t really provide free stuff, but they have a tool called Platform, which is free.

When it comes to real-time analytics, Zendesk is winning our hearts. With its live analytics feature on the dashboard, it makes it easy for you to make instant decisions in no time. Such live insights are very useful in evaluating your customer support process. But, you would not be able to enjoy such a live tracking experience on Intercom. Chat tools are the foundation of customer support software in 2023 and can serve as a key differentiator when choosing the right vendor. Initially started as a simple live chat platform in 2011, Intercom now positions itself as a conversational support platform focused on enabling personalised, messenger-based experiences.

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. With Zendesk’s Answer Bot, relevant articles are automatically suggested to your customers, saving them time while they look for solutions. 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.

Overall, Zendesk empowers businesses to deliver exceptional customer support experiences across channels, making it a popular choice for enhancing support operations. Intercom provides a perfect platform for sales and support teams to collaborate. Agents can assign sales inquiries and support requests to the respective team or team members. Selecting an ideal helpdesk software that suits your business needs is critical for the success of your customer support. In this article, we will directly compare two customer service providers—Zendesk vs Intercom, to help you evaluate what would work best for your business.

Zendesk offers robust reporting capabilities, providing businesses with detailed insights into consumer interactions, ticketing systems, agent performance, and more. Businesses can also track their performance, identify trends, and make informed decisions using its advanced analytics tool and creative dashboards that can customized according to the business needs. The integration of apps plays a significant role in creating a seamless experience or a 360-degree view of customers across the company. Zendesk allows the integration of 1300 apps ranging from billing apps, marketing tools, and other software, adding overall to the value of the business.

On the other hand, Intercom is more focused on conversational customer support, and has more help desk features suited for live chat and messaging. While both platforms offer email marketing tools, Zendesk’s email marketing features are more robust and comprehensive. Zendesk’s email marketing functionalities include advanced segmentation options, powerful automation tools, and detailed email tracking capabilities. These features empower businesses to create highly targeted and personalized email campaigns, ensuring efficient communication and nurturing of customer relationships. Yes, you can use Intercom on the front end for customer communication and Zendesk on the back end for managing support tickets and workflows. This combination maximizes the strengths of both help desk platforms, providing a seamless experience for managing customer accounts from initial interaction to issue resolution.

It excels in real-time customer communication and helps support teams create personalized customer experiences. Zendesk is a comprehensive CRM and support suite that offers a variety of features for customer support, sales, and marketing. One of Zendesk’s most notable aspects is its robust ticketing system. As Zendesk initially began as a help desk ticketing system, it’s no surprise that the platform makes tracking and managing customer inquiries seamless. Apart from a live chat, it has a feature called ‘Business Messenger’ that comes with its own AI chatbot. Moreover, Intercom bots can converse naturally with customers by using conversation starters, respond with self-help, and knowledge base articles.