Zendesk vs Intercom: An Honest Comparison in 2024

While no area of concern really stands out, there are some complaints about the company’s billing practices. For standard reporting like response times, leads generated by source, bot performance, messages sent, and email deliverability, you’ll easily find all the metrics you need. Beyond that, you can create custom reports that combine all of the stats listed above (and many more) and present them as counts, columns, lines, or tables. You can test any of HelpCrunch’s pricing plans for free for 14 days and see our tools in action immediately. To sum up this Intercom vs Zendesk battle, the latter is a great support-oriented tool that will be a good choice for big teams with various departments.

It suggests potential investment options like a low-risk investment fund or a term deposit, tailored to their unique cases. For example, imagine Ally, a makeup enthusiast, visits an offline beauty store to check out the newly launched lip kit line. You’re choosing that brand because of what it stands for — maybe it’s sustainability, quality, or community. But if the CX feels, that’s supposed to be holistic, feels broken, at every twist and turn during your journey with the brand, you might feel let down.

Intercom also offers an API enabling businesses to build custom integrations with their tools. The API is well-documented and easy to use, making it a popular choice for companies zendesk vs intercom that want to create their integrations. Intercom and Zendesk offer integration capabilities to help businesses streamline their workflow and improve customer support.

Features:

Pipedrive also has security measures baked into its solution, offering SSO for its users. Whether it’s the platform’s security or response needed in times of crisis, Sprinklr’s Trust Center ensures you’re ever ready to combat any mishaps with stealth and precision. With ThriveDesk, you can supercharge your website’s growth and streamline customer interactions like never before. Also, all of Hiver’s pricing plans come with a 7-day free trial, and no credit card is required to sign up for the trial. To sum up, if you are looking for a helpdesk with no advanced AI capabilities, you can choose Intercom.

• However, the right fit for your business will depend on your particular needs and budget.
• So, bringing CX into the fold with your brand’s core promise is downright essential, not just nice-to-have.
• Zendesk Sunshine is a separate feature set that focuses on unified customer views.
• Customer experience will be no exception, and AI models that are purpose-built for CX lead to better results at scale.
• Conversely, Intercom has a shared inbox tool that routes conversations from every channel, including live chat, email, SMS, and more, into one place.
• Intercom actively enhances its analytics capabilities by leveraging AI to forecast customer behavior.

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. Instead, they offer a product demo when prospects reach out to learn more about their pricing structure. It enables them to engage with visitors who are genuinely interested in their services.

Can I use both Zendesk and Intercom?

For example, you can set a sales trigger to automatically change the owner of a deal based on the specific conditions you select. That way, your sales team won’t have to worry about manually updating these changes as they work through a deal. Many businesses turn to customer relationship management (CRM) software to help improve customer relations and assist in sales. Freshdesk, by Freshworks Inc. gathers requests from email, web, phone, chat, messaging and social media into a unified ticketing system, making it easy to manage interactions across channels.

If agents want to offer their customers a great experience, they can spend an additional $50 to have the AI add-on. These weaknesses are not as significant as the features and functionalities Zendesk offers its users. 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. Zendesk TCO is lower than Intercom due to its ability to scale, which does not require additional cost to update the software for a growing business. It also has a transparent pricing model so businesses know the price they will incur.

At the same time, the vendor offers powerful reporting capabilities to help you grow and improve your business. Zendesk boasts robust reporting and analytics tools, plus a dedicated workforce management system. With custom correlation and attribution, you can dive deep into the root cause behind your metrics. We also provide real-time and historical reporting dashboards so you can take action at the moment and learn from past trends. Meanwhile, our WFM software enables businesses to analyze employee metrics and performance, helping them identify improvements, implement strategies, and set long-term goals. 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.

While its integrations are not as far-reaching as Zendesk’s, it seamlessly works with modern communication and business tools, like WhatsApp and the most prominent CRMS. Not to mention marketing and sales tools, like Salesforce, Hubspot, and Google Analytics. Having only appeared in 2011, Intercom lacks a few years of experience on Zendesk. It also made its name as a messaging-first platform for fostering personalized conversational experiences for customers. However, after patting yourself on the back, you now realize you’re faced with the daunting task of choosing between the two.

Lastly, the tool is easy to set up and implement, meaning no additional knowledge or expertise makes the businesses incur additional costs. The help center in Intercom is also user-friendly, enabling agents to access content creation easily. It does help you organize and create content using efficient tools, but Zendesk is more suitable if you want a fully branded customer-centric experience.

With Zendesk, you get next-level AI-powered support software that’s intuitively designed, scalable, and cost-effective. Compare Zendesk vs. Intercom and future-proof your business with reliable, easy-to-use software. Intercom’s user interface is also quite straightforward and easy to understand; it includes a range of features such as live chat, messaging campaigns, and automation workflows. Additionally, the platform allows for customizations such as customized user flows and onboarding experiences. With more folks working from their couches, remote support is stepping up.

After this live chat software comparison, you’ll get a better picture of what’s better for your business. Customer support and security are vital aspects to consider when evaluating helpdesk solutions like Zendesk and Intercom. Let’s examine and compare how each platform addresses these crucial areas to ensure effective support operations and data protection.

Chat features are integral to modern business communication, enabling real-time customer interaction and team collaboration. Intercom is more for improving sales cycles and customer relationships, while Zendesk, an excellent Intercom alternative, has everything a customer support representative can dream about. Intercom is an all-in-one solution, and compared to Zendesk, Intercom has 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.

It is quite the all-rounder as it even has a help center and ticketing system that completes its omnichannel support cycle. 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. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. 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.

The software is known for its agile APIs and proven custom integration references. This helps the service teams connect to applications like Shopify, Jira, Salesforce, Microsoft Teams, Slack, etc., all through Zendesk’s service platform. 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. Aura AI transcends the limits of traditional chatbots that typically struggle with anything but the simplest user queries. Instead, Aura AI continuously learns from your knowledge base and canned responses, growing and learning — just like a real-life agent.

What is automated customer service? A guide to success

You can configure it to assign tickets using various methods, such as skills, load balancing, and round-robin to ensure efficient handling. In the process, it streamlines collaboration between team members as well as a unified interface to manage all help resources. Currently based in Albuquerque, NM, Bryce Emley holds an MFA in Creative Writing from NC State and nearly a decade of writing and editing experience.

Zendesk Sunshine is a separate feature set that focuses on unified customer views. Your typical Zendesk review will often praise the platform’s simplicity and affordability, as well as its constant updates and rolling out of new features, like Zendesk Sunshine. For example, you can read in many Zendesk Sell reviews how adding sales tools benefits Zendesk Support users.

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. Overall, Zendesk empowers businesses to deliver exceptional customer support experiences across channels, making it a popular choice for enhancing support operations. Its sales CRM software starts at $19 per month per user, but you’ll have to pay $49 to get Zapier integrations and $99 for Hubspot integrations. Finally, you can pay $199 per month per user for unlimited sales pipelines and advanced reporting along with other features. The Zendesk marketplace hosts over 1,500 third-party apps and integrations.

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. Finding the right customer experience software is nothing short of hitting the jackpot.

Discover customer and product issues with instant replays, in-app cobrowsing, and console logs. Now that we’ve covered a bit of background on both Zendesk and Intercom, let’s dive into the features each platform offers. At the end of the day, the best sales CRM delivers on the features that matter most to you and your business. To determine which one takes the cake, let’s dive into a feature comparison of Pipedrive vs. Zendesk.

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. It goes without saying that you can generate custom reports to hone in on particular areas of interest. Whether you’re into traditional bar charts, pie charts, treemaps, word clouds, or any other type of visualization, Zendesk is a data “nerd’s” dream. It makes sure that you don’t miss a single inquiry by queuing tickets for agent handling.

Rest assured, ThriveDesk’s lightweight design and speed won’t impact the performance of your Wix-powered eCommerce website. The optimized agent interface ensures rapid responses for maximum efficiency, all while keeping your website running smoothly. In terms of G2 ratings, Zendesk and Intercom are both well-rated platforms. It can team up with tools like Salesforce and Slack, so everything runs smoothly. Starting at just $19/user/month, Hiver is a more affordable solution that doesn’t compromise on essential helpdesk functionalities.

Feature Comparison

Intercom, on the other hand, offers more advanced automation features than Zendesk. Its automation tools help companies see automated responses and triggers based on the customer journey and response time. Intercom’s automation features enable businesses to deliver a personalized experience to customers and scale their customer support function effectively.

Intercom on the other hand lacks many ticketing functionality that can be essential for big companies with a huge customer support load. 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. As mentioned before, the bot builder is a visual drag-and-drop system that requires no coding knowledge; this is also how other basic workflows are designed. The more expensive Intercom plans offer AI-powered content cues, triage, and conversation insights.

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. As more organizations adopt AI, it will be critical to choose a data model that aligns with how your business operates. Customer experience will be no exception, and AI models that are purpose-built for CX lead to better results at scale. Zendesk provides its partners with quality support and educational resources, including online training and certification programs, helping turn any salesperson into a Zendesk expert.

Intercom’s messaging system enables real-time interactions through various channels, including chat, email, and in-app messages. Connect with customers wherever they are for timely assistance and personalized experiences. Ultimately, the choice between Zendesk and Intercom depends on your business needs. If you need a solution that can rapidly scale and offer strong self-service features, Zendesk may be the best fit. However, if your focus is on creating a seamless, automated customer service experience with proactive engagement, Intercom could be the ideal choice. It’s characterized by a clear, organized layout with a strong focus on ticket management.

Let’s evaluate the user experience and interface of both Zendesk and Intercom, considering factors such as ease of navigation, customization options, and overall intuitiveness. We will also consider customer feedback and reviews to provide insights into the usability of each platform. 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. This makes it an excellent choice if you want to engage with support and potential and existing customers in real time.

Integrating AI in the help center helps agents find answers to customer inquiries, providing a seamless customer experience. Zendesk’s AI offers automated responses to customer inquiries, increasing the team’s productivity, as they can spend time on the most crucial things. Zendesk allows businesses to group their resources in the help center, providing customers with self-service personalized support. The platform has various customization options, allowing businesses personalized experiences according to their branding. Help Center in Zendesk also will enable businesses to organize their tutorials, articles, and FAQs, making it convenient for customer to find solutions to their queries. 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.

You can design them once and seamlessly scale across different communities and languages. Plus, you never have to start from scratch — just tweak existing workflows to suit new needs or languages, saving time and effort. When it comes to choosing a help desk software, security is a top priority. Intercom and Zendesk have implemented various security measures to protect their clients’ data. 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.

Before choosing the customer support software, it is crucial to consider the size of the business. Some software only works best for startups, while others have offerings only for large enterprises. Let us look at the type and size of business for which Zednesk and Intercom are suitable. HubSpot helps seamlessly integrate customer service tools that you and your team already leverage. Messagely’s pricing starts at just $29 per month, which includes live chat, targeted messages, shared inbox, mobile apps, and over 750 powerful integrations.

It has a more sophisticated user interface and a wide range of features, such as an in-app messenger, an email marketing tool, and an AI-powered chatbot. At the same time, Zendesk looks slightly outdated and can’t offer some features. Zendesk is an AI-powered platform designed to optimize customer experience across all touchpoints. It enables rapid setup and seamless scaling, making it adaptable to evolving needs. Zendesk’s AI enhances customer interactions by providing real-time insights and automating workflows.

On the other hand, Pipedrive doesn’t offer a customer service solution, limiting users to third-party integrations. Customer experience software is a suite of tools designed to manage and improve how customers interact https://chat.openai.com/ with a company throughout their entire journey. This software captures interactions across multiple channels — whether it’s via email, phone, web, or in-person — to provide a unified view of the customer.

Although Intercom offers an omnichannel messaging dashboard, it has slightly less functionality than Zendesk. 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. Some aspects give an edge or create differentiation in the operations of both software, which users may oversee while making a choice. We will discuss these differentiating factors to help you make the right choice for your business and help it excel in offering extraordinary customer service.

One of the standout features of Intercom’s user interface is the ability to view customer conversations in a single thread, regardless of the channel they were initiated on. This makes it easy to see the full context of a customer’s interactions with a business, which can lead to more personalized and practical support. 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.

CX tools now help you set up your cloud contact center so your intelligent virtual agents and live agents can work in tandem to engage with and help users remotely via text, audio, or video. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central brings customer experience to the forefront for small to medium-sized businesses. It integrates customer interactions across finance, sales, service and operations into one easy-to-use platform, making it simpler to deliver great service and make precise, data-driven decisions. Intercom offers an integrated knowledge base functionality to its user base. Using the existing knowledge base functionality, they can display self-help articles in the chat window before the customer approaches your team for support.

When it’s intelligent and accessible, reporting can provide deep insights into your customer interactions, agent efficiency, and service quality at a glance. Zendesk’s reporting tools are arguably more advanced while Intercom is designed for simplicity and ease of use. Zendesk also prioritizes operational metrics, while Intercom focuses on behavior and engagement. Today, amid the rise of omnichannel customer service, it offers a centralized location to manage interactions via email, live chat, social media, or voice calls. It started as a ticketing tool just for customer service teams and has evolved over the years into a complete customer support platform. Since, its name has become somewhat synonymous with customer service and support.

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. The Zendesk sales CRM offers tiered pricing plans designed to support businesses of all sizes, from startups to enterprises. The Professional and Enterprise plans offer advanced features that build on those in the Team and Growth plans, including lead scoring, call scripts, and unlimited email sequences. On top of that, you can use drag-and-drop widgets to create custom CRM reports with the data most important to your goals.

Let’s see how conversational AI in telecom helps make agents more productive. In conclusion, Intercom and Zendesk have implemented robust security measures to protect their clients’ data. Customers can feel confident that their data is secure when using either platform. 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.

It also offers a Proactive Support Plus as an Add-on with push notifications, a series campaign builder, news items, and more. What better way to start a Zendesk vs. Intercom than to compare their features? As expected, the right choice between Zendesk and Intercom will depend on your budget, your company, and your needs. There are many powerful integrations included, such as Salesforce, HubSpot, Mailchimp, Slack, and Zapier.

This has helped to make Zendesk one of the most popular customer service software platforms on the market. A sales CRM should also provide you with the benefits of pipeline management software. Pipedrive has workflow automation features, like setting triggers and desired actions, scheduling customer interactions, and automating lead assignment. However, one user noted that important features like automation are often down for an extensive amount of time. Zendesk offers so much more than you can get from free CRMs or less robust options, including sales triggers to automate workflows.

Gain valuable insights with Intercom’s analytics and reporting capabilities. Track key metrics, measure campaign success, and optimize customer engagement strategies. Designed for all kinds of businesses, from small startups to giant enterprises, it’s the secret weapon that keeps customers happy. So, get ready for an insightful journey through the landscapes of Zendesk and Intercom, where support excellence converges with AI innovation.

Later, they started adding all kinds of other features, like live chat for customer conversations. Why don’t you try something equally powerful yet more affordable, Chat GPT like HelpCrunch? As a result, customers can implement the help desk software quickly—without the need for developers—and see a faster return on investment.

Intercom and Zendesk offer robust customer support options, including email, phone, and live chat support, comprehensive knowledge bases, and community forums. Intercom’s chatbot functionality is a standout feature, while Zendesk’s ticketing system can help resolve support issues on time. 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 also offers scalability within its pricing plans, enabling businesses to upgrade to higher tiers as their support needs grow.

They are, however, adequate for most users, providing essential insights into customer service operations. For smaller teams that have to handle multiple tasks, do not forget to check JustReply.ai, which is a user-friendly customer support tool. It will seamlessly integrate with Slack and offers everything you need for your favorite communication platform. Intercom’s AI capabilities extend beyond the traditional chatbots; Fin is renowned for solving complex problems and providing safer, accurate answers. Fin’s advanced algorithm and machine learning enable the precision handling of queries.

Your agents will love the seamless assistance Aura AI provides throughout the entire customer interaction. From handling multiple questions to avoiding dreaded customer-stuck loops, Aura AI is the Swiss Army Knife of customer service chatbots. Furthermore, Intercom offers advanced automation features such as custom inbox rules, targeted messaging, and dynamic triggers based on customer segments.

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. When selecting a sales CRM, you’ll want to consider its total cost of ownership (TCO).

Instead, using it and setting it up is very easy, and very advanced chatbots and predictive tools are included to boost your customer service. The Suite Team plan, priced at $69 per agent, adds features like live chat and messaging, while the Suite Growth plan at $115 per agent introduces automation and advanced analytics. When comparing Zendesk and Intercom, it’s essential to understand their core features and their differences to choose the right solution for your customer support needs. 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.

But I don’t want to sell their chat tool short as it still has most of necessary features like shortcuts (saved responses), automated triggers and live chat analytics. If you’re a huge corporation with a complicated customer support process, go Zendesk for its help desk functionality. If you’re smaller more sales oriented startup with enough money, go Intercom. Intercom’s help center, while not as customizable, still provides a user-friendly platform for content creation, helping customers self-serve their queries effectively. Zendesk’s dashboard is responsive and has a sleek interface, which facilitates smoother interactions.

When you onboard a customer support platform, it’s important to consider the level of support the vendor offers. That’s because if there’s a glitch or a system outage, you want an immediate fix or clarity on the resolution. It offers a feature called “Mobile Push”  which are essentially push notifications that allow businesses to reach customers on their mobile apps. This feature enables timely alerts and updates to customers, even when they are on the go.