Zendesk vs Intercom: A comprehensive comparison guide

Intercom’s help center allows you to draft and organize collections of articles, accessible to customers via a search bar in the Messenger widget. Intercom self-service chatbot widgets, highly customizable and capable of conversing in 32 different languages, embed into your website or application. While Intercom lacks some common customer-service channels like voice calling and video conferencing, it supports other unique features that transfer across channels.

• Zendesk’s per-agent pricing structure makes it a budget-friendly option for smaller teams, allowing costs to scale with team growth.
• Visit either of their app marketplaces and look up the Intercom Zendesk integration.
• The app includes features like automated messages and conversation routing — so businesses can manage customer conversations more efficiently.
• 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.
• While Intercom does not offer free trials, they do offer demo versions of each plan.

Both Zendesk and Intercom have integration libraries, and you can also use a connecting tool like Zapier for added integrations and add-ons. You get call recording, muting and holding, conference calling, and call blocking. Zendesk also offers callback requests, call monitoring and call quality notifications, among other telephone tools.

Zendesk offers more advanced automation capabilities than Intercom, which may be a deciding factor for businesses that require complex workflows. Zendesk is a great option for large companies or companies that are looking for a very strong sales and customer service platform. It offers more support features and includes more advanced analytics and reports. Intercom has a wider range of uses out of the box than Zendesk, though by adding Zendesk Sell, you could more than make up for it.

Intercom does not offer a native call center tool, so it cannot handle calls through a cloud-based phone system or calling app on its own. However, you can connect Intercom with over 40 compatible phone and video integrations. If you’re exploring popular chat support tools Zendesk and Intercom, you may be trying to understand which solution is right for you.

Intercom’s app store has popular integrations for things like WhatsApp, Stripe, Instagram, and Slack. There is a really useful one for Shopify to provide customer support for e-commerce operations. HubSpot and Salesforce are also available when support needs to work with marketing and sales teams. Moreover, for users who require more dedicated and personalized support, Zendesk charges an additional premium. These premium support services can range in cost, typically between $1,500 and $2,800. This additional cost can be a considerable factor for businesses to consider when evaluating their customer support needs against their budget constraints.

Intercom vs. Zendesk: Omnichannel Capabilities

When comparing the reporting and analytics features of Zendesk and Intercom, both platforms offer robust tools, but with distinct focuses and functionalities. This exploration aims to provide a detailed comparison, aiding businesses in making an informed decision that aligns with their customer service goals. Both Zendesk and Intercom offer robust solutions, but the choice ultimately depends on specific business needs. However, the right fit for your business will depend on your particular needs and budget.

It also includes a list of common questions you can browse through at the bottom of the knowledge base home page so you can find answers to common issues. There are many features to help bigger customer service teams collaborate more effectively — like private notes or a real-time view of who’s handling a given ticket at the moment, etc. At the same time, the vendor offers powerful reporting capabilities to help you grow and improve your business. Intercom isn’t quite as strong as Zendesk in comparison to some of Zendesk’s customer support strengths, but it has more features for sales and lead nurturing. The highlight of Zendesk’s ticketing software is its omnichannel-ality (omnichannality?).

Zendesk Pros and Cons

Zendesk for Service and Zendesk for Sales are sold as two separate solutions, each with three pricing plans, or tiers. Survey responses automatically save as data in users’ profiles, and Intercom provides survey data in analytics and reporting. Agents can participate in forums and turn forum posts into tickets; they also can turn community-post replies into articles for future customers. Community forums enable customers to assist each other by asking questions and sharing tips, experiences, and best practices–creating a unique, user-based, searchable information hub. When a customer asks a question in the Messenger widget, the Operator automatically suggests a handful of relevant articles based on keywords to help customers resolve their own issues.

Whether agents are facing customers via chat, email, social media, or good old-fashioned phone, they can keep it all confined to a single, easy-to-navigate dashboard. That not only saves them the headache of having to constantly switch between dashboards while streamlining resolution processes—it also leads to better customer and agent experience overall. Zendesk is among the industry’s best ticketing and customer support software, and most of its additional functionality is icing on the proverbial cake. Intercom, on the other hand, is designed to be more of a complete solution for sales, marketing, and customer relationship nurturing. Intercom built additional tools to aid in marketing and engagement to supplement its customer service solution.

Advanced workflows are useful to customer service teams because they automate processes that make it easier for agents to provide great customer service. Intercom also has an omnichannel customer service solution, but it’s fairly limited, with no native voice capabilities and minimal voice integrations. The Zendesk support system stands out in particular because of its enormous integration ecosystem, which includes a wide variety of plugins and applications developed by third-party developers. Chat PG The availability of this variety enables users to link Zendesk with a wide range of applications and services in a seamless manner, which results in a workflow that is more streamlined and efficient. Considering the huge number of connectors that Zendesk provides, it appears that the company takes a holistic approach to meeting the varied requirements of businesses. Based on such information, you can easily communicate with your customers and resolve their queries instantly.

But, you would not be able to experience such a good in-app messaging service on Zendesk. Amid tight budgeting times, Desku proves to be the buddy for excellent worth and without any costly expenditure. However, the approach is far much wider than merely focusing on what would be more cost-effective but instead exploring ways through which a solution that would suit you best could be realized. Because of the app called Intercom Messenger, one can see that their focus is less on the voice and more on the text. This is fine, as not every customer support team wants to be so available on the phone. The best help desks are also ticketing systems, which lets support reps create a support ticket out of issues that can then be tracked.

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They both offer some state-of-the-art core functionality and numerous unusual features. 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. Combine that with their prowess in automation and sales solutions, and you’ve got a really strong product that can handle myriad customer relationship needs.

At the same time, Zendesk looks slightly outdated and can’t offer some features. Agents can choose if the message is private or public, upon which a group thread is initiated in the ticket’s sidebar, where participants can chat and add files. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. In fact, agents can even add customers to private messaging chats when necessary, and the customer will receive the whole conversation history by email to ensure they’re up to date.

Zendesk, on the other hand, has revamped its security since its security breach in 2016. With Zendesk, you can anticipate customer questions, allowing for shorter reply periods. With its CRM, you have the ability to place your clients in your sales funnels and follow through with them until conversion. Since Zendesk has many features, it takes a while to learn how to use the options you’ll be needing. In terms of pricing, Intercom is considered one of the most expensive tools on the market.

Support that doesn’t wait

Intercom is more for improving sales cycle and customer relationships, while Zendesk has everything a customer support representative can dream about, but it does lack wide email functionality. On the other hand, it provides call center functionalities, unlike Intercom. Overall, I actually liked Zendesk’s user experience better than Intercom’s in terms of its messaging dashboard.

You get multiple support channels at no extra cost with over 1000 APIs and integrations. Zendesk is renowned for its comprehensive toolset that aids in automating customer service workflows and fine-tuning chatbot interactions. Its strengths are prominently seen in multi-channel support, with effective email, social media, and live chat integrations, coupled with a robust internal knowledge base for agent support. On the contrary, Intercom is far less predictable when it comes to pricing and can cost hundreds/thousands of dollars per month. But this solution is great because it’s an all-in-one tool with a modern live chat widget, allowing you to easily improve your customer experiences.

What is the difference between Zendesk and Intercom?

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. So when it comes to chatting features, the choice is not really Intercom vs Zendesk. You need a complete customer service platform that’s seamlessly integrated and AI-enhanced. Intercom plan prices are determined based on your specific business needs, so interested users must contact them for specific price details.

Both options are well designed, easy to use, and share some pretty key functionality like behavioral triggers and omnichannel-ality (omnichannel-centricity?). But with perks like more advanced chatbots, intercom vs. zendesk automation, and lead management capabilities, Intercom could have an edge for many users. You could technically consider Intercom a CRM, but it’s really more of a customer-focused communication product.

Live chat add-on provides you with personal customer communication (via the web, mobile, and messaging) without interrupting their experience. Once you add live chat to your website, your visitors will be able to reach you through the chat widget. I tested both of their live chats and their support agents were answering in very quickly and right to the point. Zendesk team can be just a little bit faster depending on the time of the day.

These products range from customer communication tools to a fully-fledged CRM. Why don’t you try something equally powerful yet more affordable, like HelpCrunch? Users can benefit from using Intercom’s CX platform and AI software as a standalone tool for business messaging. 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. We make it easy for anyone within your company to access contextual customer information—including their conversation and purchase history—to provide better experiences.

• You can construct an omnichannel suite by combining productivity, e-commerce, CRM, analytics, social media, and other applications.
• 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.
• Knowledge Base is one of the self-service sections that includes articles or documents providing technical help to customers and employees.
• Although Zendesk isn’t hard to use, it’s not a perfectly smooth experience either.
• Zendesk’s user face is quite intuitive and easy to use, allowing customers to quickly find what they are looking for.

The learning and knowledgebase category is another one where it is a close call between Zendesk and Intercom. However, we will say that Intercom just edges past Zendesk when it comes to self-service resources. You can choose from a selection of templates that will match your brand, or you can start creating your design from scratch.

Zendesk vs Intercom for customer support

Broken down into custom, resolution, and task bots, these can go a long way in taking repetitive tasks off agents’ plates. Agents can use basic automation (like auto-closing tickets or setting auto-responses), apply list organization to stay on top of their tasks, or set up triggers to keep tickets moving automatically. Here are our top reporting and analytics features and an overview of where Intercom’s reporting limitations lie. Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption is used by Intercom, a customer communication tool, to keep data sent between users and the platform safe.

Intercom is a customer support platform known for its effective messaging and automation, enhancing in-context support within products, apps, or websites. It features the Intercom Messenger, which works with existing support tools for self-serve or live 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. Zendesk is a customer service software company that provides businesses with a suite of tools to manage customer interactions.

Intercom regularly hosts webinars that are recorded and stored for future reference. While Intercom does not offer free trials, they do offer demo versions of each plan. Administrator reports allow managers to observe real-time CSAT scores, conversation volume, first response time, and time to close. Below, we’ve compared the usability of Zendesk’s and Intercom’s agent dashboards and administrator controls. Zendesk Sales Engagement Tools (Reach) uses a credit system to help you find new leads or add information to existing leads. Create code-free screencast tours of products, websites, webpages, and applications within your website.

The company was founded in 2007 and today serves over 170,000 customers worldwide. Zendesk’s mission is to build software designed to improve customer relationships. They have a dedicated help section that provides instructions on how to set up and effectively use Intercom.

Its AI Chatbot, Fin, is particularly noted for handling complex queries efficiently. The strength of Zendesk’s UI lies in its structured and comprehensive environment, adept at managing numerous customer interactions and https://chat.openai.com/ 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.

Intercom’s chatbot feels a little more robust than Zendesk’s (though it’s worth noting that some features are only available at the Engage and Convert tiers). You can set office hours, live chat with logged-in users via their user profiles, and set up a chatbot. Customization is more nuanced than Zendesk’s, but it’s still really straightforward to implement. You can opt for code via JavaScript or Rails or even integrate directly with the likes of Google Tag Manager, WordPress, or Shopify. Zendesk’s help center tools should also come in handy for helping customers help themselves—something Zendesk claims eight out of 10 customers would rather do than contact support.

Without a doubt Zendesk is the most popular help desk sofware out there, this doesn’t mean that there is no competition. Zendesk will best suit you if you are planning to expand or you already own a large company that will require advanced features like advanced analytics and reporting, segmentation or retargeting. It has a lot of great features that help us provide a great customer support service which is important for a successful business. Both Zendesk and Intercom are customer support management solutions that offer features like ticket management, live chat and messaging, automation workflows, knowledge centers, and analytics.