Zendesk vs Intercom: A comprehensive comparison guide

But sooner or later, you’ll have to decide on the subscription plan, and here’s what you’ll have to pay. Zendesk is a ticketing system before anything else, and its ticketing functionality is overwhelming in the best possible way. They’ve been marketing themselves as a messaging platform right from the beginning. 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. When he isn’t writing content, poetry, or creative nonfiction, he enjoys traveling, baking, playing music, reliving his barista days in his own kitchen, camping, and being bad at carpentry. Intercom does have a ticketing dashboard that has omnichannel functionality, much like Zendesk.

Both the platforms have the knowledge base feature, and in my opinion, both of them are becoming winners. That their customers are fully satisfied with their products and services, and so is the motto of our Desku chatbots. So, by holding Desku’s hand, you can open doors for a long list of happy and fully satisfied customers. Picking customer service software to run your business is not a decision you make lightly.

While Intercom excels in certain aspects of customer communication, Zendesk offers its own set of strengths that cater to different aspects of customer support and engagement. While there can be add-ons, such as premium customer support, you can generally anticipate what you’ll be paying for your Zendesk subscription. It calculates the cost of its Pro and Premium plans based on the number of AI resolutions, people reached, and seats (or users).

There is one mind-boggling feature in Intercom, and that is its in-app messaging serving. It’s a very good way of communicating with customers through multi-platform apps. Moreover, the best part is it also lets you send customized messages to various customers on the basis of their actions. With its live analytics feature on the dashboard, it makes it easy for you to make instant decisions in no time. Such live insights are very useful in evaluating your customer support process.

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. So yeah, all the features talk actually brings us to the most sacred question — the question of pricing. You’d probably want to know how much it costs to get each of the platforms for your business, so let’s talk money now.

Inbox

Experience the comprehensive power of Intercom for effective customer communication, automation, support tools, integrations, and analytics. Streamline support processes with Intercom’s ticketing system and knowledge base. Efficiently manage customer inquiries and empower customers to find answers independently. Intercom’s messaging system enables real-time interactions through various channels, including chat, email, and in-app messages.

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. Whether you’ve just started searching for a customer support tool or have been using one for a while, chances are you know about Zendesk and Intercom. The former is one of the oldest and most reliable solutions on the market, while the latter sets the bar high in terms of innovative and out-of-the-box features. Intercom, on the other hand, was built for business messaging, so communication is one of their strong suits.

What Sets HubSpot Apart

But to provide a more robust customer experience, businesses may need to consider integrating Intercom’s AI tool with a third-party customer service platform, as it falls short of a full-stack offering. 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. Zendesk and Intercom are prominent players in the field of customer support and engagement platforms, each offering unique capabilities and advantages to address varying user requirements.

Zendesk’s AI (Fin) helps with automated responses, ensuring your customers get quick answers. On the other hand, Intercom’s AI-powered chatbots and messaging are designed to enhance your marketing and sales efforts, giving you an edge in the competitive market. Seamlessly integrate Intercom with popular third-party tools and platforms, centralizing customer data and improving workflow efficiency.

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​​​​. Understanding the unique attributes of Zendesk and Intercom is crucial in this comparison.

• Optimizing the utilization of Zendesk and Intercom involves implementing effective strategies and best practices.
• Zendesk has strong positive reviews especially since the software has mobile apps for access.
• With Intercom, businesses can engage in real-time chats, schedule meetings, and strategically deploy chat boxes to specific customer segments.

Like so many others, Monese determined that Zendesk was the best solution to provide seamless, omnichannel support because of its scalability and reliability. Brian Kale, the head of customer success at Bank Novo, describes how Zendesk helped Bank Novo boost productivity and streamline service. In terms of pricing, Intercom is considered one of the most expensive tools on the market. Though the Intercom chat window says that their customer success team typically replies in a few hours, don’t expect to receive any real answer in chat for at least a couple of days. To sum things up, one can get really confused trying to make sense of the Zendesk suite pricing, let alone calculate costs. If you’d want to test Intercom vs Zendesk before deciding on a tool for good, they both provide free trials for 14 days.

You can create articles, share them internally, group them for users, and assign them as responses for bots—all pretty standard fare. Intercom can even integrate with Zendesk and other sources to import past help center content. I just found Zendesk’s help center to be slightly better integrated into their workflows and more customizable. Broken down into custom, resolution, and task bots, these can go a long way in taking repetitive tasks off agents’ plates. 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.

Zendesk is distinguished by its robust and versatile customer support solutions. It provides a comprehensive platform for managing customer inquiries, support tickets, and interactions across multiple channels. On the other hand, Intercom shines in its focus on conversational engagement and real-time communication with customers. It offers a chat-first approach, making it ideal for companies looking to prioritize interactive and personalized customer interactions.

Zendesk vs. Intercom: Features comparison

There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data. Explore 10 engaging product update email templates in our latest blog post. Designed for various product update scenarios, these templates ensure your customers are well-informed… 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.

As a conversational relationship platform, Zendesk gives you the option of live chatting with customers via your website, mobile, and messaging. Though, if you compare Zendesk chat vs Intercom, the plugin is a bit hard to use as reviewed by customers. Installing it might take some technical skill and even when installed, could malfunction a bit. It uses artificial intelligence (AI) to assist customers through self-help options or access to the relevant articles before connecting them to your team. And this, undoubtedly, leaves your customer support agents free to solve urgent matters.

• 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.
• Analyzing these case studies provides practical insights into the tangible benefits and outcomes achieved by implementing either platform.
• The two essential things that Zendesk lacks in comparison to Intercom are in-app messages and email marketing tools.
• The bot also ensures that the customer or employee will find the right article before contacting an agent.

Zendesk also offers a number of integrations with third-party applications. 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.

Zendesk vs. Intercom pricing

Understanding your budget constraints, specific business requirements, and long-term goals is crucial. Evaluate factors such as scalability, user-friendliness, integration capabilities, and the type of customer experience you aim to provide before making a decision. In the digital age, customer support platforms have become the cornerstone of ensuring customer satisfaction and retention.

Triggers should prove especially useful for agents, allowing them to do things like automate notifications for actions like ticket assignments, ticket closing/reopening, or new ticket creation. Their template triggers are fairly limited with only seven options, but they do enable users to create new custom triggers, which can be a game-changer for agents with more complex workflows. Using this, agents can chat across teams within a ticket via email, Slack, or Zendesk’s ticketing system. This packs all resolution information into a single ticket, so there’s no extra searching or backtracking needed to bring a ticket through to resolution, even if it involves multiple agents. I tested both options (using Zendesk’s Suite Professional trial and Intercom’s Support trial) and found clearly defined differences between the two.

The cheapest plan for small businesses – Essential – costs $39 monthly per seat. 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. Their chat widget looks and works great, and they invest a lot of effort to make it a modern, convenient customer communication tool.

The answers are analyzed to help streamline the AI and can also be collated into a report for your perusal. Intercom is great for talking to customers in real-time, like through live chats or in-app messages. Zendesk is more about organizing customer requests with a ticketing system and talking to customers through many channels like email, phone, or chat. With the base plan, https://chat.openai.com/ 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.

But, you would not be able to enjoy such a live tracking experience on Intercom. For instance, Intercom can guide a new software user through each feature step by step, providing 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. In the domain of customer onboarding, Intercom takes a definitive lead with its distinctive feature – the ability to create interactive product tours.

Compare Zendesk versus Intercom to determine who will be the best partner for your business at every phase of the customer journey. And there’s still no way to know how much you’ll pay for them since the prices are only revealed after you go through a few sale demos with the Intercom team. 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. Understanding these fundamental differences should go a long way in helping you pick between the two, but does that mean you can’t use one platform to do what the other does better? These are both still very versatile products, so don’t think you have to get too siloed into a single use case.

It will help you understand your customer’s issue and solve it instantly. Although you cannot be with your customers all the time in real-time, through Desku’s live chatting, you can actually have their back. HubSpot helps seamlessly integrate customer service tools that you and your team already leverage. While Intercom also provides a user-friendly interface, some users may find it a tad overwhelming, especially when juggling multiple support requests. Zendesk’s simplicity, combined with its robust functionality, significantly reduces the margin for errors and confusion.

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. Optimizing the utilization of Zendesk and Intercom involves implementing effective strategies and best practices.

Intercom Inbox has features that vaguely remind Zendesk Support, but the offered package Acquire customer (Messages and Inbox) is more paralleled with Zendesk Support + Chat. Although Zendesk does not have an in-app messaging service, it does have one unique feature, and that is its built-in virtual call assistant, Zendesk Talk. It is a totally cloud-based service; you can operate this VOIP technology by sitting in any corner of the world. You will be able to find the most common chatting system with a single communication channel. So, communicating with customers on different communication channels would be difficult on Intercom.

Gmail-Based Interface

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. One of the things that sets Zendesk apart from other customer service software providers is its focus on design. The company’s products are built with an emphasis on simplicity and usability. This has helped to make Zendesk one of the most popular customer service software platforms on the market.

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. If money is limited for your business, a help desk that can be a Zendesk alternative or an Intercom alternative is ThriveDesk. They offer straightforward pricing plans designed to meet the diverse needs of businesses, with only 2 options to choose from; it makes it easier for business owners to make a decision regarding pricing. Choose the plan that suits your support requirements and budget, whether you’re a small team or a growing enterprise.

The support team faced spiking ticket volumes, numerous new customer accounts, and the need to shift to remote work. Sendcloud is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) company that allows users to generate packing slips and labels to help online retailers streamline their shipping process. Businesses should always consider a tool’s TCO before committing to a purchase.

Use HubSpot Service Hub to provide seamless, fast, and delightful customer service. Whether Intercom is cheaper than Zendesk depends on your specific usage, feature requirements, and the number of users in your organization. See how leading multi-channel consumer brands solve E2E customer data challenges with a real-time customer data platform.

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. Zendesk is a customer service software offering a comprehensive solution for managing customer interactions. 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. AI and ML make customer service functionalities like chatbots, sentiment analysis, ticket creation, and workflow automation possible.

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. Today, both companies offer a broad range of customer support features, making them both strong contenders in the market.

What can be really inconvenient about Zendesk is how their tools integrate with each other when you need to use them simultaneously. 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. All customer questions, be it via phone, chat, email, social media, or any other channel, are landing in one dashboard, where your agents can solve them quickly and efficiently. It guarantees continuous omnichannel support that meets customer expectations.

Its AI Chatbot, Fin, is particularly noted for handling complex queries efficiently. When it comes to advanced workflows and ticketing systems, Zendesk boasts a more full-featured solution. Due to our intelligent routing capabilities and numerous automated workflows, our users can free up hours to focus on other tasks.

You can always count on it if you need a reliable customer support platform to process tickets, support users, and get advanced reporting. Apart from a live chat, it has a feature called ‘Business Messenger’ that comes with its own AI chatbot. Moreover, Intercom bots can converse naturally with customers by using conversation starters, respond with self-help, and knowledge base articles. However, if you compare Zendesk vs Intercom chat in ease of use, the letter wins. Create a chatbot with minimal coding and customize it to your heart’s content. Zendesk is a customer service software company that provides businesses with a suite of tools to manage customer interactions.

While both platforms share the common goal of improving customer support, they differ in their approach and specialized functionalities. Understanding these differences is essential in determining which platform aligns better with a business’s specific needs and goals. The platform offers Zendesk Talk as its call center solution to keep up with other help desks. This feature is browser-based, so you don’t need additional software or hardware.

Powered by Explore, Zendesk’s reporting capabilities are pretty impressive. Right out of the gate, you’ve got dozens of pre-set report options on everything from satisfaction ratings and time in status to abandoned calls and Answer Bot resolutions. You can even save custom dashboards for a more tailored Chat PG reporting experience. One place Intercom really shines as a standalone CRM is its data utility. As with just about any customer support software, you can easily view standard user data within the messenger related to customer journey—things like recent pages viewed, activity, or contact information.

Intercom’s sales automation features encompass advanced functionalities like lead scoring, personalized lead nurturing, and streamlined pipeline management. These capabilities enable businesses to streamline their sales processes, prioritize leads effectively, and manage their sales pipelines with greater efficiency and precision. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. 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. However, it’s essential to consider the strengths of Zendesk, which offers a comprehensive and versatile customer support platform.

Leave your email below and a member of our team will personally get in touch to show you how Fullview can help you solve support tickets in half the time. Now that we’ve covered a bit of background on both Zendesk and Intercom, let’s dive into the features each platform offers. Pricing for both services varies based on the specific needs and scale of your business. When comparing the omnichannel support functionalities of Zendesk and Intercom, both platforms show distinct strengths and weaknesses.

Zendesk has a rating of 4.3 out of 5 stars, based on over 5,600 reviews. Intercom has a rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars, based on zendesk vs intercom over 2700 reviews. So, whether you’re a startup or a global giant, Zendesk’s got your back for top-notch customer support.

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. A helpdesk solution’s user experience and interface are crucial in ensuring efficient and intuitive customer support. 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.

While the pricing can be flexible, it may become more costly as your organization’s requirements and usage increase. Whether Zendesk can fully replace Intercom depends on your specific customer support and engagement requirements. For small companies and startups, Intercom offers a Starter plan — with a balanced suite of features from each of the solutions below — at $74 per month per user, billed annually. 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, Mailchimp, and Zapier.

There are several notable alternatives to Intercom in the customer support and engagement space, including Zendesk, Freshdesk, Help Scout, HubSpot, and Zoho Desk. There are several notable alternatives to Zendesk in the customer support and engagement space, including Intercom, Freshdesk, Help Scout, and Zoho Desk. For small companies and startups, Zendesk offers a six-month free trial of up to 50 agents redeemable for any combination of Zendesk Support and Sell products. Zendesk has over 1,300 integrations, compared to Intercom’s 300+ apps, making it the leader in this category. However, you can browse their respective sites to find which tools each platform supports. Intercom recently ramped up its features to include helpdesk and ticketing functionality.