Zendesk vs Intercom: An Honest Comparison in 2024

Once connected, you can add Zendesk Support to your Help Desk, and start creating Zendesk tickets from Intercom conversations. Before you start, you’ll need to retrieve your Zendesk credentials and create a Zendesk API key. You can do this by going to your settings within Zendesk (click on the cog on the left hand side), and navigating to API in the ‘Channels’ section. Even though Zendesk’s site does not clearly specify the duration of the free trial, other web resources state that it lasts for 30 days, which is twice as long as Intercom’s free trial. Intercom does not have a built-in call center solution, but you can integrate Intercom with other call center software.

Say what you will, but Intercom’s design and overall user experience leave all its competitors far behind. You can see their attention to detail — from tools to the website. If you want to test Intercom vs Zendesk before deciding on a tool for good, they both provide free 14-day trials. But sooner or later, you’ll have to decide on the subscription plan, and here’s what you’ll have to pay.

Reporting and analytics

It’s also highly customizable, so you can adjust it according to the style of your website or product. Intercom is more for improving sales cycles and customer relationships, while Zendesk, an excellent Intercom alternative, has everything a customer support representative can dream about. 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 regarding innovative and out-of-the-box features.

Connecting Zendesk Support and Zendesk Sell allows its customer service and sales-oriented wholesale team to work together effortlessly. Zendesk has sales forecasting features that leverage previous sales data to help predict future outcomes, including revenue growth, cash flow, and the likelihood of winning a deal. This data can help eliminate unwanted surprises and give your sales team valuable insights to improve their strategy. Pipedrive uses historical data to help predict cash flow and provide performance metrics for your sales team. With Zendesk, you can use lead tracking features to filter and segment your leads in real time.

By using its workforce management functionality, businesses can analyze employee performance, and implement strategies to improve them. Meanwhile, Intercom excels with its comprehensive AI automation capabilities, all built on a unified AI system. Intercom is a complete customer communication platform for small businesses. Still, considering that such companies do not have a large budget for investing in CRM software, they should carefully consider all plans. These pricing structures are flexible enough to cater to all business sizes and types.

If transparency in pricing is not an issue for you and you are a small business, contact Intercom. If, after the additional prices they charge, the plan works for you, Intercom is a great way to manage your customer relationships. Intercom also charges additional charges for specific features, such as charging $0.99 for every resolution. This eventually adds to overall business costs, so they carefully need to consider all plans and budgets before making a decision.

With Intercom, you’ll have more customizable options with the enterprise versions of the software, but you’ll have fewer lower-tier choices. If you don’t plan on building a huge enterprise just yet, we have to give the edge to Zendesk when it comes to flexible pricing options. Just as Zendesk, Intercom also offers its own Operator bot which will automatically suggest relevant articles to customers who ask for help. Intercom is 4 years younger than Zendesk and has fancied itself as a messaging platform right from the beginning. Intercom lets businesses send their customers targeted in-app messages. That being said, Intercom has an impressive array of features as well.

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. Intercom, on the other hand, was built for business messaging, so communication is one of their strong suits. 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. I tested both options (using Zendesk’s Suite Professional trial and Intercom’s Support trial) and found clearly defined differences between the two. Here’s what you need to know about Zendesk vs. Intercom as customer support and relationship management tools. That being said, while both platforms offer extensive features, they can be costly, especially for smaller enterprises.

In this article, we will show you step-by-step guidelines on how to create tickets in Zendesk from a conversation in Intercom using Custom Actions. Zendesk, just like its competitor, offers https://chat.openai.com/ a knowledge base solution that is easy to customize. Their users can create a knowledge repository to create articles or edit existing ones as per the changes in the services or product.

Pipedrive has workflow automation features, like setting triggers and desired actions, scheduling customer interactions, and automating lead assignment. However, one user noted that important features like automation are often down for an extensive amount of time. When selecting a sales CRM, you’ll want to consider its total cost of ownership (TCO).

AI is integral to customer relationship management software and facilitates consumer interactions. AI helps businesses gain detailed insight into consumer data in real-time. It also helps promote automation in routine tasks by automating repetitive processes and helps agents save time and errors. Intercom’s CRM can work as a standalone CRM and requires no additional service to operate robustly. It offers comprehensive customer data management and lead-tracking features.

Intercom’s reporting is average compared to Zendesk, as it offers some standard reporting and analytics tools. Its analytics do not provide deeper insights into consumer interactions as well. Zendesk offers robust reporting capabilities, providing businesses with detailed insights into consumer interactions, ticketing systems, agent performance, and more. Zendesk excels in its ticketing system, offering users an intuitive platform for collaboration among support agents.

So, you see, it’s okay to feel dizzy when comparing Intercom vs Zendesk. Given that we’re neither Intercom nor Zendesk, we ourselves were curious to see how these two titans of customer service differ. View your users’ Zendesk tickets in Intercom and create new ones directly from conversations. We will start syncing the last 24 hours of data from your Intercom account.

Knowledge base features

Automatically answer common questions and perform recurring tasks with AI. It also offers a Proactive Support Plus as an Add-on with push notifications, a series campaign builder, news items, and more. For large-scale businesses, the budget for such investments is usually higher than for startups, but they need to analyze if the investment is worth it. They need to comprehensively analyze if they are getting the value of the invested money. Our mission is to break apart what CRM is and means.Here we discuss anything that helps create more meaningful lasting work relationships.

It’s an opportunity for Zendesk to differentiate itself, but unfortunately it didn’t get very high marks from users, either. Reviewers were frustrated by how long it took for their tickets to get resolved, as well as the complexity with which they were tossed around from department to department. Given that these are two services predicated on making you better at customer support, you’d think they’d be able to handle it better themselves. However, reading the reviews, it’s probably more accurate to say that Zendesk is “mixed” on customer support, whereas Intercom doesn’t have a stellar record. Their help desk is a single inbox to handle customer requests, where your customer support agents can leave private notes for each other and automatically assign requests to the right people.

• Since, its name has become somewhat synonymous with customer service and support.
• 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.
• Intercom does not have a built-in call center solution, but you can integrate Intercom with other call center software.
• According to G2, Intercom has a slight edge over Zendesk with a 4.5-star rating, but from just half the number of users.
• You can also use Intercom as a customer service platform, but given its broad focus, you may not get the same level of specialized expertise.

While we wouldn’t call it a full-fledged CRM, it should be capable enough for smaller businesses that want a simple and streamlined CRM without the additional expenses or complexity. Plus, Intercom’s modern, smooth interface provides a comfortable environment for agents to work in. It even has some unique features, like office hours, real-time user profiles, and a high-degree of customization.

I’m pretty sure it’s a benchmark for other chat widgets out there. Zendesk has a broad range of security and compliance features to protect customer data privacy, such as SSO (single sign-on) and native content redaction for sensitive data. Zendesk has excellent reporting and analytics tools that allow you to decipher the underlying issues behind your help desk metrics. Discover how to awe shoppers with stellar customer service during peak season. Provide a clear path for customer questions to improve the shopping experience you offer.

It also provides seamless navigation between a unified inbox, teams, and customer interactions, while putting all the most important information right at your fingertips. This makes it easy for teams to prioritize tasks, stay aligned, and deliver superior service. Aura AI also excels in simplifying complex tasks by collecting data conversationally and automating intricate processes. When things get tricky, Aura AI smartly escalates the conversation to a human agent, ensuring that no customer is left frustrated. Plus, Aura AI’s global, multilingual support breaks down language barriers, making it an ideal solution for businesses with an international customer base. The dashboard follows a streamlined approach with a single inbox for customer inquiries.

When deciding on choosing between Zendesk or Pipedrive for your business, there is a lot to keep in mind. With Zendesk, you can connect your sales and support teams, empowering them with the information they need to deliver better customer experiences. On the other hand, Pipedrive doesn’t offer a customer service solution, limiting users to third-party integrations. If you’re still on the fence about which platform to choose, consider exploring Tidio as a strong alternative. Tidio stands out with its advanced AI-powered chatbots and seamless automated workflows, making customer interactions efficient and personalized.

For example, you can create a smart list that only includes leads that haven’t responded to your message, allowing you to separate prospects for lead nurturing. You can then leverage customizable sequences, email automation, and desktop text messaging to help keep these prospects engaged. Zendesk supports sales team productivity by syncing with your email to provide valuable data, like when your prospect opens, clicks, or replies to your email. You can also use Zendesk to automatically track and record sales calls, allowing you to focus your full attention on your customer rather than taking notes. It’s easy to move your valuable customer tickets and data from Zendesk to Intercom.

Intercom feels more wholesome and is more customer success oriented, but can be too costly for smaller companies. It’s much easier if you decide to go with the Zendesk Suite, which includes Support, Chat, Talk, and Guide tools. There are two options zendesk to intercom there — Professional for $109 or Enterprise for $179 if you pay monthly. The difference between the two is that the Professional subscription lacks some things like chat widget unbranding, custom agent roles, multiple help centers, etc.

They fall within roughly the same price range, that most SMEs and larger enterprises should find within their budget. Both also use a two-pronged pricing system, based on the number of agents/seats and the level of features needed. It’s definitely something that both your agents and customers will feel equally comfortable using. When comparing chatbots, it’s important to consider their level of intelligence, “trainability,” and customization. While both Zendesk and Intercom offer the essentials, like ticketing, issue resolution, and automation, the devil’s in the details when it comes to which is best for your unique 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. 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. Zendesk is billed more as a customer support and ticketing solution, while Intercom includes more native CRM functionality.

Similar to Zendesk, though, users praise its ease of use and feature set. While no area of concern really stands out, there are some complaints about the company’s billing practices. With over 160,000 customers across all industries and regions, Zendesk has the CX expertise to provide you with best practices and thought leadership to increase your overall value. But don’t just take our word for it—listen to what customers say about why they picked Zendesk. 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.

Plus, our transparent pricing doesn’t have hidden fees or endless add-ons, so customers know exactly what they’re paying for and can calculate the total cost of ownership ahead of time. In comparison, Intercom’s confusing pricing structure that features multiple add-ons may be unsuitable for small businesses. Pop-up chat, in-app messaging, and notifications are some of the highly-rated features of this live chat software. Zendesk is another popular customer service, support, and sales platform that enables clients to connect and engage with their customers in seconds. Just like Intercom, Zendesk can also integrate with multiple messaging platforms and ensure that your business never misses out on a support opportunity.

Unified sales and service platforms

As an avid learner interested in all things tech, Jelisaveta always strives to share her knowledge with others and help people and businesses reach their goals. When it comes to Intercom, it reserves SSO and identity management for its higher-priced tier plan as an add-on. Moreover, it lacks native content redaction for sensitive information. Discover how this Shopify store used Tidio to offer better service, recover carts, and boost sales. We’d also recommend checking out this blog on suspended ticket management in ZenDesk. Many use cases call for different approaches, and Zendesk and Intercom are but two software solutions for each case.

In a nutshell, none of the customer support software companies provide decent user assistance. The Intercom versus Zendesk conundrum is probably the greatest problem in customer service software. They both offer some state-of-the-art core functionality and numerous unusual features. Basically, if you have a complicated support process, go with Zendesk for its help desk functionality. If you’re a sales-oriented corporation, use Intercom for its automation options.

• With Zendesk, you can connect your sales and support teams, empowering them with the information they need to deliver better customer experiences.
• The software is known for its agile APIs and proven custom integration references.
• Zendesk offers robust reporting capabilities, providing businesses with detailed insights into consumer interactions, ticketing systems, agent performance, and more.
• Yes, you can localize the Messenger to work with multiple languages, resolve conversations automatically in multiple languages and support multiple languages in your Help Center.
• Furthermore, Intercom offers advanced automation features such as custom inbox rules, targeted messaging, and dynamic triggers based on customer segments.

If your data migration needs are very large, specific, complex, or don’t match the capabilities above, then there are other options available which may be more appropriate. After an in-depth analysis such as this, it can be pretty challenging for your business to settle with either option. That’s why it would be better to review where both the options would be ideal to use.

This will ensure you keep all your valuable ticket, user and company information and interactions with customers when moving to Intercom from Zendesk. Again, Zendesk has surpassed the number of reviewers when compared to Intercom. Some of the highly-rated features include ticket creation user experience, email to case, and live chat reporting. Zendesk has received a rating of 4.4 out of 5 from 2,693 reviewers. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. They’ve been rated as one of the easy live chat solutions with more integrated options. 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.

Zendesk offers simple chatbots and provides businesses with straightforward chatbot creation tools, allowing them to set up automated responses and assist customers with common queries. Zendesk may be unable to give the agents more advanced features or customization options for chatbots. On the contrary, Intercom’s pricing is far less predictable and can cost hundreds/thousands of dollars per month. But this solution wins because it’s an all-in-one tool with a modern live chat widget, allowing you to improve your customer experiences easily.

Check these 7 Zendesk alternatives to improve your customer support. Yes, you can integrate the Intercom solution into your Zendesk account. It will allow you to leverage some Intercom capabilities while keeping your account at the time-tested platform. 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.

Utilizing modern CRM software can help your sales team boost their productivity and sales performance. The difference in prices between plans is so significant because of the features each of them provides. Additional payment per active user or seat depends on a chosen service and a plan. Also, Intercom has a special proposition for early-stage startups, which can get Intercom’s pro products for $49/month for up to one year.

Intercom Versus Zendesk: Support

Customers want speed, anticipation, and a hyper-personalized experience conveniently on their channel of choice. Intelligence has become key to delivering the kinds of experiences customers expect at a lower operational cost. As more organizations adopt AI, it will be critical to choose a data model that aligns with how your business operates. Customer experience will be no exception, and AI models that are purpose-built for CX lead to better results at scale. Missouri Star Quilt Company is one of the world’s largest online retailers of fabric and quilting supplies, shipping thousands of orders a day. After struggling with different customer service solutions, Missouri Star Quilt Company turned to Zendesk for service and sales.

Zendesk’s customer support is also very fast, though their live chat is only available for registered users. The highlight of Zendesk is its help desk ticketing system, which brings several customer communication channels to one location. The software allows agents to switch between tickets seamlessly, leading to better customer satisfaction. Whether an agent wants to transition from live chat to phone or email with a customer, it’s all possible on the same ticketing page. For smaller teams that have to handle multiple tasks, do not forget to check JustReply.ai, which is a user-friendly customer support tool. It will seamlessly integrate with Slack and offers everything you need for your favorite communication platform.

With our commitment to quality and integrity, you can be confident you’re getting the most reliable resources to enhance your customer support initiatives. Intercom’s live chat reports aren’t just offering what your customers are doing or whether they are satisfied with your services. They offer more detailed insights like lead generation sources, a complete message report to track customer engagement, and detailed information on the support team’s performance. A collection of these reports can enable your business to identify the right resources responsible for bringing engagement to your business.

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. Also, their in-app messenger is worth a separate mention as it’s one of their distinctive tools (especially since Zendesk doesn’t really have one). With Intercom you can send targeted email, push, and in-app messages which can be based on the most relevant time or behavior triggers. On one hand, Zendesk offers a great many features, way more than Intercom, but it lacks in-app messenger and email marketing tools.

Compared to Zendesk, Intercom offers few integrations, which may hinder its scalability. The Zendesk sales CRM offers tiered pricing plans designed to support businesses of all sizes, from startups to enterprises. The Professional and Enterprise plans offer advanced features that build on those in the Team and Growth plans, including lead scoring, call scripts, and unlimited email sequences.

How to set up a regular sync of all public articles from your Zendesk Guide Help Center into Intercom. You can trigger the Custom action automatically through Automation workflows or Inbox Rules. Additionally, Zendesk is built to scale and has a low TCO, meaning your business can quickly get up and running without needing help from developers.

This method helps offer more personalized support as well as get faster response and resolution times. Today, amid the rise of omnichannel customer service, it offers a centralized location to manage interactions via email, live chat, social media, or voice calls. There are many features to help bigger customer service teams collaborate more effectively, such as private notes or a real-time Chat GPT view of who’s handling a given ticket at the moment. At the same time, the vendor offers powerful reporting capabilities to help you grow and improve your business. Why don’t you try something equally powerful yet more affordable, like HelpCrunch? Zendesk offers so much more than you can get from free CRMs or less robust options, including sales triggers to automate workflows.

This helps support teams to resolve customer issues without losing context. Moreover, you can track multiple requests through a single ticket. There’s plenty of information about customer support and ticketing software options. Read these resources to learn more about why users choose Zendesk vs Intercom.

You get to engage with them further and get to know more about their expectations. This becomes the perfect opportunity to personalize the experience, offer assistance to prospects as per their needs, and convert them into customers. This live chat software provider also enables your business to send proactive chat messages to customers and engage effectively in real-time. This is one of the best ways to qualify high-quality leads for your business and improve your chances of closing a sale faster.

Zendesk is an all-in-one omnichannel platform offering various channel integrations in one place. The dashboard of Zendesk is sleek, simple, and highly responsive, offering a seamless experience for managing customer interactions. Tracking the ticket progress enables businesses to track what part of the resolution customer complaint has reached. On the other hand, Intercom catches up with Zendesk on ticket handling capabilities but stands out due to its automation features. Intercom’s large series of bots obviously run on automations as well.

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. In the world of business, customer relationships are a valuable asset. Many businesses turn to customer relationship management (CRM) software to help improve customer relations and assist in sales. When you see pricing plans starting for $79/month, you should get a clear understanding of how expensive other plans can become for your business. What’s worse, Intercom doesn’t offer a free trial to its prospect to help them test the product before onboarding with their services. Instead, they offer a product demo when prospects reach out to learn more about their pricing structure.

If you create a new chat with the team, land on a page with no widget, and go back to the browser for some reason, your chat will puff. Many businesses need a capable and user-friendly help desk system. Often, it’s a centralized platform for managing inquiries and issues from different channels. Let’s look at how help desk features are represented in our examinees’ solutions.

Agents can easily view ongoing interactions, and take over from Aura AI at any moment if they feel intervention is needed. Our AI also accelerates query resolution by intelligently routing tickets and providing contextual information to agents in real-time. To make your ticket handling a breeze, Customerly offers an intuitive, all-in-one platform that consolidates customer inquiries from various channels into a unified inbox. Intercom is a customer-focused communication platform with basic CRM capabilities.

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. Luca Micheli is a serial tech entrepreneur with one exited company and a passion for bootstrap digital projects. He’s passionate about helping companies to succeed with marketing and business development tips. However, for more advanced CRM needs like lead management and sales forecasting, Intercom may not make the cut, unfortunately. What’s even cooler is its ability to use AI to forecast customer behavior.

While both Zendesk and Intercom tick both those boxes, they each have their own distinct style. Use ticketing systems to efficiently manage high ticket volume, deliver timely customer support, and boost agent productivity. Intercom is an all-in-one solution, and compared to Zendesk, Intercom has a less intuitive design and can be complicated for new users to learn. It also offers a confusing pricing structure and fewer integrations, making it less scalable and cost-effective. Customer expectations are already high, but with the rise of AI, customers are expecting even more.

If you are looking for more integration options and budget is not an issue, Intercom can be the perfect live chat solution for your business. It is also ideal for businesses who are searching for conversational chatbot functionality. Their AI-powered chatbot can enable your business to boost engagement and improve marketing efforts in real-time.

If I had to describe Intercom’s help desk, I would say it’s rather a complementary tool to their chat tools. It’s great, it’s convenient, it’s not nearly as advanced as the one by Zendesk. Boost your lead gen and sales funnels with Flows – no-code automation paths that trigger at crucial moments in the customer journey.

You can even finagle some forecasting by sourcing every agent’s assigned leads. You could say something similar for Zendesk’s standard service offering, so it’s at least good to know they have Zendesk Sell, a capable CRM option to supplement it. You can use Zendesk Sell to track tasks, streamline workflows, improve engagement, nurture leads, and much more. Customerly allows you to rate prospects, either manually or automatically, so you can prioritize the most valuable leads.

Zendesk has more pricing options, and its most affordable plan is likely cheaper than Intercom’s, although without exact Intercom numbers, it is not easy to truly know the cost. If you require a robust helpdesk with powerful ticketing and reporting features, Zendesk is the better choice, particularly for complex support queries. Customerly’s CRM is designed to help businesses build stronger relationships by keeping customer data organized and actionable.

This will provide live data on who your users are and what they do in your app. 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 detailed reports that can be shared with others and enable team members to collaborate on them simultaneously. You can either track your performance on a pre-built dashboard or customize and build one for yourself. This customized dashboard will help you see metrics that you’d like to focus on regularly.

Help desk SaaS is how you manage general customer communication and for handling customer questions. Zendesk is quite famous for designing its platform to be intuitive and its tools to be quite simple to learn. 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.