Zendesk vs Intercom: A comprehensive comparison guide

What can be really inconvenient about Zendesk, though is how their tools integrate with each other when you need to use them simultaneously. On practice, I can’t promise you anything Chat PG when it comes to Intercom. Moreover, these are new prices as they’re in the middle of changing their pricing policy right now (and they’re definitely not getting cheaper).

These products range from customer communication tools to a fully-fledged CRM. Zendesk boasts incredibly robust sales capabilities and security features. 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. One of Zendesk’s standout features that we need to shine a spotlight on is its extensive marketplace of third-party integrations and extensions.

Like Zendesk, Intercom allows you to chat with online visitors and assist with their issues. Depending on your needs, you can set up Intercom on your website or mobile app and add your automations. Setting up Intercom help centers is also very easy and intuitive, with no previous knowledge required. After this, you’ll have to set up your workflows, personalizing your tickets and storing them by topic. You can then add automations and triggers, such as automatically closing a ticket or sending a message to a user.

Even better, it’s the most cost-effective, lightweight, and speedy live chat solution available for Shopify business owners. 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.

You need a complete customer service platform that’s seamlessly integrated and AI-enhanced. 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. Provide self-service alternatives so customers can resolve their own issues.

Intercom Differentiation

It can automatically suggest relevant articles for agents during business hours to share with clients, reducing your support agents’ workload. So when it comes to chatting features, the choice is not really Intercom vs Zendesk. The latter offers a chat widget that is simple, outdated, and limited in customization options, while the former puts all of its resources into its messenger. Basically, if you have a complicated support process, go with Zendesk, an excellent Intercom alternative, for its help desk functionality. If you’re a sales-oriented corporation, use Intercom for its automation options. Both tools can be quite heavy on your budget since they mainly target big enterprises and don’t offer their full toolset at an affordable price.

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. Intercom live chat is modern, smooth, and has many advanced features that other chat tools don’t. It’s highly customizable, too, so you can adjust it according to your website or product’s style.

With Intercom you can send targeted email, push, and in-app messages which can be based on the most relevant time or behavior triggers. If you’re a huge corporation with a complicated customer support process, go Zendesk for its help desk functionality. If you’re smaller more sales oriented startup with enough money, go Intercom. Intercom isn’t as great with sales, but it allows for better communication. With Intercom, you can keep track of your customers and what they do on your website in real time.

Intercom vs Zendesk: intro

Zendesk is renowned for its comprehensive toolset that aids in automating customer service workflows and fine-tuning chatbot interactions. Its strengths are prominently seen in multi-channel support, with effective email, social media, and live chat integrations, coupled with a robust internal knowledge base for agent support. While the company is smaller than Zendesk, Intercom has earned a reputation for building high-quality customer service software. The company’s products include a messaging platform, knowledge base tools, and an analytics dashboard. Many businesses choose to work with Intercom because of its focus on personalization and flexibility, allowing companies to completely customize their customer service experience.

For standard reporting like response times, leads generated by source, bot performance, messages sent, and email deliverability, you’ll easily find all the metrics you need. Beyond that, you can create custom reports that combine all of the stats listed above (and many more) and present them as counts, columns, lines, or tables. Using this, agents can chat across teams within zendesk or intercom 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. Intercom’s solution offers several use cases, meaning the product’s investments and success resources have a broad focus.

Zendesk wins the omnichannel capabilities category because it offers voice as a service, which we think is absolutely critical. Agents can use the desktop chatbox to respond to customers in any outbound channel. Zendesk for Sales, or Zendesk Sell, is Zendesk’s sales pipeline and CRM tool with its own dashboard for lead generation and conversion. 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.

You would rather have to integrate it with third-party apps like Appy Pie Connect. Zendesk has been ruling the market for ages due to its multi-communication and ticketing system. Whether it’s about communicating via phone, email, or social media, Zendesk will always stay upfront. Both the platforms have the knowledge base feature, and in my opinion, both of them are becoming winners. Moreover, research says that companies can reduce customer resolution times upto a great percentage through the helpdesk software. Today, thanks to the virtual technology revolution, you can find numerous help desk software, but our vote goes for Zendesk and Intercom.

• Intercom is a customer messaging platform that enables businesses to engage with customers through personalized and real-time communication.
• If you thought Zendesk prices were confusing, let me introduce you to the Intercom charges.
• Suppose you are thinking that Intercom isn’t offering any attractive features, but it’s actually not true.

For basic chat and messaging, Intercom charges a flat fee of $39 per month for its basic plan with one user and $99 per month for its team plan with up to 5 users. If you want automated options, Intercom starts at either $499 or $999 per month for up to ten users, depending on the level of automation you’re looking for. 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.

Pricing plans: Zendesk vs. Intercom

When it comes to advanced workflows and ticketing systems, Zendesk boasts a more full-featured solution. Due to our intelligent routing capabilities and numerous automated workflows, our users can free up hours to focus on other tasks. Intercom’s integration capabilities are limited, and some apps don’t integrate well with third-party customer service technology.

Easily track your service team’s performance and unlock coaching opportunities with AI-powered insights. While Intercom does not offer free trials, they do offer demo versions of each plan. Intercom’s Inbox organizes all of an agent’s core functions into one interface. Below, we’ve compared the usability of Zendesk’s and Intercom’s agent dashboards and administrator controls. Create entry rules that trigger when the messaging campaign begins, choosing the target audiences and when follow-up messages generate.

Zendesk for Service sells three plans, ranging from $49 to $99 monthly per user, with a 30-day free trial available for each plan. Intercom plan prices are determined based on your specific business needs, so interested users must contact them for specific price details. The admin and manager dashboard provides a zoomed-out view of all activity taking place in each inbox, for whole departments and individual agents. Agents can respond in any channel by typing in the text box and have access to deep customer experience history and background in the right-hand column. The dashboard’s left-hand column organizes and sorts all tickets by urgency. When an agent clicks on a conversation, the full conversation history populates the middle screen.

Mobile app: Zendesk Vs. Intercom

This site does not include all software companies or all available software companies offers. However, this is somewhat subjective, and depending on your business needs and favorite tools, you may argue we got it all mixed up, and Intercom is truly superior. Some https://chat.openai.com/ startups and small businesses may prefer one app, while large companies and enterprise operations will have their own requirements. Integrations are the best way to enhance the toolkit of your apps by connecting them for interoperable actions and features.

Intercom’s app store has popular integrations for things like WhatsApp, Stripe, Instagram, and Slack. There is a really useful one for Shopify to provide customer support for e-commerce operations. HubSpot and Salesforce are also available when support needs to work with marketing and sales teams. A customer service department is only as good as its support team members, and these highly-prized employees need to rely on one another. Tools that allow support agents to communicate and collaborate are important aspect of customer service software. Zendesk’s user face is quite intuitive and easy to use, allowing customers to quickly find what they are looking for.

It’s known for its unified agent workspace which combines different communication methods like email, social media messaging, live chat, and SMS, all in one place. This makes it easier for support teams to handle customer interactions without switching between different systems. Plus, Zendesk’s integration with various channels ensures customers can always find a convenient way to reach out. Intercom is a customer messaging platform that enables businesses to engage with customers through personalized and real-time communication. On the contrary, Intercom is far less predictable when it comes to pricing and can cost hundreds/thousands of dollars per month.

By the end of the article, you’ll not only know all of the main differences between Zendesk and Intercom, but you’ll know which is the right tool for you. Rated 5 stars out of 5 on G2, ThriveDesk is highly regarded by users. Rest assured, ThriveDesk’s lightweight design and speed won’t impact the performance of your Wix-powered eCommerce website. The optimized agent interface ensures rapid responses for maximum efficiency, all while keeping your website running smoothly.

Zendesk has many amazing team collaboration and communication features, like whisper mode, which lets multiple agents chime in to help each other without the customer knowing. There is also something called warm transfers, which let one rep add contextual notes to a ticket before transferring it to another rep. You also get a side conversation tool. Intercom has a very robust advanced chatbot set of tools for your business needs. There is a conversation routing bot, an operator bot, a lead qualification bot, and an article-suggesting bot, among others. It is also not too difficult to program your own bot rules using Intercon’s system. In the category of customer support, Zendesk appears to be just slightly better than Intercom based on the availability of regular service and response times.

When it comes to customer communication, Intercom has a perfect layout and customer information storage system. Based on such information, you can easily communicate with your customers and resolve their queries instantly. Its easy navigability allows you to switch between different sections smoothly. Although Zendesk does not have an in-app messaging service, it does have one unique feature, and that is its built-in virtual call assistant, Zendesk Talk.

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. Is it as simple as knowing whether you want software strictly for customer support (like Zendesk) or for some blend of customer relationship management and sales support (like Intercom)?

If you are looking for a comprehensive customer support solution with a wide range of features, Zendesk is a good option. 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. It will help you understand your customer’s issue and solve it instantly. Although you cannot be with your customers all the time in real-time, through Desku’s live chatting, you can actually have their back. When comparing Zendesk and Intercom, various factors come into play, each focusing on different aspects, strengths, and weaknesses of these customer support platforms.

Intercom feels more wholesome and is more client-success-oriented, but it can be too costly for smaller companies. 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. Besides, the prices differ depending on the company’s size and specific needs.

You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. Essentially, Desku is not an option but a reliable replacement for Zendesk and Intercom that companies can rely on at lower costs and improved performance. Efficiency, accuracy, and optimized cash flow — these are the foundational goals of any finance team handling accounts… The Zendesk marketplace is also where you can get a lot of great add-ons.

This can make it more difficult to import CRM data and obtain complete context from customer data. For example, Intercom’s Salesforce integration doesn’t create a view of cases in Salesforce. To sum things up, Zendesk is a great customer support oriented tool which will be a great choice for big teams with various departments. Intercom feels more wholesome and is more customer success oriented, but can be too costly for smaller companies. Also, their in-app messenger is worth a separate mention as it’s one of their distinctive tools (especially since Zendesk doesn’t really have one).

For example, you can read in many Zendesk Sell reviews how adding sales tools benefits Zendesk Support users. HubSpot helps seamlessly integrate customer service tools that you and your team already leverage. Picking customer service software to run your business is not a decision you make lightly. However, customers can purchase multiple Intercom plans to use together, or purchase add-ons to select just the features they want. 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. When a customer asks a question in the Messenger widget, the Operator automatically suggests a handful of relevant articles based on keywords to help customers resolve their own issues.

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.