Zendesk vs Intercom Comparison 2024: Which One Is Better?

From there, you can include FAQs, announcements, and article guides and then save them into pre-set lists for your customers to explore. Use them to quickly resolve customer question on, for example, how to use your product. You can then create linked tickets for any bug reports or issues that require further troubleshooting by technical teams.

It is favored by customer support, helpdesk, IT service management, and contact center teams. Intercom is great at making it easy for businesses and their customers to talk to each other instantly and back and forth. With live chat, in-app messaging, and targeted messaging, among other features, the tool lets businesses talk to customers right away. People who work in fields like e-commerce or SaaS, where quick responses and personalised exchanges are very important, may benefit the most from this. Zendesk users, on the other hand, usually say good things about its powerful support system.

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.

There are even automations to help with things like SLAs, or service level agreements, to do things like send out notifications when headlights are due. Because of the app called Intercom Messenger, one can see that their focus is less on the voice and more on the text. This is fine, as not every customer support team wants to be so available on the phone. Email marketing, for example, is a big deal, but less so when it comes to customer service. Still, for either of these platforms to have some email marketing or other email functionality is common sense. The best help desks are also ticketing systems, which lets support reps create a support ticket out of issues that can then be tracked.

Intercom or Zendesk: Integrations and add-ons

The strength of Zendesk’s UI lies in its structured and comprehensive environment, adept at managing numerous customer interactions and integrating various channels seamlessly. However, compared to the more contemporary designs like Intercom’s, Zendesk’s UI may appear outdated, particularly in aspects such as chat widget and customization options. This could impact user experience and efficiency for new users grappling with its complexity​​​​​​. Both Zendesk and Intercom have AI capabilities that deserve special mention. Zendesk’s AI (Fin) helps with automated responses, ensuring your customers get quick answers.

Intercom’s role-based permissions allow administrators full control over each department’s and agent’s capabilities, and access to channels and information. 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.

At a glance: Zendesk vs. Intercom

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. These products range from customer communication tools to a fully-fledged CRM. Zendesk boasts incredibly robust sales capabilities and security features.

These features can add significant value for businesses aiming to implement more sophisticated support capabilities as they scale. On the other hand, Intercom brings a dynamic approach to customer support. Its suite of tools goes beyond traditional ticketing and focuses on customer engagement and messaging automation. From in-app chat to personalized autoresponders, Intercom provides a unified experience across multiple channels, creating a support ecosystem that nurtures and converts leads. The customer support platform starts at just $5 per agent per month, which is a very basic customer support tool.

• Premiere Zendesk plans have 24/7 proactive support with faster response times.
• Intercom also offers scalability within its pricing plans, enabling businesses to upgrade to higher tiers as their support needs grow.
• When you switch from Zendesk, you can also create dynamic macros to speed up your response time to common queries, like feature requests and bug reports.

On the other hand, if you need something that is more tailored to your customer base and is less expensive, then Intercom might be a better fit. Intercom is a customer relationship management (CRM) software company that provides a suite of tools for managing customer interactions. The company was founded in 2011 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California. Intercom’s products are used by over 25,000 customers, from small tech startups to large enterprises. What sets Zendesk apart is its user-friendly interface, customizable workflows, and scalability. It caters to a wide range of industries, particularly excelling in e-commerce, SaaS, technology, and telecommunications.

They have a 2-day SLA, no phone support, and the times I have had to work with them they have been incredibly difficult to work with. Very rarely do they understand the issue (mostly with Explore) that I am trying to communicate to them. The support documentation is incredibly lackluster, and it’s often impossible to know which guide to use as they have non-sensical terminology that makes even finding the appropriate guide very difficult. We hope this list has provided you with a better grasp of each platform and its features.

Compared to Zendesk and Intercom, Helpwise offers competitive and transparent pricing plans. 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. Overall, Zendesk empowers businesses to deliver exceptional customer support experiences across channels, making it a popular choice for enhancing support operations. The two essential things that Zendesk lacks in comparison to Intercom are in-app messages and email marketing tools.

In today’s hyper-competitive, hyper-connected globalized economy, customer experience has become a fundamental differentiator. As customers’ needs are constantly evolving, businesses must adapt and keep up to guarantee the best customer experience and satisfaction. Intercom works with any website or web-based product and aims to be your one-way stop for all of your customer communication needs. Here, we’ve outlined the support options that Intercom and Zendesk provide to companies using their platforms. Inside a ticket, the workspace center console displays the ticket’s conversation.

Intercom has a dark mode that I think many people will appreciate, and I wouldn’t say it’s lacking in any way. But I like that Zendesk just feels slightly cleaner, has easy online/away toggling, more visual customer journey notes, and a handy widget for exploring the knowledge base on the fly. Zendesk also packs some pretty potent tools into their platform, so you can empower your agents to do what they do with less repetition. Agents can use basic automation (like auto-closing tickets or setting auto-responses), apply list organization to stay on top of their tasks, or set up triggers to keep tickets moving automatically. 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.

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Intercom, of course, allows its customer support team to collaborate and communicate too, but overall, Zendesk wins this group. 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 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. Premiere Zendesk plans have 24/7 proactive support with faster response times. Other customer service add-ons with Zendesk include custom training and professional services. Today, both companies offer a broad range of customer support features, making them both strong contenders in the market.

Zendesk offers a free 30-day trial, after which customers will need to upgrade to one of their paid plans. Intercom is ideal for personalized messaging, while Zendesk offers robust ticket management and self-service options. In this article, we comprehensively do a comparison of Zendesk vs Intercom, examining their key features, benefits, and industry use cases. By exploring their distinct offerings, zendesk intercom we aim to assist businesses in making informed decisions when selecting a customer service platform. The cheapest plan for small businesses – Starter – costs $89 monthly, including 2 seats and 1,000 people reached/mo. 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 also offers a 14-day free trial, after which customers can upgrade to a paid plan or use the basic free plan. Unlike Zendesk, the prices for Intercom are based on the number of seats and contacts, with each plan tailored to each customer, meaning that the pricing can be quite flexible. This is especially helpful for smaller businesses that may not need a lot of features.

The primary function of Intercom’s mobile app is the business messenger suite, including personalized messaging, real-time support tools, push notifications, in-app messaging and emailing. Intercom also does mobile carousels to help please the eye with fresh designs. However, the right fit for your business will depend on your particular needs and budget. If you’re looking for a comprehensive solution with lots of features and integrations, then Zendesk would be a good choice.

Jira Service Management review 2024: for tracking project issues

Nevertheless, the platform’s support consistency can be a concern, and the unpredictable pricing structure might lead to increased costs for larger organizations. While both platforms have a significant presence in the industry, they cater to varying business requirements. Zendesk, with its extensive toolkit, is often preferred by businesses seeking an all-encompassing customer support solution. In addition to Intercom vs Zendesk, alternative helpdesk solutions are available in the market. ThriveDesk is a feature-rich helpdesk solution that offers a comprehensive set of tools to manage customer support effectively. Messagely’s pricing starts at just $29 per month, which includes live chat, targeted messages, shared inbox, mobile apps, and over 750 powerful integrations.

However, as Monese grew and eyed a European expansion, it became clear that the company needed to centralize data in a single solution that would scale along with them. As you can imagine, banking from anywhere requires a flexible, robust customer service experience. Which platform is “better” depends on the precise requirements and objectives that you have. When comparing the automation and AI features of Zendesk and Intercom, both platforms come with unique strengths and weaknesses.

With its integrated suite of applications, Intercom provides a comprehensive solution that caters to businesses seeking a unified ecosystem to manage customer interactions. This scalability ensures businesses can align their support infrastructure with their evolving requirements, ensuring a seamless customer experience. Intercom is the go-to solution for businesses seeking to elevate customer support and sales processes. With its user-friendly interface and advanced functionalities, Intercom offers a comprehensive suite of tools designed to effectively communicate and engage with customers. Intercom’s ticketing system and help desk SaaS is also pretty great, just not as amazing as Zendesk’s.

About Intercom

This gets you unlimited email addresses and email templates in both text form and HTML. Zendesk is quite famous for designing its platform to be intuitive and its tools to be quite simple to learn. This is aided by the fact that the look and feel of Zendesk’s user interface are neat and minimal, with few cluttering features. Test any of HelpCrunch pricing plans for free for 14 days and see our tools in action right away.

Zendesk’s chatbot, Answer Bot, automatically answers customer questions asynchronously in up to 40 languages–via any text-based channel. 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. Users with light access–such as knowledgeable agents and supervisors–can be added to tickets for browsing and feedback.

To select the ideal fit for your business, it is crucial to compare these industry giants and assess which aligns best with your specific requirements. There are many features to help bigger customer service teams collaborate more effectively — like private notes or a real-time view of who’s handling a given ticket at the moment, etc. At the same time, the vendor offers powerful reporting capabilities to help you grow and improve your business. Intercom has a wider range of uses out of the box than Zendesk, though by adding Zendesk Sell, you could more than make up for it. Both options are well designed, easy to use, and share some pretty key functionality like behavioral triggers and omnichannel-ality (omnichannel-centricity?). But with perks like more advanced chatbots, automation, and lead management capabilities, Intercom could have an edge for many users.

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. This makes it an excellent choice if you want to engage with support and potential and existing customers in real time. Messagely’s chatbots are powerful tools for qualifying and converting leads while your team is otherwise occupied or away. With chatbots, you can generate leads to hand over to your sales team and solve common customer queries without the need of a customer service representative behind a keyboard.

The program is simple to use and includes all of the necessary capabilities for providing good customer service. A customer service department is only as good as its support team members, and these highly-prized employees need to rely on one another. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. Tools that allow support agents to communicate and collaborate are important aspect of customer service software. Zendesk has an app available for both Android and iOS, which makes it easy to stay connected with customers while on the go. The app includes features like push notifications and real-time customer engagement — so businesses can respond quickly to customer inquiries.

This section is crucial for creating automated workflows and can be used to save important information from the API response to a specific attribute, making it easily accessible in future interactions. G2 ranks Intercom higher than Zendesk for ease of setup, and support quality—so you can expect a smooth transition, effortless onboarding, and continuous success. Whether you’re starting fresh with Intercom or migrating from Zendesk, set up is quick and easy. Find reporting for all articles (including synced articles) in the Articles report. How to set up a regular sync of all public articles from your Zendesk Guide Help Center into Intercom.

While Intercom lacks some common customer-service channels like voice calling and video conferencing, it supports other unique features that transfer across channels. The Agent Workspace highlights tickets based on the issue and urgency, assigning each one a priority–agents can also tag tickets based on recency, hold-vs-open status, and urgency. The offers that appear on the website are from software companies from which CRM.org receives compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site (including, for example, the order in which they appear). 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.

In an omnichannel contact center, agents can manage customer interactions across channels, no matter which channel a customer uses to contact the company. Zendesk for Service transforms customer queries and conversations from all channels–call, web chat, tweet, text, or email–into tickets in the Agent Workspace. 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. Intercom and Zendesk are two of the most popular customer service platforms, each with its own set of distinct advantages and drawbacks. There are pre-built workflows to help with things like ticket sharing, as well as conversation routing based on metrics like agent skill set or availability.

Create personalized messages for specific customer segments, driving engagement and satisfaction. 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. Zendesk is primarily a ticketing system, and its ticketing capability is overwhelming in the best conceivable manner. All client contacts, whether via phone, chat, email, social media, or any other channel, land in one dashboard, where your agents can quickly and efficiently resolve them.

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. However, it is possible Intercom’s support is superior at the premium level. In a nutshell, none of the customer support software companies provide decent assistance for users.

First, you can only talk to the support team if you are a registered user. But keep in mind that Zendesk is viewed more as a support and ticketing solution, while Intercom is CRM functionality-oriented. Which means it’s rather a customer relationship management platform than anything else. Intercom is more for improving sales cycle and customer relationships, while Zendesk has everything a customer support representative can dream about, but it does lack wide email functionality. On the other hand, it provides call center functionalities, unlike Intercom. Overall, I actually liked Zendesk’s user experience better than Intercom’s in terms of its messaging dashboard.

You can opt for code via JavaScript or Rails or even integrate directly with the likes of Google Tag Manager, WordPress, or Shopify. Zendesk’s help center tools should also come in handy for helping customers help themselves—something Zendesk claims eight out of 10 customers would rather do than contact support. To that end, you can import themes or apply your own custom themes to brand your help center the way you want it.