Zendesk vs Intercom: Which Solution to Choose in 2024?

Is it as simple as knowing whether you want software strictly for customer support (like Zendesk) or for some blend of customer relationship management and sales support (like Intercom)? 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.

This means the company is still working out some kinks and operating with limited capabilities. Prioritize the agent experience to maximize productivity and customer satisfaction while reducing employee turnover. Yes, both Intercom and Zendesk let you try out some of their tools for free before you decide to pay for the full version. Intercom puts a lot of effort into making a sleek and easy-to-use interface. They want to make a space that makes it easy for people to find their way around and quickly adopt the app.

Intercom vs Zendesk: overall impression

Help desk SaaS is how you manage general customer communication and for handling customer questions. When comparing the automation and AI features of Zendesk and Intercom, both intercom vs. zendesk platforms come with unique strengths and weaknesses. Intercom, on the other hand, is ideal for those focusing on CRM capabilities and personalized customer interactions.

The platform is recognized for its ability to resolve a significant portion of common questions automatically, ensuring faster response times. From the inbox, live agents and chatbots can refer to and link knowledge base articles, to elaborate on replies and help customers locate answers. While administrators can automatically assign tickets to certain agents or teams, they can also manually assign tickets to members of sales or customer service teams. Team inboxes aggregate tickets applicable to the whole team–or a specific department–that any agent can address. 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.

If that sounds good to you, sign up for a free demo to see our software in action and get started. On the other hand, Intercom lacks many ticketing functionality that can be essential for big companies with a huge client support load. Zendesk is billed more as a customer support and ticketing solution, while Intercom includes more native CRM functionality.

Intercom has a community forum where users can engage with each other and gain insights from their experiences. With only the Enterprise tier offering round-the-clock email, phone, and chat help, Zendesk support is sharply separated by tiers. Survey composer allows you to create the question and answer format, also customizing color, rating scales, and greetings.

When visitors click on it, they’ll be directed to one of your customer service teammates. 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. But it’s designed so well that you really enjoy staying in their inbox and communicating with clients. Their chat widget looks and works great, and they invest a lot of effort to make it a modern, convenient customer communication tool. The Intercom versus Zendesk conundrum is probably the greatest problem in the customer service software world.

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. There are 3 Basic support plans at $19, $49 and $99 per user per month billed annually, and 5 Suite plans at $49, $79, $99, $150, and $215 per user per month billed annually. Hivers offers round-the-clock proactive support across all its plans, ensuring that no matter the time or issue, expert assistance is always available. This 24/7 support model is designed to provide continuous, real-time solutions to clients, enhancing the overall reliability and responsiveness of Hivers’ services. When comparing Zendesk and Intercom, various factors come into play, each focusing on different aspects, strengths, and weaknesses of these customer support platforms.

These are both still very versatile products, so don’t think you have to get too siloed into a single use case. We have numerous customers that do this and benefit greatly from our out-of-the-box integration with Intercom. 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.

It isn’t as adept at purer sales tasks like lead management, list engagement, advanced reporting, forecasting, and workflow management as you’d expect a more complete CRM to be. Intercom is second to none when it comes to providing great customer service, particularly in terms of proactive contact and the customisation of in-app experiences. The extensive automation and robust ticketing operations that Zendesk offers are among the numerous capabilities that the company possesses. 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.

Intercom wins the reporting and analytics category due to its unique visualization and display formats for contact center and article data. Reporting and analytics provide metrics, trends, and key performance indicators (KPIs) that offer insights to agents and administrators. 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. Zendesk wins the collaboration tools category because of its easy-to-use side conversations feature.

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. Businesses of all sizes can rely on the Zendesk customer service platform and benefit from workflow management, powerful AI tools, robust insights, and more.

Whether it’s syncing data with your CRM, enhancing communication via messaging platforms, or automating tasks with productivity apps, Zendesk makes it possible. Without proper channels to reach you, usually, customers will take their business elsewhere. And, thanks to the internet, a few taps will lead them right to your competitor! Most businesses use live chats as their main customer communication channel.

Check out our list of unified communications providers for more information. 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. The Zendesk Admin Center panels allow administrators to control settings, accessibility, automations, and workflows for everything from chatbots to integrations and custom APIs. Create a help center combining knowledge base articles and a customer contact request form, embeddable into any webpage or mobile app.

Intercom vs Zendesk features & functionality

You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. Intercom also excels in real-time chat solutions, making it a strong contender for businesses seeking dynamic customer interaction. This unpredictability in pricing might lead to higher costs, especially for larger companies. While it offers a range of advanced features, the overall costs and potential inconsistencies in support could be a concern for some businesses​​​​.

• While it excels in interactive and engaging communication, especially on mobile, some businesses might find its focus on chat-based interfaces limiting if they need extensive email or voice call support.
• With this feature, businesses can easily handle and keep track of customer requests, making sure that no issues get lost.
• 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.
• No matter how a customer contacts your business, your agents will have access to the tools and information they need to continue and close conversations on any channel.
• Some people like Intercom’s conversational support tool, which lets customers talk to you in a more personalised and interactive way.

Zendesk also offers detailed reports that can be shared with others and enable team members to collaborate on them simultaneously. A customer service department is only as good as its support team members, and these highly-prized employees need to rely on one another. Tools that allow support agents to communicate and collaborate are important aspect of customer service software. 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 is also not too difficult to program your own bot rules using Intercon’s system. 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.

The app includes features like push notifications and real-time customer engagement — so businesses can respond quickly to customer inquiries. 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.

Guide customers to faster resolutions

Intercom has more customization features for features like bots, themes, triggers, and funnels. 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. 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 is a Starter plan for small businesses at $74 per month billed annually, and there are add-ons like a WhatsApp add-on at $9 per user per month or surveys at $49 per month. 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. Choose Zendesk for a scalable, team-size-based pricing model and Intercom for initial low-cost access with flexibility in adding advanced features.

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. Pricing for both services varies based on the specific needs and scale of your business. When comparing the user interfaces (UI) of Zendesk and Intercom, both platforms exhibit distinct characteristics and strengths catering to different user preferences and needs.

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. Which means it’s rather a customer relationship management platform than anything else. Zendesk, on the other hand, is known for its powerful ticketing system and smart analytics tools.

Intercom generally receives positive feedback for its customer support, with users appreciating the comprehensive features and team-oriented tools. However, there are occasional criticisms regarding the effectiveness of its AI chatbot and some interface navigation challenges. The overall sentiment from users indicates a satisfactory level of support, although opinions vary.

Intercom offers admin full visibility and control over all company inboxes, as well as agent access controls and role management. Intercom wins the sales pipeline tools category because its campaigning and sequencing tools integrate all channels and unique services, like carousels and product tours. 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.

Intercom wins the automation and AI category because its chatbots have some impressive capabilities, like lead qualification and advanced routing. An inbound customer message through any of these channels becomes a ticket for your support agents, whose reply reaches the customer through the same channel they originally used. Intercom’s ticketing system and help desk SaaS is also pretty great, just not as amazing as Zendesk’s. Their customer service management tools have a shared inbox for support teams. It really shines in its modern messenger interface, making real-time chat a breeze.

This could impact user experience and efficiency for new users grappling with its complexity​​​​​​. Understanding the unique attributes of Zendesk and Intercom is crucial in this comparison. Zendesk is renowned for its comprehensive range of functionalities, including advanced email ticketing, live chat, phone support, and a vast knowledge base. Its ability to seamlessly integrate with various applications further amplifies its versatility. Intercom is ideal for personalized messaging, while Zendesk offers robust ticket management and self-service options. Compared to Zendesk and Intercom, Helpwise offers competitive and transparent pricing plans.

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. 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. Intercom has a full suite of email marketing tools, although they are part of a pricier package.

But we doubled down and created a truly full-service CX solution capable of handling any support request. Novo has been a Zendesk customer since 2019 but didn’t immediately start taking full advantage of all our features and capabilities. Apps and integrations are critical to creating a 360 view of the customer across the company and ensuring agents have easy access to key customer context. When agents don’t have to waste time toggling between different systems and tools to access the customer details they need, they can deliver faster, more personalized customer service. Intercom is great at making it easy for businesses and their customers to talk to each other instantly and back and forth.

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. 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. The support team faced spiking ticket volumes, numerous new customer accounts, and the need to shift to remote work. Track customer service metrics to gain valuable insights and improve customer service processes and agent performance. Sales teams can also view outbound communications, and any support agent can access resources from the Intercom workspace.

Intercom bills itself first and foremost as a platform to make the business of customer service more personalized, among other things. They offer an advanced feature for customer data management that goes beyond basic CRM stuff. It gives detailed contact profiles enriched by company data, behavioral data, conversation data, and other custom fields. Intercom’s solution aims to streamline high-volume ticket influx and provide personalized, conversational support. It also includes extensive integrations with over 350 CRM, email, ticketing, and reporting tools.

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. Intercom is a customer messaging platform that enables businesses to engage with customers through personalized and real-time communication. When you combine the help desk with Intercom Messenger, you get added channels for customer engagement.

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. 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, we aim to assist businesses in making informed decisions when selecting a customer service platform. Companies looking for a more complete customer service product–without niche bells and whistles, but with all the basic channels you want–should look to Zendesk. Small businesses who prioritize collaboration will also enjoy Zendesk for Service. With Messagely, you can increase your customer satisfaction and solve customers’ issues while they’re still visiting your site.

Whether it is about organizing customer issues or communicating with team members, dashboards can make an impactful difference. Yes, you can replace Zendesk with Intercom as both platforms have a rich set of features and integrations. 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.

Intercom or Zendesk: Chatbot features

It can automatically suggest relevant articles for agents during business hours to share with clients, reducing your support agents’ workload. Basically, if you have a complicated support process, go with Zendesk, an excellent Intercom alternative, for its help desk functionality. If you’re a sales-oriented corporation, use Intercom for its automation options. Both tools can be quite heavy on your budget since they mainly target big enterprises and don’t offer their full toolset at an affordable price. You can even improve efficiency and transparency by setting up task sequences, defining sales triggers, and strategizing with advanced forecasting and reporting tools.

Messagely pulls together all of the information about the customer contacting you and gives your representatives information on each interaction they’ve had with them, all within a streamlined platform. This way, your clients will never have to repeat themselves or get frustrated because their new representative doesn’t know their background. However, if you’re looking for a streamlined, all-in-one messaging platform, there is no better option than Messagely.

The company’s products include a messaging platform, knowledge base tools, and an analytics dashboard. Many businesses choose to work with Intercom because of its focus on personalization and flexibility, allowing companies to completely customize their customer service experience. 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.

You can then add automations and triggers, such as automatically closing a ticket or sending a message to a user. The two essential things that Zendesk lacks in comparison to Intercom are in-app messages and email marketing tools. If you thought Zendesk prices were confusing, let me introduce you to the Intercom charges. It’s virtually https://chat.openai.com/ impossible to predict what you’ll pay for Intercom at the end of the day. They charge for customer service representative seats and people reached, don’t reveal their prices, and offer tons of custom add-ons at additional cost. Zendesk also has an Answer Bot, which instantly takes your knowledge base game to the next level.

Best Customer Service Apps Your Customer Service Team Will Love

Zendesk has traditionally been more focused on customer support management, while Intercom has been more focused on live support solutions like its chat solution. 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. You can set business rules, SLA, and ticket routing based on the agent’s skills, language, and expertise. Each message will have identifiers so that they will be easy to recognize at a glance. As a result, you’ll be able to see the sender, anyone who replied, and the dates of their interaction.

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. Easily reply to customer conversations and manage workload in a smart & automated way. Here is a Zendesk vs. Intercom based on the customer support offered by these brands. Here, we’ve outlined the support options that Intercom and Zendesk provide to companies using their platforms.

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. In today’s world of fast-paced Chat PG customer service and high customer expectations, it’s essential for business leaders to equip their teams with the best support tools available. Zendesk and Intercom both offer noteworthy tools, but if you’re looking for a full-service solution, there is one clear winner.

This is aided by the fact that the look and feel of Zendesk’s user interface are neat and minimal, with few cluttering features. As for Intercom’s general pricing structure, there are three plans, but you’ll have to contact them to get exact prices. 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. When it comes to business, particularly in SaaS, the significance of a robust customer success strategy cannot be overstated….

Use HubSpot Service Hub to provide seamless, fast, and delightful customer service. Messagely also provides you with a shared inbox so anyone from your team can follow up with your users, regardless of who the user was in contact with first. You can also follow up with customers after they have left the chat and qualify them based on your answers. After signing up and creating your account, you can start filling in your information, such as your company name and branding and your agents’ profiles and information. The setup can be so complex that there are tutorials by third parties to teach new users how to do it right. Intercom works with any website or web-based product and aims to be your one-way stop for all of your customer communication needs.

There’s even on-the-spot translation built right in, which is extremely helpful. As you can imagine, banking from anywhere requires a flexible, robust customer service experience. Monese is another fintech company that provides a banking app, account, and debit card to make settling in a new country easier. By providing banking without boundaries, the company aims to provide users with quick access to their finances, wherever they happen to be.

Whether you’re starting fresh with Intercom or migrating from Zendesk, set up is quick and easy. Keeping this general theme in mind, I’ll dive deeper into how each software’s features compare, so you can decide which use case might best fit your needs. 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.

Founded in 2007, Zendesk started as a ticketing tool for customer success teams. It was later that they started adding all kinds of other features, like live chat for customer conversations. They bought out the Zopim live chat solution and integrated it with their toolset.

Zendesk for Service sells three plans, ranging from $49 to $99 monthly per user, with a 30-day free trial available for each plan. The top of the agent workspace shows an agent’s open tickets, ticket statistics, and satisfaction statistics, as well as tabs depicting all current tickets. Intercom’s role-based permissions allow administrators full control over each department’s and agent’s capabilities, and access to channels and information.

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. Both platforms have their unique strengths in multichannel support, with Zendesk offering a more comprehensive range of integrated channels and Intercom focusing on a dynamic, chat-centric experience. Learn how top CX leaders are scaling personalized customer service at their companies. 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.