Zendesk vs Intercom: Which is better?

Difference between Intercom vs Zendesk Median Cobrowse

zendesk vs. intercom

However, there are occasional criticisms regarding the effectiveness of its AI chatbot and some interface navigation challenges. The overall sentiment from users indicates a satisfactory level of support, although opinions vary. Intercom also excels in real-time chat solutions, making it a strong contender for businesses seeking dynamic customer interaction.

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. In the realm of automation and workflow management, Zendesk truly shines as a frontrunner. It empowers businesses with a robust suite of automation tools, enabling them to streamline their support processes seamlessly. Zendesk allows for the creation of predefined rules and workflows that efficiently route tickets to the appropriate agents, ensuring swift and precise issue resolution.

Intercom Differentiation

Choose the plan that suits your support requirements and budget, whether you’re a small team or a growing enterprise. As your business grows, so does the volume of customer inquiries and support tickets. Managing everything manually is becoming increasingly difficult, and you need a robust customer support platform to streamline your operations. When comparing the reporting and analytics features of Zendesk and Intercom, both platforms offer robust tools, but with distinct focuses and functionalities.

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. Zendesk also packs some pretty potent tools into their platform, so you can empower your agents to do what they do with less repetition. 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. Zendesk and Intercom offer various pricing plans, but Intercom is generally more expensive.

In addition to Intercom vs Zendesk, alternative helpdesk solutions are available in the market. ThriveDesk is a feature-rich helpdesk solution that offers a comprehensive set of tools to manage customer support effectively. One of Zendesk’s standout features that we need to shine a spotlight on is its extensive marketplace of third-party zendesk vs. intercom integrations and extensions. Imagine having the power to connect your helpdesk solution with a wide range of tools and applications that your team already uses. Whether it’s syncing data with your CRM, enhancing communication via messaging platforms, or automating tasks with productivity apps, Zendesk makes it possible.

Zendesk is renowned for its comprehensive range of functionalities, including advanced email ticketing, live chat, phone support, and a vast knowledge base. Its ability to seamlessly integrate with various applications further amplifies its versatility. Novo has been a Zendesk customer since 2019 but didn’t immediately start taking full advantage of all our features and capabilities. 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.

Automation

Here comes Desku as the strong competitor, which can effectively substitute Zendesk and Intercom. Desku provides a user-friendly platform with robust features that enable easy transition during the migration from other support systems. Intercom stands out here due to its ability  to tailor sales workflows. You can also set up interactive product tours to highlight new features in-product and explain how they work.

Experience targeted communication with Intercom’s automation and segmentation features. Create personalized messages for specific customer segments, driving engagement and satisfaction. Hivers offers round-the-clock proactive support across all its plans, ensuring that no matter the time or issue, expert assistance is always available.

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. Though Zendesk now considers itself to be a “service-first CRM company,” since its founding in 2007, their bread and butter offering has leaned much more heavily toward the “service” part of that equation. Keeping this general theme in mind, I’ll dive deeper into how each software’s features compare, so you can decide which use case might best fit your needs. Let’s compare Intercom and Zendesk using the help desk features they have. Essentially, Desku is not an option but a reliable replacement for Zendesk and Intercom that companies can rely on at lower costs and improved performance.

However, it’s essential to recognize that Zendesk has its own array of strengths, particularly in its comprehensive and versatile customer support platform. Both Zendesk and Intercom are customer support management solutions that offer features like ticket management, live chat and messaging, https://chat.openai.com/ automation workflows, knowledge centers, and analytics. Zendesk has traditionally been more focused on customer support management, while Intercom has been more focused on live support solutions like its chat solution. Zendesk and Intercom offer help desk management solutions to their users.

zendesk vs. intercom

The platform is recognized for its ability to resolve a significant portion of common questions automatically, ensuring faster response times. 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. Intercom built additional tools to aid in marketing and engagement to supplement its customer service solution. But we doubled down and created a truly full-service CX solution capable of handling any support request.

Zendesk is ideal for businesses seeking to enhance their customer service processes and maintain a high level of customer satisfaction across all communication channels. Determining whether Zendesk is better than Intercom hinges on your unique customer support and engagement requirements. Zendesk excels as a robust and versatile customer support platform, offering comprehensive tools for managing customer inquiries and support operations across various channels. If your business values a feature-rich and customizable solution for customer interactions, Zendesk may be the better choice. It’s known for its unified agent workspace which combines different communication methods like email, social media messaging, live chat, and SMS, all in one place. This makes it easier for support teams to handle customer interactions without switching between different systems.

Those same tools also increase customer retention by 27% while saving 23% on sales and marketing costs. It introduces shared inboxes tailored for different teams, such as sales, marketing, and customer success. These shared inboxes facilitate seamless customer interactions across multiple channels, ensuring that teams can collaborate efficiently and maintain consistent, top-notch support. Determining whether Intercom can effectively replace Zendesk depends on your specific customer support and engagement requirements. When comparing the pricing of Zendesk and Intercom, there are significant differences to take into account.

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In this article, we will compare Intercom and Zendesk, highlighting their features, benefits, and drawbacks. 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. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. 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.

These are both still very versatile products, so don’t think you have to get too siloed into a single use case.

Because Intercom started as a live chat service, its messenger functionality is very robust. It feels very modern, and Intercom offers some advanced messenger features that Zendesk does not. Zendesk started in 2007 as a web-based SaaS product for managing incoming customer support requests. Since then, it has evolved into a full-fledged CRM that offers Chat PG a suite of software applications to its over 160,000 customers like Uber, Siemens, and Tesco. ThriveDesk is a help desk software tailor-made for businesses seeking extensive features and a powerful yet simple live chat assistant. Even better, it’s the most cost-effective, lightweight, and speedy live chat solution available for Shopify business owners.

Difference between Intercom vs Zendesk

Zendesk offers robust, pre-built reports for sales and support teams. Here are our top reporting and analytics features and an overview of where Intercom’s reporting limitations lie. In today’s world of fast-paced customer service and high customer expectations, it’s essential for business leaders to equip their teams with the best support tools available. Zendesk and Intercom both offer noteworthy tools, but if you’re looking for a full-service solution, there is one clear winner. But they also add features like automatic meeting booking (in the Convert package), and their custom inbox rules and workflows just feel a little more, well, custom. I’ll dive into their chatbots more later, but their bot automation features are also stronger.

In the dynamic landscape of customer support platforms, choosing between Zendesk and Intercom depends on various factors such as budget, specific business requirements, and long-term goals. While Zendesk excels in providing comprehensive customer service solutions and extensive integrations, Intercom stands out with its personalized messaging approach and sophisticated sales automation tools. Businesses should carefully evaluate their needs and consider scalability, user-friendliness, and integration capabilities before deciding on the platform that best suits their requirements.

They both offer some state-of-the-art core functionality and numerous unusual features. Zendesk is billed more as a customer support and ticketing solution, while Intercom includes more native CRM functionality. 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. Overall, I actually liked Zendesk’s user experience better than Intercom’s in terms of its messaging dashboard.

  • These capabilities enable businesses to streamline their sales processes, prioritize leads effectively, and manage their sales pipelines with greater efficiency and precision.
  • The Intercom vs. Zendesk pricing may be justified by the value-added services and minor features that they have for their all-in-one pricing.
  • The platform offers Zendesk Talk as its call center solution to keep up with other help desks.
  • Efficient customer service and support capabilities are fundamental for maintaining high customer satisfaction levels.
  • You can set up email sequences that specify how and when leads and contacts are engaged.

Intercom stands out for its modern and user-friendly messenger functionality, which includes advanced features with a focus on automation and real-time insights. 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.

The Zendesk chat tool has most of the necessary features like shortcuts (saved responses), automated triggers, and live chat analytics. 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. 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. 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, automation, and lead management capabilities, Intercom could have an edge for many users.

SF-based Zendesk cuts dozens of Calif. managers, 8% of staff – SFGATE

SF-based Zendesk cuts dozens of Calif. managers, 8% of staff.

Posted: Thu, 01 Jun 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]

Intercom enables customers to self-serve through its messaging platform. Agents can easily find resources for customers from their agent workspace. Intercom’s integration capabilities are limited, and some apps don’t integrate well with third-party customer service technology. This can make it more difficult to import CRM data and obtain complete context from customer data. For example, Intercom’s Salesforce integration doesn’t create a view of cases in Salesforce. Intercom also has an omnichannel customer service solution, but it’s fairly limited, with no native voice capabilities and minimal voice integrations.

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. You can use it for customer support, but that’s not its core strength. Both Intercom and Zendesk have proven to be valuable tools for businesses looking to provide excellent customer support. Evaluate their features, compare them based on your business needs, and choose the one that aligns best with your goals and objectives. Efficient customer service and support capabilities are fundamental for maintaining high customer satisfaction levels.

zendesk vs. intercom

If your organization aims to enhance customer engagement through live chat, in-app messaging, and proactive outreach, Intercom might serve as a viable alternative to Zendesk. Both solutions provide a campaign tool, live chat, and a knowledge base. We will compare those customer service solutions in terms of functionality and price. To begin with, putting help desk platforms “side by side” is a thankless job as software differs in functionality, price, and purposes. The compared vendors share a strategy of delivering their services as either separate add-ons or all-in-one tools.

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. Intercom, while differing from Zendesk, offers specialized features aimed at enhancing customer relationships. Founded as a business messenger, it now extends to enabling support, engagement, and conversion. 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.

  • Zendesk provides limited customer support for its basic plan users, along with costly premium assistance options.
  • Zendesk boasts an extensive array of integration options, with over 1,500 apps in its ecosystem.
  • With Zendesk Sell, you can also customize how deals move through your pipeline by setting pipeline stages that reflect your sales cycle.
  • For instance, it can use past interactions and behaviors to tailor recommendations or responses.
  • You can even finagle some forecasting by sourcing every agent’s assigned leads.
  • 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 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. Intercom is a customer relationship management (CRM) software company that provides a suite of tools for managing customer interactions. The company was founded in 2011 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California.

If not, then you should because it will ease much of your workload as you would not have to waste your precious time in finding the helpdesk operator, plus zero management issues. While both Zendesk and Intercom offer ways to track your sales pipeline, each platform handles the process a bit differently. Zendesk and Intercom both have an editor preview feature that makes it easier to add images, videos, call-to-action buttons, and interactive guides to your help articles.

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. Zendesk and Intercom also both offer analytics and reporting capabilities that allow businesses to analyze and monitor customer agents’ productivity. 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. This feature ensures that each customer request is handled by the best-suited agent, improving the overall efficiency of the support team.

When comparing the automation and AI features of Zendesk and Intercom, both platforms come with unique strengths and weaknesses. Intercom, on the other hand, is ideal for those focusing on CRM capabilities and personalized customer interactions. Intercom’s solution offers several use cases, meaning the product’s investments and success resources have a broad focus. But this also means the customer experience ROI tends to be lower than what it would be if you went with a best-in-class solution like Zendesk. However, as Monese grew and eyed a European expansion, it became clear that the company needed to centralize data in a single solution that would scale along with them.