Zendesk vs Intercom: Which Solution to Choose in 2024?

They’ve been marketing themselves as a messaging platform right from the beginning. Discover customer and product issues with instant replays, in-app cobrowsing, and console logs. Find reporting for all articles (including synced articles) in the Articles report.

Yes—as your business’s needs grow, you will require a more sophisticated case management system. But that doesn’t mean you have to completely switch from your current provider if you’re not quite ready. Our integration with Intercom enables bi-directional contact and case synchronization, so you can continue using Intercom as your front-end digital experience and use Zendesk for case management.

Zendesk has over 160,000 customers, including some well-known brands like Siemens, Uber and Instacart. We hope that this Intercom VS Zendesk comparison helps you choose one that matches your support, marketing, and sales needs. But in case you are in search of something beyond these two, then ProProfs Chat can be an option. Zendesk also offers detailed reports that can be shared with others and enable team members to collaborate on them simultaneously. You can either track your performance on a pre-built dashboard or customize and build one for yourself.

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.

Pricing & Scalability

One of the standout features of Zendesk’s user interface is the ability to view customer interactions in a timeline format, which can help track the progress of a customer’s support request. Additionally, Zendesk offers a wide range of customization options, allowing users to tailor the user interface to their needs. Zendesk offers tiered pricing based on the level of service you need, the size of your teams, and other factors. Every feature is available in the broadest option, Zendesk Suite, which is the version most companies would be implementing. After all, most businesses find it easier to use one solution for all of their needs rather than parceling duties out to different tools. Zendesk is a comprehensive CRM and support suite that offers a variety of features for customer support, sales, and marketing.

As customers come closer to purchasing, they often find themselves weighing the same pros and cons. In our experience, when future clients start thinking about the advantages and disadvantages of Intercom vs. Zendesk, these are the questions they want answers to. Like so many others, Monese determined that Zendesk was the best solution to provide seamless, omnichannel support because of its scalability and reliability. Brian Kale, the head of customer success at Bank Novo, describes how Zendesk helped Bank Novo boost productivity and streamline service.

• So you see, it’s okay to feel dizzy when comparing Zendesk vs Intercom platforms.
• Some of the highly-rated features include ticket creation user experience, email to case, and live chat reporting.
• Intercom and Zendesk offer robust customer support options, including email, phone, and live chat support, comprehensive knowledge bases, and community forums.
• 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.
• One of the standout features of Zendesk’s user interface is the ability to view customer interactions in a timeline format, which can help track the progress of a customer’s support request.
• You can even save custom dashboards for a more tailored reporting experience.

Use HubSpot Service Hub to provide seamless, fast, and delightful customer service. The support team faced spiking ticket volumes, numerous new customer accounts, and the need to shift to remote work. Sendcloud is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) company that allows users to generate packing slips and labels to help online retailers streamline their shipping process. Businesses should always consider a tool’s TCO before committing to a purchase. Many software vendors aren’t upfront about the cost of using their products, maintenance costs, or integration fees.

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. Behavior-based messaging allows you to customize every last detail of triggers and rules including–which channel sends the message, when it sends, where it sends, and who gets targeted. Sequence all channels–chat, web post, email, chatbot outreach, tour message, banner, push notification, or carousel–mixing and matching modes of outreach to fit campaign goals. Zendesk wins the collaboration tools category because of its easy-to-use side conversations feature. With Intercom workload management tools, administrators can ensure that incoming conversations, traffic, and workload are evenly distributed among team members. Zendesk wins the omnichannel capabilities category because it offers voice as a service, which we think is absolutely critical.

Zendesk vs. Intercom: Features comparison

It is also important to use 100% open-source because it builds trust and allows anyone to contribute and independently audit. Simply go to My Account → Domains → Aliases, click Add Alias (or) Edit Alias, and then click the checkbox to enable IMAP Storage. You can even have both IMAP storage and forwarding recipients enabled at the same time. As it is a two-way communication device, intercoms also allow the visitor to answer back to you. Honestly, I was really pleasantly surprised by how responsive the company is. I was able to get responses to virtually every question each time I was asking within a few hours, even considering the time zones.

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. It’s clear that both of these tools are designed for different use cases.

As Zendesk initially began as a help desk ticketing system, it’s no surprise that the platform makes tracking and managing customer inquiries seamless. Whatever people are using to communicate with each other, whether it be online or over the phone, they expect to also be able to talk to the businesses they use with those same tools and platforms. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. Among the many challenges facing businesses today is the pressing need to meet their customers where they are. 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. 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.

Prioritize the agent experience to maximize productivity and customer satisfaction while reducing employee turnover. However, if you’re looking for a streamlined, all-in-one messaging platform, there is no better option than Messagely. You don’t have to pay per contact on your database, and you there are many free features you can use.

Intercom is a customer messaging platform for sending both automated and live chat messages directly to the customer. Panoply’s Intercom integration makes it possible to load your data directly into your own data warehouse, without an ETL process in place or costly data infrastructure. One of the standout features of Intercom’s customer support is its chatbot functionality.

Intercom vs Zendesk: intro

The platform’s modules include chat support, call center solutions, help desk applications, and knowledge base, so you’ll cover all the bases of efficient customer services. Intercom is better for smaller companies that are looking for a simple and capable customer service platform. Instead, using it and setting it up is very easy, and very advanced chatbots and predictive tools are included to boost your customer service. Today, both companies offer a broad range of customer support features, making them both strong contenders in the market.

If your team is looking for a robust live chat option to engage website visitors, Olark is the perfect Intercom alternative for you. The bot feeds customers and employees the relevant articles upon making a query. This makes things faster for support teams to access information without bothering other users. 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. Both Intercom and Zendesk provide you with their own Operator bot, which immediately suggests relevant material to clients via the chat widget.

You’ll have to to grant us with your Zendesk login credentials to be able to carry out the export. These are required so that our service can reach data from your Zendesk. Our automated tool is consistently tested and upgraded to provide you with the desired results.

Zendesk would be a perfect option for businesses that are searching for a well-integrated support system. It offers a suite that compiles help desk, live chat, and knowledge base to their user base. This enables them to speed up the support process and build experiences that customers like. Zendesk provides a range of customer support options, including email, phone, and live chat support. They also offer a comprehensive knowledge base that includes articles, videos, and tutorials to help users get the most out of the platform. While the company is smaller than Zendesk, Intercom has earned a reputation for building high-quality customer service software.

Zendesk:

Intercom, of course, allows its customer support team to collaborate and communicate too, but overall, Zendesk wins this group. 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. 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. This article will compare Intercom vs Zendesk, outlining each tool’s features, ease-of-use, pricing and plans, pros and cons, and user-support options.

Setting up Intercom help centers is also very easy and intuitive, with no previous knowledge required. 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. Their chat widget looks and works great, and they invest a lot of effort to make it a modern, convenient customer communication tool. When it comes to which company is the better fit for your business, there’s no clear answer. It really depends on what features you need and what type of customer service strategy you plan to implement.

Both the platforms have the knowledge base feature, and in my opinion, both of them are becoming winners. Intercom and Zendesk offer competitive pricing plans with various features to suit different business needs. Businesses should carefully evaluate intercom vs. zendesk their requirements and choose the best method for their needs and budget. When choosing the right customer support tool, pricing is an essential factor to consider. In this section, we will compare the pricing structures of Intercom and Zendesk.

The API is well-documented and easy to use, making it a popular choice for companies that want to create their integrations. The answer, as with most things in life, is that it depends on your specific needs and ultimate goals. With Zendesk’s Answer Bot, relevant articles are automatically suggested to your customers, saving them time while they look for solutions. Again, Zendesk has surpassed the number of reviewers when compared to Intercom.

When they do respond, they’re usually unhelpful or want to immediately transfer you to the sales department. That being said the customer support for both Zendesk and Intercom is lacking. While both offer a wide number of integration options, Zendesk wins the top spot in this category. Whatever you think of Intercom’s design and general user experience, you can’t deny that it outperforms all of its competitors.

Contact Center of the Future: Empower Agents with AI…

When comparing the automation and AI features of Zendesk and Intercom, both platforms come with unique strengths and weaknesses. You can contact the sales team if you’re just looking around, but you will not receive decent customer support unless you buy their service. Here is a Zendesk vs. Intercom based on the customer support offered by these brands. Respond to all conversations across different messaging platforms in one place and avoid juggling between dozens of tabs. Collaborate with your teammates by easily assigning the right rep to best handle a customer query.

AI and ML make customer service functionalities like chatbots, sentiment analysis, ticket creation, and workflow automation possible. All these features are necessary for operational efficiency and help agents deliver fast, personalized customer experiences. Users build chatbots to automatically route customer conversations and streamline customer support processes. The application features a dedicated knowledge base or user community to resolve customer issues. Additionally, Zoho Desk’s mobile app allows agents to manage customer requests anytime, anywhere. The application, which has similar features to Intercom, has more economical plans.

This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data. We hope this list has provided you with a better grasp of each platform and its features. Remember that there is no one-size-fits-all solution, and the optimal platform for you will be determined by your individual demands. Intercom also does not offer a free trial period for users to examine the software prior to joining up for their services. Many users complain that Intercom’s help is unavailable the majority of the time, forcing them to repeatedly ask the same question to a bot.

This is not a huge difference; however, it does indicate that customers are generally more satisfied with Intercom’s offerings than Zendesk’s. Zendesk is a much larger company than Intercom; it has over 170,000 customers, while Intercom has over 25,000. While this may seem like a positive for Zendesk, it’s important to consider that a larger company may not be as agile or responsive to customer needs as a smaller company. How to set up a regular sync of all public articles from your Zendesk Guide Help Center into Intercom. Other email services advertise as open-source, but they do not release the source code to their back-end.

Zendesk is a customer service software offering a comprehensive solution for managing customer interactions. It integrates customer support, sales, and marketing communications, aiming to improve client relationships. Known for its scalability, Zendesk is suitable for various business sizes, from startups to large corporations. Zendesk also offers digital support during business hours, and their website has a chatbot.

Intercom, on the other hand, lacks key ticketing features that are critical for large firms with a high volume of customer assistance. Zendesk’s Suite Team plan (the cheapest plan) costs $49 per user per month. You get multiple support channels at no extra cost with over 1000 APIs and integrations. They also offer several other features such as pre-defined responses, custom rules, and customizable online forms.

Intercom vs Zendesk Comparison (

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. I tested both options (using Zendesk’s Suite Professional trial and Intercom’s Support trial) and found clearly defined differences between the two.

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. But it’s designed so well that you really enjoy staying in their inbox and communicating with clients. Zendesk also has an Answer Bot, which instantly takes your knowledge base game to the next level. It can automatically suggest relevant articles for agents during business hours to share with clients, reducing your support agents’ workload.

With all accounted for, it seems that Zendesk still has a number of user interface issues. It will allow you to leverage some Intercom capabilities while keeping your account at the time-tested platform. What can be really inconvenient about Zendesk is how their tools integrate with each other when you need to use them simultaneously. Well, I must admit, the tool is gradually transforming from a platform for communicating with users to a tool that helps you automate every aspect of your routine.

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. 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. Zendesk is a ticketing system before anything else, and its ticketing functionality is overwhelming in the best possible way.

They have offices all around the world including countries such as Mexico City, Tokyo, New York, Paris, Singapore, São Paulo, London, and Dublin. In this article, we’ll compare Zendesk vs Intercom to find out which is the right customer support tool for you. Test any of HelpCrunch pricing plans for free for 14 days and see our tools in action right away. So yeah, all the features talk actually brings us to the most sacred question — the question of pricing. You’d probably want to know how much it costs to get each of the platforms for your business, so let’s talk money now.

Intercom also does mobile carousels to help please the eye with fresh designs. Further, if companies plan to create multi-channel campaigns, Intercom makes a great fit. However, customers should keep in mind that Intercom does not offer voice. Zendesk is billed more as a customer support and ticketing solution, while Intercom includes more native CRM functionality.

Desku provides a user-friendly platform with robust features that enable easy transition during the migration from other support systems. When choosing a customer support tool, it’s essential to consider what other users have to say about their experience with the platform. Intercom and Zendesk offer integration capabilities to help businesses streamline their workflow and improve customer support. In this section, we will take a closer look at the integration capabilities of both platforms. When deciding between Intercom and Zendesk, businesses should consider their specific needs and goals. For those with a complicated customer support process, Zendesk may be the better option.

All plans come with a 7-day free trial, and no credit card is required to sign up for the trial. With only the Enterprise tier offering round-the-clock email, phone, and chat help, Zendesk support is sharply separated by tiers. Although the Intercom chat window claims that their team responds within a few hours, user reviews have stated that they had to wait for a few days. Intercom is the clear victor in terms of user experience, leaving all of its competitors in the dust. 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.

Multilingual content and other advanced features come with a $49 price per agent per month. Zendesk, unlike Intercom, is a more affordable and predictable customer service platform. You can always count on it if you need a reliable customer support platform to process tickets, support users, and get advanced reporting. Zendesk also offers various integrations with third-party tools, including CRMs, marketing automation platforms, and analytics tools. Some of the popular integrations include Salesforce, HubSpot, Marketo, and Google Analytics.

Zendesk, on the other hand, has revamped its security since its security breach in 2016. Chat agents also get a comprehensive look at their entire customer’s journey, so they will have a better idea of what your customers need, without needing to ask many questions. Since Intercom doesn’t offer a CRM, its pricing is divided into basic messaging and messaging with automations. You can also contact Zendesk support 24/7, whereas Intercom support only has live agents during business hours.

It offers more support features and includes more advanced analytics and reports. Whenever new features are released (which in some companies happens daily), more data needs labelling and testing is required. Customer support agents may only tag a support ticket with one or two general topics. Other issues mentioned by the customer may be omitted and nuances are lost. Manual tagging is also subjective as agents may interpret the content of tickets differently.

Overall, Zendesk empowers businesses to deliver exceptional customer support experiences across channels, making it a popular choice for enhancing support operations. You can construct an omnichannel suite by combining productivity, e-commerce, CRM, analytics, social media, and other applications. Having more connectors accessible gives organizations the flexibility to select software that meets their specific needs.