Zendesk vs Intercom: Choosing the best tool for your business

Zendesk vs Intercom: Which is better?

You can analyze if that weakness is something that concerns your business model. The best thing about this plan is that it is eligible for an advanced AI add-on, has integrated community forums, side conversations, skill-based routing, and is HIPAA-enabled. Zendesk offers various features, which may differ according to the plan. Intercom also provides fast time to value for smaller and mid-sized businesses with limitations for large-scale companies. It may have limited abilities regarding the scalability or support of an enterprise-level company. Thus, due to its limited agility, businesses with complex business models may not find it appropriate.

Knowledge Base is one of the self-service sections that includes articles or documents providing technical help to customers and employees. To make a comparison of Zendesk vs Intercom knowledge base features is quite tricky. So, Intercom Articles will be opposed to Zendesk Suite – in that way the contrast is (more or less) fair. Intercom Inbox has customer support features that vaguely remind Zendesk Support, but the offered package Acquire customer (Messages and Inbox) is more paralleled with Zendesk Support + Chat. Intercom is a complete customer communication platform for small businesses.

Whether it’s the ticketing system, knowledge base corner, or branding elements, you get the full right to use them as per your brand’s need. 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. If you do go with ActiveCampaign, I HIGHLY recommend that you take their paid training.

• It is tailored for automation and quick access to insights, offering a user-friendly experience.
• Startups usually have low budgets for such investments, making it easier for these small businesses to choose the right plan.
• It can team up with tools like Salesforce and Slack, so everything runs smoothly.
• It lets customers reach out via messaging, a live chat tool, voice, and social media.
• In this case, we’ll see what their similarities and differences are.

Managing everything manually is becoming increasingly difficult, and you need a robust customer support platform to streamline your operations. You can create an omnichannel CRM suite with a mix of productivity, collaboration, eCommerce, CRM, analytics, email marketing, social media, and other tools. Both app stores include many popular integrations, such as Salesforce, HubSpot, intercom vs zendesk Mailchimp, and Zapier. In general, Zendesk offers a wide range of live chat features such as customizable chat widgets, automatic greetings, offline messaging, and chat triggers. In addition to these features, Intercom offers messaging automation and real-time visitor insights. Because Intercom started as a live chat service, its messenger functionality is very robust.

Compared to Intercom, Zendesk’s pricing starts at $49/month, which is still understandable but not meant for startups looking for affordable pricing plans. These plans are not inclusive of the add-ons or access to all integrations. Once you add them all to the picture, their existing plans can turn out to be quite expensive.

Top Features

As a result, companies can identify trends and areas for improvement, allowing them to continuously improve their support processes and provide better service to their customers. When it comes to integrations, Zendesk and Intercom both offer diverse possibilities, but here, Zendesk takes the lead. Zendesk boasts an extensive array of integration options, with over 1,500 apps in its ecosystem. Both Zendesk and Intercom are standout performers when it comes to providing comprehensive multi channel support, catering to diverse customer needs. Zendesk offers a versatile array of communication channels, including email, chat, social media, phone, and web forms.

Basically, you can create new articles, divide them by categories and sections — make it a high end destination for customers when they have questions or issues. 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. Hiver’s latest study found that 77% of customers prefer email over other support channels to contact a business. Intercom, on the other hand, is ideal for those focusing on CRM capabilities and personalized customer interactions.

Knowledge base

In a nutshell, none of the customer support software companies provide decent assistance for users. Their chat widget looks and works great, and they invest a lot of effort to make it a modern, convenient customer communication tool. 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.

Another critical difference between Zendesk and Intercom is their approach to CRM. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. In addition to its service features, Zendesk offers a fully integrated CRM solution, Zendesk Sell, available for an additional cost, starting at $19/agent/month. It includes tools for lead management, sales forecasting, and workflow management and automation. Its customer data platform lets you manage customer data, segmentation, and automated reminders.

The ProProfs Live Chat Editorial Team is a passionate group of customer service experts dedicated to empowering your live chat experiences with top-notch content. We stay ahead of the curve on trends, tackle technical Chat GPT hurdles, and provide practical tips to boost your business. With our commitment to quality and integrity, you can be confident you’re getting the most reliable resources to enhance your customer support initiatives.

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​​​​​​. Intercom also uses AI and features a chatbot called Fin, but negative reviews note basic reporting and a lack of customization. Fin is priced at $0.99 per resolution, so companies handling large volumes of queries might find it costly.

The best help desks are also ticketing systems, which lets support reps create a support ticket out of issues that can then be tracked. Ticket routing helps to send the ticket to the best support team agent. Zendesk is quite famous for designing its platform to be intuitive and its tools to be quite simple to learn.

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. For instance, Intercom can guide a new software user through each feature step by step, providing https://chat.openai.com/ context and assistance along the way. In contrast, Zendesk primarily relies on a knowledge base, housing articles, FAQs, and self-help resources. While this resource center can reduce the dependency on agent assistance, it lacks the interactive element found in Intercom’s onboarding process.

You get a dashboard that makes creating, tracking, and organizing tickets easy. Intercom allows visitors to search for and view articles from the messenger widget. Customers won’t need to leave your app or website to find the help they need.Zendesk, on the other hand, will redirect the customer to a new web page. You can also add apps to your Intercom Messenger home to help users and visitors get what they need, without having to start a conversation.

Most businesses use live chats as their main customer communication channel. It is handy for both sides since users can get in touch with customer support teams via a chat widget placed right on the website. Zendesk is more robust in terms of its ticket management capabilities, it offers more customization options and advanced features like a virtual call center app. On the other hand, Intercom is more focused on conversational customer support, and has more help desk features suited for live chat and messaging. While both platforms offer email marketing tools, Zendesk’s email marketing features are more robust and comprehensive. Zendesk’s email marketing functionalities include advanced segmentation options, powerful automation tools, and detailed email tracking capabilities.

These features empower businesses to create highly targeted and personalized email campaigns, ensuring efficient communication and nurturing of customer relationships. Intercom is a customer messaging platform that enables businesses to engage with customers through personalized and real-time communication. Yes, you can use Intercom on the front end for customer communication and Zendesk on the back end for managing support tickets and workflows. This combination maximizes the strengths of both help desk platforms, providing a seamless experience for managing customer accounts from initial interaction to issue resolution. Intercom, on the other hand, offers more advanced automation features than Zendesk.

Intercom’s tools are packaged together, limiting customization and potentially leading to higher costs if you need only specific features. Additionally, Intercom’s call center and advanced analytics rely on third-party integrations, whereas Zendesk offers solutions like Zendesk Sell, Talk and Explore. If you need a highly customizable, all-in-one platform with extensive built-in features, Zendesk may be the better choice. To begin with, efficient customer relationship management is important these days. 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!

Their users can create a knowledge repository to create articles or edit existing ones as per the changes in the services or product. Zendesk, like Intercom, offers multilingual language functionality. It also provides detailed reports on how each self-help article performs in your knowledge base and helps you identify how each piece can be improved further. Both tools also allow you to connect your email account and manage it from within the application to track open and click-through rates. In addition, Zendesk and Intercom feature advanced sales reporting and analytics that make it easy for sales teams to understand their prospects and customers more deeply. Zendesk takes the slight lead here because it offers some advanced help desk features, which Intercom does not.

To sum it all up, you need to consider various aspects of your business before choosing CRM software. While deciding between Zendesk and Intercom, you should ensure the customization, AI automation, and functionalities align with your business goals. Intecom’s pricing strategies are not as transparent as Zendesk’s pricing. So, whether you’re a startup or a global giant, Zendesk’s got your back for top-notch customer support. Zendesk lets you chat with customers through email, chat, social media, or phone. While both Zendesk and Intercom offer ways to track your sales pipeline, each platform handles the process a bit differently.

Many use cases call for 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. Like with many other apps, Zapier seems to be the best and most simple way to connect Intercom to Zendesk. The Zendesk marketplace is also where you can get a lot of great add-ons. There are also several different Shopify integrations to choose from, as well as CRM integrations like HubSpot and Salesforce.

Zendesk has also introduced its chatbot to help its clients send automated answers to some frequently asked questions to stay ahead in the competitive marketplace. What’s more, it helps its clients build an integrated community forum and help center to improve the support experience in real-time. Welcome to another blog post that helps you gauge which live chat solution is compatible with your customer support needs. And in this post, we will analyze two popular names in the SaaS industry – Intercom & Zendesk. The ProProfs Live Chat Editorial Team is a diverse group of professionals passionate about customer support and engagement. We update you on the latest trends, dive into technical topics, and offer insights to elevate your business.

Although Intercom offers an omnichannel messaging dashboard, it has slightly less functionality than Zendesk. Considering that Zendesk and Intercom are leading the market for customer service software, it becomes difficult for businesses to choose the right tool. Sometimes, businesses do not even realize the importance of various aspects you must consider while making this choice.

In this article, we will compare Intercom and Zendesk, highlighting their features, benefits, and drawbacks. Intercom distinguishes itself by excelling in real-time customer engagement. It offers a comprehensive suite of features that empowers businesses to foster immediate connections with their customers. With Intercom, businesses can engage in real-time chats, schedule meetings, and strategically deploy chat boxes to specific customer segments. What truly sets Intercom apart is its data-driven approach to customer engagement.

Easily track your service team’s performance and unlock coaching opportunities with AI-powered insights. I found that if I wanted to work most productively I’d need to have all four main Zendesk products opened in different browser tabs as there is no option of having all of them within a single dashboard. What can be really inconvenient about Zendesk, though is how their tools integrate with each other when you need to use them simultaneously. On practice, I can’t promise you anything when it comes to Intercom.

Can Zendesk replace Intercom?

In comparison, Intercom’s confusing pricing structure that features multiple add-ons may be unsuitable for small businesses. With the base plan, you get some sweet facilities like a ticketing system, data analytics, customer chat history, and more. In comparison to that, you enjoy customized agent roles, sandbox, and skills-based routing, besides offering basic functionalities with the expensive enterprise plan. Because of its easy navigation and interface, Intercom has always received positive words from its users. We can say that Zendesk’s user interface is very clean and clear to understand. Besides its easy navigation, it also offers a mesmerizing ticketing system, multichannel communication, and analytics reporting.

• This is one of the best ways to qualify high-quality leads for your business and improve your chances of closing a sale faster.
• Both Intercom and Zendesk have proven to be valuable tools for businesses looking to provide excellent customer support.
• Intercom is a customer support platform known for its effective messaging and automation, enhancing in-context support within products, apps, or websites.
• If compared to Intercom’s chatbot, Zendesk offers a relatively latest platform that makes support automation possible.
• Moving on, Dominic delves into the features offered by Zendesk and Intercom.

This feature enables support agents to proactively engage with customers and provide assistance. Zendesk may not offer the same level of real-time tracking capabilities. Zendesk on the other hand offers tools that support a wide variety of customer service functions including robust ticket management capabilities. Intercom and Zendesk both offer comprehensive customer support solutions. 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.

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In terms of customer service, Zendesk fails to deliver an exceptional experience. This can be a bummer for many as they can always stumble upon an issue. One of the most significant downsides of Intercom is its customer support.

What better way to start a Zendesk vs. Intercom than to compare their features? A free trial will give you a better look and feel of both the product. There is no harm in testing the waters before committing to one or the other, as both Zendesk and Intercom offer free trials. As for the category of voice and phone features, Zendesk is a clear winner.

A lot can be gleaned from a customer support tool’s ticketing features. These features help support reps manage and organize support requests and ongoing communications so they are vital tools that will be used every day. As two of the most popular and effective customer support solutions on the market, Intercom and Zendesk often compete head-to-head to win the business of companies like yours. The Zendesk chat tool has the most necessary features like shortcuts to saved responses, chatbots, and live chat analytics. In navigating this conundrum, several digital tools can come in handy, and two of the most popular options are Intercom and Zendesk. As both platforms have their pros and cons, it can be difficult to decide which one is right for your business.

They may be utilized to alert consumers about product updates, provide assistance, and promote specials that are relevant to them. Zendesk’s dashboard ties together your customer interactions from every possible channel. This makes it easy for agents to manage requests and communicate with customers more efficiently. They also offer features that enhance collaboration amongst employees if you have a bigger team. Intercom, of course, allows its customer support team to collaborate and communicate too, but overall, Zendesk wins this group. Yes, Zendesk offers an integration with Intercom available through the Zendesk Marketplace.

It really shines in its modern messenger interface, making real-time chat a breeze. Its multichannel support is more focused on engaging customers through its chat and messaging systems, including mobile carousels and interactive communication tools. However, compared to Zendesk, Intercom might not offer the same breadth in terms of integrating a wide range of external channels. 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 Dixa’s user-friendly tools, you can quickly create a seamless customer experience across multiple channels.

Their customer service management tools have a shared inbox for support teams. When you combine the help desk with Intercom Messenger, you get added channels for customer engagement. To begin with, putting Zendesk vs. Intercom “side by side” is a thankless job as software differs in functionality, price, and purposes.

In this segment, Dominic explores the outbound capabilities of Zendesk and Intercom. How well do these platforms facilitate proactive customer engagement? Which one offers superior communication tools for reaching out to customers?

Businsses need to do a cost analysis whenever they select customer service software for their business. You cannot invest much in this software if you are a small business, as it would exceed the budget requirements. The help center in Intercom is also user-friendly, enabling agents to access content creation easily.

However, some users remarked that a developer is needed to properly install the software or run the risks of problems in the future. The Intercom Messenger, in particular, performs well compared to the Zendesk alternative. Analytics features Intercom has is done through add-ons such as Google Analytics, Statbot, Microsoft Teams, and more.

Test any of HelpCrunch pricing plans for free for 14 days and see our tools in action right away. Besides, the prices differ depending on the company’s size and specific needs. We conducted a little study of our own and found that all Intercom users share different amounts of money they pay for the plans, which can reach over $1000/mo. The price levels can even be much higher if we’re talking of a larger company.

It brings all your customer interactions to a single dashboard so that you can track all your support requests, answer questions quickly, and monitor performance from one place. Some of the links that appear on the website are from software companies from which CRM.org receives compensation. The main idea here is to rid the average support agent of a slew of mundane and repetitive tasks, giving them more time and mental energy to help customers with tougher issues. Help desk SaaS is how you manage general customer communication and for handling customer questions.

This feature is available on all the channels your customers use to get in touch with your brand. 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.

Zendesk is not far behind Intercom when it comes to email features. There is a simple email integration tool for whatever email provider you regularly use. This gets you unlimited email addresses and email templates in both text form and HTML. There is automatic email archiving and incoming email authentication. Zendesk can also save key customer information in their platform, which helps reps get a faster idea of who they are dealing with as well as any historical data that might assist in the support. Zendesk Sunshine is a separate feature set that focuses on unified customer views.

Intercom focuses on providing personalized customer messaging and support at every stage of the customer lifecycle. Its conversational support approach, powerful automation capabilities, and in-depth analytics empower businesses to deliver tailored and effective customer experiences. In the digital age, customer support platforms have become the cornerstone of ensuring customer satisfaction and retention. Businesses across various industries rely on these platforms to manage and streamline customer interactions, enhance communication, and provide timely assistance. 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.

Zendesk also allows Advanced AI and Advanced data privacy and protection plans, which cost $50 per month for each Advanced add-on. While they like the ease of use this product offers its users, they’ve indeed rated them low in terms of services. Zendesk also offers a straightforward interface to operators that helps them identify the entire interaction pathway with the customers. Compared to being detailed, Zendesk gives a tough competition to Intercom. Operators can easily switch from one conversation to another, therefore helping operators manage more interactions simultaneously. Zendesk also offers a sales pipeline feature through its Zendesk Sell product.

For instance, when you need to access specific features or information, Zendesk’s organized interface ensures that everything is easily locatable, reducing search time and user frustration. To sum things up, Zendesk is a great customer support oriented tool which will be a great choice for big teams with various departments. Intercom feels more wholesome and is more customer success oriented, but can be too costly for smaller companies. You can publish your knowledge base articles and divide them by categories and also integrate them with your messenger to accelerate the whole chat experience.

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. Key offerings include automated support with help center articles, a messenger-first ticketing system, and a powerful inbox to centralize customer queries. The two essential things that Zendesk lacks in comparison to Intercom are in-app messages and email marketing tools. On the other hand, Intercom lacks many ticketing functionality that can be essential for big companies with a huge client support load.

Although the interface may require a learning curve, users find the platform effective and functional. However, Intercom has fewer integration options than Zendesk, which may limit its capabilities for businesses seeking extensive integrations. However, if you are looking for a robust messaging solution with customer support features, go for Intercom. Its intuitive messenger can help your business boost engagement and improve sales and marketing efforts. Zendesk and Intercom also both offer analytics and reporting capabilities that allow businesses to analyze and monitor customer agents’ productivity.

Although it provides businesses with valuable messaging and automation tools, they may require more than this to achieve a higher level of functionality. Companies might assume that using Intercom increases costs, potentially impacting businesses’ ROI. Zendesk, just like its competitor, offers a knowledge base solution that is easy to customize.

Both Zendesk and Intercom are excellent customer service solutions. 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. 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.

It delivers a multi-channel support system with customer service automation. 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.

This tier provides everything a small or medium-sized business will need, including better ticket management and advanced workflow automation tools. Intercom is a fully-featured customer support platform that provides powerful automation and AI tools to enable more efficient and effective customer engagement. Intercom focuses on real-time customer messaging, while Zendesk provides a comprehensive suite for ticketing, knowledge base, and self-service support. What sets Zendesk apart is its user-friendly interface, customizable workflows, and scalability.