Intercom vs Zendesk: Which Is Better?

We will compare those customer service solutions in terms of functionality and price. Zendesk offers its users consistently high ROI due to its comprehensive product features, firm support, and advanced customer support, automation, and reporting features. It allows businesses to streamline operations and workflows, improving customer satisfaction and eventually leading to increased revenues, which justifies the continuous high ROI. Intercom has a different approach, one that’s all about sales, marketing, and personalized messaging. Intercom has your back if you’re looking to supercharge your sales efforts. It’s like having a toolkit for lead generation, customer segmentation, and crafting highly personalized messages.

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. They have similar features, but Intercom has lots of features and tools that better integrate each other. So it will transmit the live data on the users and what they are doing in your app. This option is useful for those who are looking for a smooth switch from Zendesk to Intercom. Formerly known as Insights, Zendesk now uses Explore to provide analytics to help businesses tailor their services to increase customer satisfaction. Zendesk is suitable for startups, mainly due to its transparent pricing.

Since then, it has evolved into a full-fledged CRM that offers a suite of software applications to its over 160,000 customers like Uber, Siemens, and Tesco. For small businesses, the choice depends on the complexity of their CRM needs. Zendesk’s more affordable plans may be suitable if essential CRM functions are enough.

This lack of transparency can create budgeting problems for businesses. Let us dive deeper into the offerings of Zendesk and Intercom to make a comparison at a glance. This comparison is going to help you understand the features of both tools. Just like Intercom, Zendesk’s customer service is quite disappointing.

This is fine, as not every customer support team wants to be so available on the phone. If your business has an app, in-app messaging can be used to send messages to customers. You can use this with the push notification of the app to keep your customers in the loop of possible promos, rewards, and more. Every CRM software comes with some limitations along with the features it offers. You can analyze if that weakness is something that concerns your business model. The best thing about this plan is that it is eligible for an advanced AI add-on, has integrated community forums, side conversations, skill-based routing, and is HIPAA-enabled.

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. While both Intercom and Zendesk excel in customer support and engagement, the decision between the two depends on your specific requirements. It’s well-suited for organizations aiming to enhance customer engagement through real-time communication. Determining whether Zendesk is better than Intercom hinges on your unique customer support and engagement requirements.

However, a fundamental difference between them is their scope and focus. 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.

Choosing the right tool for your business can be a daunting task, but fear not! Let’s dive into the showdown of Zendesk vs. Intercom as Dominic walks us through the essential aspects. It enables businesses to have real-time conversations with their customers through their website or mobile app. In contrast, Zendesk offers a more diverse range of communication channels, including email, social media, phone, and live chat. It also provides mid-sized businesses with comprehensive customer relationship management software, as they require more advanced features to handle customer support.

It can automatically suggest relevant articles for agents during business hours to share with clients, reducing your support agents’ workload. 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)? Powered by Explore, Zendesk’s reporting capabilities are pretty impressive.

Customer Support: How Zendesk and Intercom Stack up

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. You can publish your knowledge base articles and divide them by categories and also integrate them with your messenger to accelerate the whole chat experience. Zendesk also has the Answer Bot, which can take your knowledge base game to the next level instantly. It can automatically suggest your customer relevant articles reducing the workload for your support agents.

Don’t miss out on the latest tips, tools, and tactics at the forefront of customer support. Any business knows that the front desk is where everything happens. It’s where customers ask the questions that may result in the largest sales in your company’s history. Zendesk has more pricing options, which means you’re free to choose your tier from the get-go. With Intercom, you’ll have more customizable options with the enterprise versions of the software, but you’ll have fewer lower-tier choices. If you don’t plan on building a huge enterprise just yet, we have to give the edge to Zendesk when it comes to flexible pricing options.

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. There is power to be realized in partnerships and the strategic combination of forces, and companies using chatbots for customer service can further enhance the CX, taking it to new heights. Netomi’s virtual agents sit alongside human agents to supplement and enhance the capacity of support teams, ensuring the seamless resolution of customer queries. Intercom offers advanced customer service through its automated functions and is suitable for businesses looking for a sophisticated customer support solution.

However, the add-on Customer Lists available for Professional and Enterprise subscriptions does have mass email options. These weaknesses are not as significant as the features and functionalities Zendesk offers its users. The Expert plan, which offers collaboration, real-time dashboard, security, and reporting tools for large teams, costs $139.

After an in-depth exploration of Zendesk and Intercom, Dominic wraps up the video with his conclusions. He summarizes the key points, discusses the strengths and weaknesses of each platform, and provides recommendations based on different business needs. Viewers are equipped Chat GPT with the knowledge to make an informed choice that aligns with their specific requirements. 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.

Their agent was always trying to convert me into a lead along the way, but heck, that’s a side effect of our job. To sum things up, one can get really confused trying to make sense of Zendesk’s pricing, let alone to calculate costs. You’d probably want to know how much it costs to get Zendesk or Intercom for your business, so let’s talk money now. As I’ve already mentioned, they started as a help desk/ticketing tool, and honestly, they perfected every bit of it over the years. As it turns, it’s quite difficult to compare Zendesk against Intercom as they serve different purposes and will fit different businesses. 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.

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At the same time, the vendor offers powerful reporting capabilities to help you grow and improve your business. Founded in 2007, Zendesk started as a ticketing tool for customer success teams. It was later that they started adding all kinds of other features, like live chat for customer conversations.

This has helped to make Zendesk one of the most popular customer service software platforms on the market. Both Intercom and Zendesk have proven to be valuable tools for businesses looking to provide excellent customer support. Evaluate their features, compare them based on your business needs, and choose the one that aligns best with your goals and objectives. Zendesk outshines Intercom for customer support workflows with its core feature, the ticketing system. Zendesk’s ticketing system is renowned for its highly organized approach, which empowers businesses to manage customer support requests with unparalleled efficiency.

This feature enables support agents to proactively engage with customers and provide assistance. Zendesk may not offer the same level of real-time tracking capabilities. Zendesk on the other hand offers tools that support a wide variety of customer service functions including robust ticket management capabilities. Intercom and Zendesk both offer comprehensive customer support solutions. Intercom is ideal for personalized messaging, while Zendesk offers robust ticket management and self-service options. Compared to Zendesk and Intercom, Helpwise offers competitive and transparent pricing plans.

We also adhere to numerous industry standards and regulations, such as HIPAA, SOC2, ISO 27001, HDS, FedRAMP LI-SaaS, ISO 27018, and ISO 27701. The Zendesk Marketplace offers over 1,500 no-code apps and integrations. Customer expectations are already high, but with the rise of AI, customers are expecting even more. Customers want speed, anticipation, and a hyper-personalized experience conveniently on their channel of choice. Intelligence has become key to delivering the kinds of experiences customers expect at a lower operational cost.

Compare Intercom and Zendesk Chat to find the best solution for your particular requirements. By evaluating their key features, pricing, specifications, and ratings, you’ll gather valuable information to make a well-informed decision. Talking about the Intercom, it has flexible pricing plans that its experts can help adjust as per your requirements to match contacts and number of seats. The good news is that you enjoy a generous free 14-day trial by opting to get an idea if the particular service is suitable for your business or not. That their customers are fully satisfied with their products and services, and so is the motto of our Desku chatbots.

In a nutshell, both these companies provide great customer support. I tested both of their live chats and their support agents were answering in very quickly and right to the point. Zendesk team can be just a little bit faster depending on the time of the day. 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.

Intercom and Zendesk, two of the most popular customer service platforms have gained popularity and unique clientele for themselves since their launch. While both are customer-centric, it is worth mentioning that when we dig even a little deeper, the differences and similarities become quite apparent, even to a casual observer. The best way, however, to maximize their potential is through Intercom Zendesk integrations on Appy Pie Connect. Intercom is a customer messaging platform that enables businesses to engage with customers through personalized and real-time communication. While Intercom offers a user-friendly interface and solid chat features, it may lack the comprehensive, modular capabilities provided by Zendesk.

So, by holding Desku’s hand, you can open doors for a long list of happy and fully satisfied customers. We need a solution that allows whoever picks up the chat or phone to quickly see the history of that customer, their request, notes, and the status of their order. We need a powerful chat tool that can enable immediate engagement, have some basic automation, and allows users to drop in.

Tracking the ticket progress enables businesses to track what part of the resolution customer complaint has reached. On the other hand, Intercom catches up with Zendesk on ticket handling capabilities but stands out due to its automation features. Again, Zendesk has surpassed the number of reviewers when compared to Intercom. Some of the highly-rated features include ticket creation user experience, email to case, and live chat reporting. When you see pricing plans starting for $79/month, you should get a clear understanding of how expensive other plans can become for your business. What’s worse, Intercom doesn’t offer a free trial to its prospect to help them test the product before onboarding with their services.

In addition to these features, Intercom offers messaging automation and real-time visitor insights. Because Intercom started as a live chat service, its messenger functionality is very robust. It feels very modern, and Intercom offers some advanced messenger features that Zendesk does not. Staying updated with the future prospects and developments of Zendesk and Intercom is crucial for anticipating upcoming features and advancements.

Intercom’s AI has the transformative power to enhance customer service by offering multilingual support and contextual responses. AI-driven chatbot Fin is designed to automate consumer interactions. Fin uses seamless communication across customer bases, breaking language barriers and catering to global audiences. AI is integral to customer relationship management software and facilitates consumer interactions.

They offer more detailed insights like lead generation sources, a complete message report to track customer engagement, and detailed information on the support team’s performance. A collection of these reports can enable your business to identify the right resources responsible for bringing engagement to your business. Whichever solution you choose, mParticle can help integrate your data. MParticle is a Customer Data Platform offering plug-and-play integrations to Zendesk and Intercom, along with over 300 other marketing, analytics, and data warehousing tools. With mParticle, you can connect your Zendesk and Intercom data with other marketing, analytics, and business intelligence platforms without any custom engineering effort. Intercom stands out here due to its ability  to tailor sales workflows.

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. 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. If you create a new chat with the team, land on a page with no widget, and go back to the browser for some reason, your chat will go puff. Intercom has more customization features for features like bots, themes, triggers, and funnels. Though expensive and quality are synonymous in some worlds, such a principle cannot define Desku where it stands out as one of such affordable companies.

Zendesk, just like its competitor, offers a knowledge base solution that is easy to customize. Their users can create a knowledge repository to create articles or edit existing ones as per the changes in the services or product. Zendesk, like Intercom, offers multilingual language functionality. It also provides detailed reports on how each self-help article performs in your knowledge base and helps you identify how each piece can be improved further. They offer an omnichannel chat solution that integrates with multiple messaging platforms and marketing channels and even automates incoming support processes with bots.

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. Zendesk, less user-friendly and with higher costs for quality vendor support, might not suit budget-conscious intercom versus zendesk or smaller businesses. Pricing for both services varies based on the specific needs and scale of your business. Test any of HelpCrunch pricing plans for free for 14 days and see our tools in action right away. Besides, the prices differ depending on the company’s size and specific needs.

Easily reply to customer conversations and manage workload in a smart & automated way. Lastly, Intercom offers an academy that offers concise courses to help users make the most out of their Intercom experience. Intercom’s helpdesk is more of a complementary tool to their chat tools.

It really depends on what features you need and what type of customer service strategy you plan to implement. For instance, Intercom can guide a new software user through each feature step by step, providing context and assistance along the way. In contrast, Zendesk primarily relies on a knowledge base, housing articles, FAQs, and self-help resources.

Zendesk will meet all your needs, whether you are a budding startup or an enterprise player. It simplifies the ticketing flow through features like automation, a shared inbox, private notes, a consolidated dashboard, analytics, etc. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. Since its inception in 2007, Zendesk is known for its robust help desk software designed to improve customer relationships. Zendesk empowers brands to connect with customers on multiple channels. The offers that appear on the website are from software companies from which CRM.org receives compensation.

Is there a better Collaboration software than Intercom?

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. 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. These plans make Hiver a versatile tool, catering to a range of business sizes and needs, from startups to large enterprises looking for a comprehensive customer support solution within Gmail. Intercom’s solution aims to streamline high-volume ticket influx and provide personalized, conversational support.

Zendesk’s pricing plans start at $19 per month, while Intercom’s pricing plans start at $74 per month. Your best pricing plan will depend on your specific needs and budget. If you are a small business with basic CRM needs, then the Zendesk Support Team or Intercom Starter may be a good option for you. If you are a growing business with more complex CRM needs, then the Zendesk Enterprise or Intercom Pro plan may be a better option for you. When it comes to which company is the better fit for your business, there’s no clear answer.

While Intercom offers a “Starter Plan” for very small businesses, the price for larger companies is scaled upward, too. If you only need the services Intercom offers, then you’ll only spend around $75 a month for two seats. Another feature Intercom offers that Zendesk doesn’t is email marketing tools. Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to communicate with your customers. When reviewing a product, users are asked to assess the product’s overall quality, which includes assigning specific ratings for ease of use, value for money, customer support, and functionality.

The learning and knowledgebase category is another one where it is a close call between Zendesk and Intercom. However, we will say that Intercom just edges past Zendesk when it comes to self-service resources. Let’s compare Zendesk vs. Intercom using the help desk features they have.

• If you are a growing business with more complex CRM needs, then the Zendesk Enterprise or Intercom Pro plan may be a better option for you.
• One more thing to add, there are ways to integrate Intercom to Zendesk.
• 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.
• Test any of HelpCrunch pricing plans for free for 14 days and see our tools in action right away.

Overall, Zendesk’s extensive features and customization options make it a powerful choice for diverse business requirements. When comparing Zendesk and Intercom, Zendesk stands out with its robust and versatile customer support solutions. It offers a comprehensive platform for managing customer inquiries and support tickets across multiple channels, providing businesses with a powerful toolset for customer service management. Zendesk’s extensive feature set and customizable workflows are particularly appealing to organizations looking to streamline and scale their customer support operations efficiently. Zendesk is distinguished by its robust and versatile customer support solutions.

Without proper channels to reach you, usually, customers will take their business elsewhere. And, thanks to the internet, a few taps will lead them right to your competitor! Most businesses use live chats as their main customer communication channel. It is handy for both sides since users can get in touch with customer support teams via a chat widget placed right on the website. Zendesk is more robust in terms of its ticket management capabilities, it offers more customization options and advanced features like a virtual call center app.

Automated service to migrate your data between help desk platforms without programming skills — just follow simple Migration Wizard. As a rule, Intercom reviews are positive as many users praise the interface, the ease of use, and the deployment of the software. However, some users remarked that a developer is needed to properly install the software or run the risks of problems in the future. The Intercom Messenger, in particular, performs well compared to the Zendesk alternative. Analytics features Intercom has is done through add-ons such as Google Analytics, Statbot, Microsoft Teams, and more. To sum it all up, you need to consider various aspects of your business before choosing CRM software.

There is a simple email integration tool for whatever email provider you regularly use. This gets you unlimited email addresses and email templates in both text form and HTML. There is automatic email archiving and incoming email authentication. 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. Zendesk Sunshine is a separate feature set that focuses on unified customer views.

Zendesk offers a free 30-day trial, after which customers will need to upgrade to one of their paid plans. When it comes to ease-of-use, Zendesk undeniably takes the lead over Intercom. Zendesk’s intuitive design caters to beginners and non-technical users, offering a seamless experience right from the start. 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.

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. To begin with, putting Zendesk vs. Intercom “side by side” is a thankless job as software differs in functionality, price, and purposes. The compared vendors share a strategy of delivering their services as either separate add-ons or all-in-one tools. However, businesses must choose between Zendesk vs Intercom based on their needs and requirements.

Its straightforward pricing structure ensures businesses get access to the required features without complex tiers or hidden costs, making it an attractive option for cost-conscious organizations. Intercom’s app store has popular integrations for things like WhatsApp, Stripe, Instagram, and Slack. There is a really https://chat.openai.com/ 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. Intercom bills itself first and foremost as a platform to make the business of customer service more personalized, among other things.

These pricing structures are flexible enough to cater to all business sizes and types. Moreover, the pricing model ensures customer transparency and reveals the costs that businesses will incur. Zendesk and Intercom offer a free trial of 14 days, but you will eventually have to choose once the trial ends. The pricing strategies are covered below so you can analyze the pricing structure and select your customer service software.

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. It is a totally cloud-based service; you can operate this VOIP technology by sitting in any corner of the world. You will be able to find the most common chatting system with a single communication channel. So, communicating with customers on different communication channels would be difficult on Intercom.

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. Intercom Inbox has customer support features that vaguely remind Zendesk Support, but the offered package Acquire customer (Messages and Inbox) is more paralleled with Zendesk Support + Chat. Intercom is a complete customer communication platform for small businesses. Still, considering that such companies do not have a large budget for investing in CRM software, they should carefully consider all plans. Intercom also charges additional charges for specific features, such as charging $0.99 for every resolution.

While this resource center can reduce the dependency on agent assistance, it lacks the interactive element found in Intercom’s onboarding process. While Intercom also provides a user-friendly interface, some users may find it a tad overwhelming, especially when juggling multiple support requests. Zendesk’s simplicity, combined with its robust functionality, significantly reduces the margin for errors and confusion. In the realm of user-friendliness, Zendesk clearly emerges as the superior choice. Determining whether Intercom can effectively replace Zendesk depends on your specific customer support and engagement requirements. Whether Zendesk can fully replace Intercom depends on your specific customer support and engagement requirements.

This is an AI assistant that will help anyone navigate Guide by providing results as you type your query. The bot also ensures that the customer or employee will find the right article before contacting an agent. Thus, it leaves your team to solve more important customer requests. Knowledge Base is one of the self-service sections that includes articles or documents providing technical help to customers and employees.

• Since its inception in 2007, Zendesk is known for its robust help desk software designed to improve customer relationships.
• The main difference is its connectivity with the Intercom Team Inbox.
• One of the pivotal aspects of any customer support platform is its ticketing system.
• 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.
• Intercom, on the other hand, is designed to be more of a complete solution for sales, marketing, and customer relationship nurturing.
• It doesn’t require a team of administrators to manage and its toolset is robust without being complex.

If this scenario applies to you, you must check out our feature-rich and cost-effective tool—Helplama. The top products based on usability and customer satisfaction, as rated by user reviews. So, by now, you can see that according to this article, Zendesk inches past Intercom as the better customer support platform. 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. 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.