Zendesk vs Intercom: the ultimate comparison by Ana Khlystova HelpCrunch

And considering that its tools (including live chat options) are so easy to use, it’s probably going to be easier for a small business to get integrated and set up. Zendesk is a great option for large companies or companies that are looking for a very strong sales and customer service platform. It offers more support features and includes more advanced analytics and reports. 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.

As the name suggests, it’s a more sales-oriented solution with robust contact and deal management tools as well. Powered by AI, Intercom’s Fin chatbot is purportedly capable of solving 50% of all queries autonomously — in multiple languages. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. At the same time, Fin AI Copilot background support to agents, acting as a personal, real-time AI assistant for dealing with inquiries.

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. On practice, I can’t promise you anything 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).

It’s designed so well that you really enjoy staying in their inbox and communicating with clients. Founded in 2007, Zendesk started as a ticketing tool for customer success teams. Later, they started adding all kinds of other features, like live chat for customer conversations. Zendesk helps you manage and update your leads, analyze your pipeline, and create customizable reports on the go with our mobile CRM app. Plus, visit tagging and geolocation features allow your sales team to effortlessly log in-person sales visits, letting you monitor all your sales interactions in one centralized place. Pipedrive provides a mobile app to manage sales leads, view your calendar, and access your to-do list.

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. 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.

What is the difference between Zendesk and Intercom?

It’s much easier if you decide to go with the Zendesk Suite, which includes Support, Chat, Talk, and Guide tools. There are two options there — Professional for $109 or Enterprise for $179 if you pay monthly. The difference between the two is that the Professional subscription lacks some things like chat widget unbranding, custom agent roles, multiple help centers, etc.

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. 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. 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.

And while many other chatbots take forever to set up, you can set up your first chatbot in under five minutes. You can also follow up with customers after they have left the chat and qualify them based on your answers. Since Intercom doesn’t offer a CRM, its pricing is divided into basic messaging and messaging with automations. Since Intercom is so intuitive, the time you’ll need to spend training new users on how to interact with the platform is greatly reduced. Users also point out that it can take a couple of hours to get used to the flow of tickets, which doesn’t happen in CRM, and they aren’t pleased with the product’s downtime. Then, you can begin filling in details such as your account’s name and icon and your agents’ profiles and security features.

Even better, it’s the most cost-effective, lightweight, and speedy live chat solution available for Shopify business owners. 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. Gain valuable insights with Intercom’s analytics and reporting capabilities. Track key metrics, measure campaign success, and optimize customer engagement strategies. Seamlessly integrate Intercom with popular third-party tools and platforms, centralizing customer data and improving workflow efficiency.

Intercom’s user-friendly interface and easy integration with other tools make it a popular choice for many businesses. 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. Founded in 2007, Zendesk started off as a ticketing tool for customer support teams.

Intercom’s integration with these tools allows businesses to track customer interactions, personalize messaging, and automate workflows. In summary, Intercom and Zendesk are powerful customer support tools offering various features to help businesses communicate with their customers effectively. While Intercom has a more modern and user-friendly interface, Zendesk has a broader range of features and integrations. Ultimately, the choice between Intercom and Zendesk will depend on the specific needs of your business. Zendesk’s pricing structure provides increasing levels of features and capabilities as businesses move up the tiers. This scalability allows organizations to adapt their support operations to their expanding customer base.

CoinJar is one of the longest-running cryptocurrency exchanges in the world. To help keep up with its growing customer base, CoinJar turned to Zendesk for a user-friendly and easily scalable solution after testing other CRMs, including Pipedrive and HubSpot. Leveraging the sequencing and bulk email features of the Zendesk sales CRM, CoinJar increased its visibility and productivity at scale. Zendesk supports sales team productivity by syncing with your email to provide valuable data, like when your prospect opens, clicks, or replies to your email. You can also use Zendesk to automatically track and record sales calls, allowing you to focus your full attention on your customer rather than taking notes.

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. The right sales CRM can help your team close more deals and boost your business. If that’s not detailed enough, then surely their visitor browsing details will leave you surprised. This enables your operators to understand visitor intent faster and provide them with a personalized experience. And considering how appropriate Zendesk is for larger companies, there’s a good chance you may need to take them up on that. It means that Zendesk’s prices are slightly easier to figure out than Intercom’s.

If you thought Zendesk’s pricing was confusing, let me introduce you to Intercom’s pricing. It’s virtually impossible to predict what you’re going to pay for Intercom at end of the day. 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.

Moreover, it lacks native content redaction for sensitive information. Luca Micheli is a serial tech entrepreneur with one exited company and a passion for bootstrap digital projects. He’s passionate about helping companies to succeed with marketing and business development tips. Customerly’s reporting tools are built on the principle that you can’t improve what you can’t measure. What’s more, we support live video support for moments when your customers need in-depth guidance. However, for more advanced CRM needs like lead management and sales forecasting, Intercom may not make the cut, unfortunately.

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Intercom lets businesses send their customers targeted in-app messages. On one hand, Zendesk offers a great many features, way more than Intercom, but it lacks in-app messenger and email marketing tools. On the other hand, Intercom has all its (fewer) tools and features integrated with each other way better, which makes your experience with the tool as smooth as silk. ThriveDesk is a help desk software tailor-made for businesses seeking extensive features and a powerful yet simple live chat assistant.

Lastly, Intercom offers an academy that offers concise courses to help users make the most out of their Intercom experience. 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.

Before you make your choice, check out Messagely’s features and compare them to discover which platform is best for you. This way, your clients will never have to repeat themselves or get frustrated because their new representative doesn’t know their background. You don’t have to pay per contact on your database, and you there are many free features you can use.

Additionally, Zendesk’s customizable dashboards and reporting features provide valuable insights into customer support performance. Intercom is a customer messaging platform that enables businesses to engage with customers through personalized and real-time communication. Intercom offers a range of customer support options, including email, phone, and live chat support. In addition, they provide a comprehensive knowledge base that includes articles, videos, and tutorials to help users get the most out of the platform. Intercom and Zendesk offer robust customer support options, including email, phone, and live chat support, comprehensive knowledge bases, and community forums.

These include ticketing, chatbots, and automation capabilities, to name just a few.Here’s a side-by-side comparison to help you identify the strengths and weaknesses of each platform. Ultimately, it’s important to consider what features each platform offers before making a decision, as well as their pricing options and customer support policies. 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. Today, both companies offer a broad range of customer support features, making them both strong contenders in the market.

Intercom’s chatbot functionality is a standout feature, while Zendesk’s ticketing system can help resolve support issues on time. Both software solutions offer core customer service features like live chat for sales, help desk management capabilities, and customer self-service options like a knowledge base. They’re also known for their user-friendly interfaces and reliable support team. On the contrary, Intercom’s pricing is far less predictable and can cost hundreds/thousands of dollars per month. But this solution wins because it’s an all-in-one tool with a modern live chat widget, allowing you to improve your customer experiences easily.

This live chat software provider also enables your business to send proactive chat messages to customers and engage effectively in real-time. This is one of the best ways to qualify high-quality leads for your business and improve your chances of closing a sale faster. Zendesk is another popular customer service, support, and sales platform that enables clients to connect and engage with their customers in seconds. Just like Intercom, Zendesk can also integrate with multiple messaging platforms and ensure that your business never misses out on a support opportunity.

Furthermore, Intercom offers advanced automation features such as custom inbox rules, targeted messaging, and dynamic triggers based on customer segments. The Zendesk Marketplace offers over 1,500 no-code apps and integrations. Powered by Explore, Zendesk’s reporting capabilities are pretty impressive. Right out of the gate, you’ve got dozens of pre-set report options on everything from satisfaction ratings and time in status to abandoned calls and Answer Bot resolutions. You can even save custom dashboards for a more tailored reporting experience.

Zendesk VS. Intercom for Customer Support: Pricing

There are many powerful integrations included, such as Salesforce, HubSpot, Mailchimp, Slack, and Zapier. Finally, you’ll have to choose your reporting preferences including details about what you’ll be tracking and how often you want to be reported of changes. In terms of pricing, Intercom is considered one of the hardest on your pocket. Zendesk can be more flexible and predictable in this area as you can buy different tools separately (or even use their limited versions for free). Though Intercom chat window says that their team typically replies in a few hours, I received the answer in a couple of minutes.

As time passes by, the line between Intercom and Zendesk becomes more blurred as they try to keep up with one another and implement new features, services, and pricing policies. At the end of the day, there is not a universally better option, just one that suits your needs and preferences the most. In addition, some of the services Zendesk offers have a free plan (find them below in the tables).

• Experience targeted communication with Intercom’s automation and segmentation features.
• It has a very intuitive design that goes far beyond its platform and into its articles, product guides, and even its illustrations.
• This method helps offer more personalized support as well as get faster response and resolution times.
• To determine which one takes the cake, let’s dive into a feature comparison of Pipedrive vs. Zendesk.

They’ve been rated as one of the easy live chat solutions with more integrated options. Just like Intercom, Zendesk’s customer service is quite disappointing. The only relief is that they do reach out to customers, but it gets too late.

This is aided by the fact that the look and feel of Zendesk’s user interface are neat and minimal, with few cluttering features. When it comes to self-service portals for things like knowledgebases, Intercom has a useful set of resources. Intercom also has a community forum where users can help one another with questions and solutions. For Intercom’s pricing plan, on the other hand, there is much less information on their website.

What’s really nice about this is that even within a ticket, you can switch between communication modes without changing views. So if an agent needs to switch from chat to phone to email (or vice versa) with a customer, it’s all on the same ticketing page. There’s even on-the-spot translation built right in, which is extremely helpful.

You can access detailed customer data at a glance while chatting, enabling you to make informed decisions in real time. The customer journey timeline provides a clear view of customer activities, helping you understand behaviors and tailor your responses accordingly. If you want to get to the nitty-gritty of your customer service team’s performance, Zendesk is the way to go.

Zendesk meets global security and privacy compliance standards and includes features like single sign-on (SSO) to help provide protection against cyberattacks and keep your data safe. A sales CRM should also provide you with the benefits of pipeline management software. In the world of business, customer relationships are a valuable asset. Many businesses turn to customer relationship management (CRM) software to help improve customer relations and assist in sales. They also have an integrated capability where you see everything related to the one customer in one spot – all their interactions with you, and can move the customer through your custom stages.

Zendesk, on the other hand, offers tiered pricing plans based on the number of agents, making it a better choice for larger enterprises. It’s important to consider your budget and the specific needs of your business when evaluating the pricing options. In today’s digital world, providing exceptional customer support is crucial for businesses to stand out from their competitors.

If your business is established and you need to cut down on those ticket resolution times, Zendesk may be worth it. Intercom and Zendesk offer competitive pricing plans with various features to suit different business needs. Businesses should carefully evaluate their requirements and choose the best method for their needs and budget. Intercom’s user interface is known for being modern, intuitive, and user-friendly.

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Overall, Zendesk has a slight edge over Intercom when it comes to ticketing capabilities. It provides a variety of customer service automation features like auto-closing tickets, setting auto-responses, and creating chat triggers to keep tickets moving automatically. The highlight of Zendesk is its help desk ticketing system, which brings several customer communication channels to one location. The software allows agents to switch between tickets seamlessly, leading to better customer satisfaction.

With Intercom, you can keep track of your customers and what they do on your website in real time. Like Zendesk, Intercom allows you to chat with online visitors and assist with their issues. 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. 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. If you are looking for a comprehensive customer support solution with a wide range of features, Zendesk is a good option.

Triggers should prove especially useful for agents, allowing them to do things like automate notifications for actions like ticket assignments, ticket closing/reopening, or new ticket creation. Their template triggers are fairly limited with only seven options, but they do enable users to create new custom triggers, which can be a game-changer for agents with more complex workflows. 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.

Master Tidio with in-depth guides and uncover real-world success stories in our case studies. Discover the blueprint for exceptional customer experiences and unlock new pathways for business success. It also provides seamless navigation between a unified inbox, teams, and customer interactions, while putting all the most important information right at your fingertips. This makes it easy for teams to prioritize tasks, stay aligned, and deliver superior service.

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. In this article, we’ll compare Zendesk vs Intercom to find out which is the right customer support tool for you. Just as Zendesk, Intercom also offers its own Operator bot which will automatically suggest relevant articles to customers who ask for help. Both Zendesk and Intercom offer varying flavors when it comes to curating the whole customer support experience. Easily reply to customer conversations and manage workload in a smart & automated way.

It works seamlessly with over 1,000 business tools, like Salesforce, Slack, and Shopify. With its features and pricing, Zendesk is geared toward businesses that full in the range from mid-sized to enterprise-level. Intercom is an all-in-one solution, and compared to Zendesk, Intercom has Chat GPT a less intuitive design and can be complicated for new users to learn. It also offers a confusing pricing structure and fewer integrations, making it less scalable and cost-effective. Customer expectations are already high, but with the rise of AI, customers are expecting even more.

When selecting a sales CRM, you’ll want to consider its total cost of ownership (TCO). Zendesk has a low TCO because it has no hidden costs and can be easily set up without needing developers or third-party help, saving you time and money. Alternatively, Pipedrive users should prepare to pay more for even simple CRM features like email tracking, whereas email tracking is available for all Zendesk Sell plans.

While Zendesk features are plenty, someone using it for the first time can find it overwhelming. With only the Enterprise tier offering round-the-clock email, phone, and chat help, Zendesk support is sharply separated by tiers. Many use cases call for intercom or zendesk different approaches, and Zendesk and Intercom are but two software solutions for each case. One more thing to add, there are ways to integrate Intercom to Zendesk. Visit either of their app marketplaces and look up the Intercom Zendesk integration.

While both Zendesk and Intercom offer strong ticketing systems, they differ in the depth of automation capabilities. However, after patting yourself on the back, you now realize you’re faced with https://chat.openai.com/ the daunting task of choosing between the two. With so many features to consider, not to mention pricing, user experience, and scalability, we don’t blame you if you feel your head spinning.

Zendesk provides its partners with quality support and educational resources, including online training and certification programs, helping turn any salesperson into a Zendesk expert. Conversely, some Pipedrive users have issues working with Pipedrive, with users describing their support and onboarding experiences as slow and limited. Zendesk has received a rating of 4.4 out of 5 from 2,693 reviewers.

Hit the ground running – Master Tidio quickly with our extensive resource library. Learn about features, customize your experience, and find out how to set up integrations and use our apps. Provide a clear path for customer questions to improve the shopping experience you offer. If you require a robust helpdesk with powerful ticketing and reporting features, Zendesk is the better choice, particularly for complex support queries.