Zendesk vs Intercom: Which is better?

Broken down into custom, resolution, and task bots, these can go a long way in taking repetitive tasks off agents’ plates. Intercom, on the other hand, was built for business messaging, so communication is one of their strong suits. Combine that with their prowess in automation and sales solutions, and you’ve got a really strong product that can handle myriad customer relationship needs. Businesses of all sizes can rely on the Zendesk customer service platform and benefit from workflow management, powerful AI tools, robust insights, and more. If that sounds good to you, sign up for a free demo to see our software in action and get started. Their help desk is a single inbox to handle customer requests, where your customer support agents can leave private notes for each other and automatically assign requests to the right people.

Intercom is a customer relationship management (CRM) software company that provides a suite of tools for managing customer interactions. 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.

This makes it an excellent choice if you want to engage with support and potential and existing customers in real time. 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​​​​. Intercom is a customer support platform known for its effective messaging and automation, enhancing in-context support within products, apps, or websites. It features the Intercom Messenger, which works with existing support tools for self-serve or live support.

Why don’t you try something equally powerful yet more affordable, like HelpCrunch? Users can benefit from using Intercom’s CX platform and AI software as a standalone tool for business messaging. But to provide a more robust customer experience, businesses may need to consider integrating Intercom’s AI tool with a third-party customer service platform, as it falls short of a full-stack offering. Not only does Zendesk offer a free trial, it’s actually sort of a freemium tool, which means you can choose one their tools (live chat, knowledge base, call center software) and use it for free forever. As any free tool, the functionalities there are quite limited, but nevertheless. If you’re a really small business or a startup, you can benefit big time from such free tools.

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. Both options are well designed, easy to use, and share some pretty key functionality like behavioral triggers and omnichannel-ality (omnichannel-centricity?). But with perks like more advanced chatbots, automation, and lead management capabilities, Intercom could have an edge for many users. Zendesk is among the industry’s best ticketing and customer support software, and most of its additional functionality is icing on the proverbial cake.

One place Intercom really shines as a standalone CRM is its data utility. 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.

Besides its easy navigation, it also offers a mesmerizing ticketing system, multichannel communication, and analytics reporting. So, Zendesk’s users are always going to have a smooth experience with it. The sophisticated nature of its chatbot makes it more than a task automation tool — it takes customer interactions to the next level. What makes Desku unique is that it has competitively priced services with similar features as those provided by other companies but at a lower cost. Here comes Desku as the strong competitor, which can effectively substitute Zendesk and Intercom. Desku provides a user-friendly platform with robust features that enable easy transition during the migration from other support systems.

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. Zendesk pricing is divided between a customer support product called “Zendesk for support”, and a fully-fledged CRM called “Zendesk for sales”. Both Zendesk and Intercom have knowledge bases to help customers get the most out of their platforms.

But they also add features like automatic meeting booking (in the Convert package), and their custom inbox rules and workflows just feel a little more, well, custom. I’ll dive into their chatbots more later, but their bot automation features are also stronger. 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.

This gets you unlimited email addresses and email templates in both text form and HTML. There is automatic email archiving and incoming email authentication. Intercom’s dashboards may not be as aesthetically pleasing as Zendesk’s, but they still allow users to navigate their tools with few distractions. As for Intercom’s general pricing structure, there are three plans, but you’ll have to contact them to get exact prices.

You can also follow up with customers after they have left the chat and qualify them based on your answers. 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. Although Zendesk isn’t hard to use, it’s not a perfectly smooth experience either.

Platform

If you’d want to test Zendesk and Intercom before deciding on a tool for good, they both provide free trials. Intercom has a standard trial period for a SaaS product which is 14 days, while Zendesk offers a 30-day trial. It’s modern, it’s smooth, it looks great and it has so many advanced features. It has very limited customization options in comparison to its competitors. 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.

Messagely’s pricing starts at just $29 per month, which includes live chat, targeted messages, shared inbox, mobile apps, and over 750 powerful integrations. On the other hand, Zendesk’s customer support includes a knowledge base that’s very intuitive and easy to navigate. 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. In addition to Intercom vs Zendesk, alternative helpdesk solutions are available in the market.

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. 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. Intercom has more customization features for features like bots, themes, triggers, and funnels.

If money is limited for your business, a help desk that can be a Zendesk alternative or an Intercom alternative is ThriveDesk. Choose the plan that suits your support requirements and budget, whether you’re a small team or a growing enterprise. Experience the comprehensive power of Intercom for effective customer communication, automation, support tools, integrations, and analytics. Streamline support processes with Intercom’s ticketing system and knowledge base. Efficiently manage customer inquiries and empower customers to find answers independently. Intercom’s messaging system enables real-time interactions through various channels, including chat, email, and in-app messages.

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. There is a simple email integration tool for whatever email provider you regularly use.

Reporting and Analytics

We conducted a little study of our own and found that all Intercom users share different amounts of money they pay for the plans, which can reach over $1000/mo. The price levels can even be much higher if we’re talking of a larger company. 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. If I had to describe Intercom’s helpdesk, I would say it’s rather a complementary tool to their chat tools.

Their customer service management tools have a shared inbox for support teams. When you combine the help desk with Intercom Messenger, you get added channels for customer engagement. Founded in 2007, Zendesk started off as a ticketing tool for customer support teams. It was later when they started adding all kinds of other tools like when they bought out Zopim live chat and just integrated it with their toolset. Intercom is the go-to solution for businesses seeking to elevate customer support and sales processes. With its user-friendly interface and advanced functionalities, Intercom offers a comprehensive suite of tools designed to effectively communicate and engage with customers.

Send surveys at key points throughout the customer buying cycle, utilizing multiple types of question formats. Surveys turn customer insights into action, with triggers and campaign response adjustments depending on customer responses. The Sell dashboard, different from the Service dashboard, features pre-built widgets that agents can organize however they want, to view the metrics they care most about.

Messaging and live chat

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. 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. Now that we’ve covered a bit of background on both Zendesk and Intercom, let’s dive into the features each platform offers. 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.

As your business grows, so does the volume of customer inquiries and support tickets. Managing everything manually is becoming increasingly difficult, and you need a robust customer support platform to streamline your operations. With the base plan, you get some sweet facilities like a ticketing system, data analytics, customer chat history, and more. In comparison to that, you enjoy customized agent roles, sandbox, and skills-based routing, besides offering basic functionalities with the expensive enterprise plan.

These are both still very versatile products, so don’t think you have to get too siloed into a single use case. We have numerous customers that do this and benefit greatly from our out-of-the-box integration with Intercom. Like so many others, Monese determined that Zendesk was the best solution to provide seamless, omnichannel support because of its scalability and reliability. With over 100,000 customers across all industries and regions, Zendesk knows what it takes to interact with customers while retaining and growing relationships. Compare Zendesk versus Intercom to determine who will be the best partner for your business at every phase of the customer journey. I found that if I wanted to work most productively I’d need to have all four main Zendesk products opened in different browser tabs as there is no option of having all of them within a single dashboard.

Messagely’s chatbots are powerful tools for qualifying and converting leads while your team is otherwise occupied or away. With chatbots, you can generate leads to hand over to your sales team and solve common customer queries without the need of a customer service representative behind a keyboard. Intercom is praised as an affordable option with high customization capabilities, allowing businesses to create a personalized support experience. Although the interface may require a learning curve, users find the platform effective and functional. However, Intercom has fewer integration options than Zendesk, which may limit its capabilities for businesses seeking extensive integrations. 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.

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. Zendesk for Service, a customer service solution, provides unified customer-facing communication channels, self-service, collaboration, customer routing, and analytics–all organized in one dashboard. The Zendesk chat tool has most of the necessary features like shortcuts (saved responses), automated triggers, and live chat analytics. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. 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. The highlight of Zendesk’s ticketing software is its omnichannel-ality (omnichannality?).

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. Lastly, Intercom offers an academy that offers concise courses to help users make the most out of their Intercom experience. 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’s mobile app is also good for ticketing, helping you create new support tickets with macros and updates. It’s also good for sending and receiving notifications, as well as for quick filtering through the queue of open tickets. Intercom has a full suite of email marketing tools, although they are part of a pricier package.

Additionally, the platform allows for customizations such as customized user flows and onboarding experiences. 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. 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.

In short, Zendesk is perfect for large companies looking to streamline their customer support process; Intercom is great for smaller companies looking for advanced customer service features. 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. Both platforms offer distinct strengths, catering to customer support and engagement aspects. 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

But we doubled down and created a truly full-service CX solution capable of handling any support request. Novo has been a Zendesk customer since 2019 but didn’t immediately start taking full advantage of all our features and capabilities. 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. When agents don’t have to waste time toggling between different systems and tools to access the customer details they need, they can deliver faster, more personalized customer service. So yeah, two essential things that Zendesk lacks in comparison to Intercom are in-app messages and email marketing tools. Intercom on the other hand lacks many ticketing functionality that can be essential for big companies with a huge customer support load.

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. The setup is designed to seamlessly connect your customer support team with customers across all platforms.

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. Zendesk also offers a number of integrations with third-party applications. AI and ML make customer service functionalities like chatbots, sentiment analysis, ticket creation, and workflow automation possible.

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. Its ability to seamlessly integrate with various applications further amplifies its versatility.

Companies looking for a more complete customer service product–without niche bells and whistles, but with all the basic channels you want–should look to Zendesk. Small businesses who prioritize collaboration will also enjoy Zendesk for Service. For very small companies and startups, Intercom also offers a Starter plan–with a balanced suite of features from each of the above solutions–at $74 monthly per user. In an https://chat.openai.com/ omnichannel contact center, agents can manage customer interactions across channels, no matter which channel a customer uses to contact the company. Overall, Zendesk empowers businesses to deliver exceptional customer support experiences across channels, making it a popular choice for enhancing support operations. Zendesk also has an Answer Bot, which instantly takes your knowledge base game to the next level.

Pricing for both services varies based on the specific needs and scale of your business. Some of the links that appear on the website are from software companies from which CRM.org receives compensation. Many use cases call for different approaches, and Zendesk and Intercom are but two software solutions for each case. 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. Discover customer and product issues with instant replays, in-app cobrowsing, and console logs. This is not a huge difference; however, it does indicate that customers are generally more satisfied with Intercom’s offerings than Zendesk’s.

Zendesk has an app available for both Android and iOS, which makes it easy to stay connected with customers while on the go. The app includes features like push notifications and real-time customer engagement — so businesses can respond quickly to customer inquiries. 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. Zendesk has a help center that is open to all to find out answers to common questions.

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. 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. 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. Zendesk has traditionally been more focused on customer support management, while Intercom has been more focused on live support solutions like its chat solution.

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. We make it easy for anyone within your company to access contextual customer information—including their conversation and purchase history—to provide better experiences. In fact, the Zendesk Marketplace has 1,300+ apps and integrations, from billing software to marketing automation tools. All interactions with customers be it via phone, chat, email, social media, or any other channel are landing in one dashboard, where your agents can solve them fast and efficiently. There’s a plethora of features to help bigger teams collaborate more effectively — like private notes or real-time view of who’s handling a given ticket at the moment, etc.

Zendesk’s Admin Center provides tools that automate agent ticket workflows. Design and send out mobile push messages–phone pop-ups containing text and images that prompt customers to take action and redirect to a specific app page when clicked. 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. Easily reply to customer conversations and manage workload in a smart & automated way. 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.

Premiere Zendesk plans have 24/7 proactive support with faster response times. Other customer service add-ons with Zendesk include custom training and professional services. 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. From the inbox, live agents and chatbots can refer to and link knowledge base articles, to elaborate on replies and help customers locate answers. They have a dedicated help section that provides instructions on how to set up and effectively use Intercom.

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. 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. The setup can be so complex that there are tutorials by third parties to teach new users how to do it right. Intercom works with any website or web-based product and aims to be your one-way stop for all of your customer communication needs. 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.

There is a Starter plan for small businesses at $74 per month billed annually, and there are add-ons like a WhatsApp add-on at $9 per user per month or surveys at $49 per month. 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.

• Intercom is better for smaller companies that are looking for a simple and capable customer service platform.
• In an omnichannel contact center, agents can manage customer interactions across channels, no matter which channel a customer uses to contact the company.
• The dashboard’s left-hand column organizes and sorts all tickets by urgency.

Imagine having the power to connect your helpdesk solution with a wide range of tools and applications that your team already uses. Whether it’s syncing data with your CRM, enhancing communication via messaging platforms, or automating tasks with productivity apps, Zendesk makes it possible. Intercom and Zendesk are both powerful support solutions with unique features.

Their chat widget looks and works great, and they invest a lot of effort to make it a modern, convenient customer communication tool. 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.

Their agent was always trying to convert me into a lead along the way, but heck, that’s a side effect of our job. However, if you’re looking for a streamlined, all-in-one messaging platform, there is no better option than Messagely. Zendesk, on the other hand, has revamped its security since its security breach in 2016. It is now trusted by multiple Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 companies. It’s divided into about 20 topics with dozens of articles each, so navigating through it can be complicated. In terms of G2 ratings, Zendesk and Intercom are both well-rated platforms.

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. 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. ThriveDesk is a help desk software tailor-made for businesses seeking extensive features and a powerful yet simple live chat assistant.

Zendesk lets you chat with customers through email, chat, social media, or phone. And you would be surprised to know that the Intercom does not have a VOIP call service. So, if you have customers who prefer to call service with an Intercom, it wouldn’t be possible.

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. 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 main idea here is to rid the average support agent of a slew of mundane and repetitive tasks, giving them more time and mental energy to help customers with tougher issues. Zendesk can also save key customer information in their platform, which helps reps get a faster idea of who they are dealing with as well as any historical data that might assist in the support.

It can team up with tools like Salesforce and Slack, so everything runs smoothly. If you go through Zendesk’s reviews and ratings section, you will get to see a long list of positive appraisals. And we all know that receiving such continuous positive Customer feedback isn’t easy at all. Amid tight budgeting times, Desku proves to be the buddy for excellent worth and without any costly expenditure.

Whether agents are facing customers via chat, email, social media, or good old-fashioned phone, they can keep it all confined to a single, easy-to-navigate dashboard. That not only saves them the headache of having to constantly switch between dashboards while streamlining resolution processes—it also leads to better customer and agent experience overall. Intercom enables customers to self-serve through its messaging platform. Agents can easily find resources for customers from their agent workspace.

Zendesk wins the collaboration tools category because of its easy-to-use side conversations feature. The entire thread is saved within the ticket for future agents to reference. Agents can add each other to internal notes within a ticket, looping in team members to collaborate when necessary. zendesk or intercom For example, you can assign all inbound technical queries to an engineer; or, assign all pricing queries to the sales team. 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.

It really shines in its modern messenger interface, making real-time chat a breeze. 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. Zendesk is a customer service software company that provides businesses with a suite of tools to manage customer interactions. The company was founded in 2007 and today serves over 170,000 customers worldwide. Zendesk’s mission is to build software designed to improve customer relationships.

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 sales team for get the costs for the Premium subscription, though. 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. Although it can be pricey, Zendesk’s platform is a very robust one, with powerful reporting and insight tools, a large number of integrations, and excellent scalability features.

In this paragraph, let’s explain some common issues that users usually ask about when choosing between Zendesk and Intercom platforms. Well, I must admit, the tool is gradually transforming from a platform for communicating with users to a Chat PG tool that helps you automate every aspect of your routine. They’ve been marketing themselves as a messaging platform right from the beginning. Intercom does have a ticketing dashboard that has omnichannel functionality, much like Zendesk.