Zendesk vs Intercom: Which is better?

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. 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.

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. Intecom’s pricing strategies are not as transparent as Zendesk’s pricing. 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.

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. In summary, choosing Zendesk and Intercom hinges on your business’s unique requirements and priorities. If you seek a comprehensive customer support solution with a strong emphasis on traditional ticketing, Zendesk is a solid choice, particularly for smaller to mid-sized businesses. In addition to Intercom vs Zendesk, alternative helpdesk solutions are available in the market.

If you’d want to test Intercom vs Zendesk before deciding on a tool for good, they both provide free trials for 14 days. But sooner or later, you’ll have to decide on the subscription plan, and here’s what you’ll have to pay. Well, I must admit, the tool is gradually transforming from a platform for communicating with users to a tool that helps you automate every aspect of your routine. Zendesk is a ticketing system before anything else, and its ticketing functionality is overwhelming in the best possible way.

Groove has put together an informative review of both brands to highlight the similarities and differences to allow you to make the right choice. If you’re part of a team or manage a team, then it’s quite common that you’d want to broadcast certain messages… All plans come with a 7-day free trial, and no credit card is required to sign up for the trial. Rated 5 stars out of 5 on G2, ThriveDesk is highly regarded by users. 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.

Learn more about the differences between leading chat support solutions Intercom and Zendesk so that you can choose the right tool for your needs. Zendesk, less user-friendly and with higher costs for quality vendor support, might not suit budget-conscious or smaller businesses. When comparing the automation and AI features of Zendesk and Intercom, both platforms come with unique strengths and weaknesses.

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. In the realm of user-friendliness, Zendesk clearly emerges as the superior choice. There are several notable alternatives Chat PG 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. Overall, when comparing Zendesk to Intercom, Zendesk’s features will probably win out over time.

Intercom Differentiation

Moreover, the best part is it also lets you send customized messages to various customers on the basis of their actions. When it comes to real-time analytics, Zendesk is winning our hearts. 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.

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. We will also consider customer feedback and reviews to provide insights into the usability of each platform. Intercom has a different approach, one that’s all about sales, marketing, and personalized messaging.

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’s pricing structure provides increasing levels of features and capabilities as businesses move up the tiers. This scalability allows organizations to adapt their support operations to their expanding customer base. Higher-tier plans in Zendesk come packed with advanced functionalities such as chatbots, customizable knowledge bases, and performance dashboards.

While deciding between Zendesk and Intercom, you should ensure the customization, AI automation, and functionalities align with your business goals. As we delve into the features of Zendesk, we can identify the following weaknesses regarding user experience. Whether Intercom is cheaper than Zendesk depends on your specific usage, feature requirements, and the number of users in your organization. Use HubSpot Service Hub to provide seamless, fast, and delightful customer service.

Picking customer service software to run your business is not a decision you make lightly. Zendesk has more pricing options, which means you’re free to choose your tier from the get-go. 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.

Automating onboarding messages, product guides, newsletters, and the list goes on. Intercom understands very well that email marketing is no more than a magic wand for building strong customer relations. Amid tight budgeting times, Desku proves to be the buddy for excellent worth and without any costly expenditure.

Zendesk Pricing Structure

The support documentation is incredibly lackluster, and it’s often impossible to know which guide to use as they have non-sensical terminology that makes even finding the appropriate guide very difficult. In terms of G2 ratings, Zendesk and Intercom are both well-rated platforms. 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 over 2700 reviews.

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. 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.

Zendesk AI is the intelligence layer that infuses CX intelligence into every step of the customer journey. In addition to being pre-trained on billions of real support interactions, our AI powers bots, agent and admin assist, and intelligent workflows that lead to 83 percent lower administrative costs. Customers have also noted that they can implement Zendesk AI five times faster than other solutions.

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. Zendesk and Intercom are robust tools with a wide range of customer service and CRM features. 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. On the other hand, Intercom, starting at a lower price point, could be more attractive for very small teams or individual users. However, additional costs for advanced features can quickly increase the total expense.

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. Zendesk is among the industry’s best ticketing and customer support software, and most of its additional functionality is icing on the proverbial cake.

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.

Intercom also excels in real-time chat solutions, making it a strong contender for businesses seeking dynamic customer interaction. This unpredictability in pricing might lead to higher costs, intercom vs zendesk 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​​​​.

Zendesk started as a customer support request SaaS, a legacy that continues today with its robust ticketing and customer messaging solutions. In contrast, Intercom aims to provide an all-in-one business communication platform to support, engage, and convert customers with sales and marketing functions. An example of the platforms’ different focus is that Intercom includes an email marketing feature, whereas Zendesk doesn’t. Intercom’s pricing structure offers different plans to cater to various customer support and engagement needs, accommodating users with different budgets.

Is it as simple as knowing whether you want software strictly for customer support (like Zendesk) or for some blend of customer relationship management and sales support (like Intercom)? 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 reporting experience.

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. It also provides mid-sized businesses with comprehensive customer relationship management software, as they require more advanced features to handle customer support.

Zendesk lets you chat with customers through email, chat, social media, or phone. The Intercom inbox is AI-enhanced and designed for speed and efficiency. No switching tools, no lost context, and no ticket backlogs—so your team can resolve complex issues faster. Test any of HelpCrunch pricing plans for free for 14 days and see our tools in action right away. If I had to describe Intercom’s helpdesk, I would say it’s rather a complementary tool to their chat tools.

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. 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. While some of these functionalities related to AI are included in the Zendesk suite, others are part of advanced AI add-ons.

And if you want to invest in making more sales and conversions with your help desk software, it may be worth it to put some money into Intercom for its uniquely conversational approach to front desk help. 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. When comparing the user interfaces (UI) of Zendesk and Intercom, both platforms exhibit distinct characteristics and strengths catering to different user preferences and needs. With ThriveDesk, you can supercharge your website’s growth and streamline customer interactions like never before. Yes, you can integrate the Intercom solution into your Zendesk account.

Integrations

The choice between the two depends on specific business needs and budget considerations. If you want to enjoy the benefits of both Zendesk and Intercom in one place and enjoy better value for money overall, Desku is a strong alternative. 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. Some businesses may require supplemental products to meet specific needs. Intercom’s CRM utility is a solid foundation for managing customer relationships and sales in one platform.

You can use Zendesk Sell to track tasks, streamline workflows, improve engagement, nurture leads, and much more. Intercom primarily focuses on messaging but offers limited channel breadth compared to Zendesk, requiring paid add-ons for critical channels like WhatsApp. Zendesk is designed with the agent in mind, delivering a modern, intuitive experience. The customizable Zendesk Agent Workspace enables reps to work within a single browser tab with one-click navigation across any channel. Intercom, on the other hand, can be a complicated system, creating a steep learning curve for new users.

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. At the same time, Zendesk looks slightly outdated and can’t offer some features. 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. However, it’s essential to recognize that Zendesk has its own array of strengths, particularly in its comprehensive and versatile customer support platform.

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 go puff. You can even improve efficiency and transparency by setting up task sequences, defining sales triggers, and strategizing with advanced forecasting and reporting tools. Starting at $19 per user per month, it’s also on the cheaper end of the spectrum compared to high-end CRMs like ActiveCampaign and HubSpot. 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.

Both the platforms have the knowledge base feature, and in my opinion, both of them are becoming winners. 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. For leading a successful business, communication is one of the keys. Customers will stay with you long if they are not getting any support from your company, especially when you are new to them.

Now that we’ve discussed the customer service-focused features of Zendesk and Intercom, let’s turn our attention to how these platforms can support sales and marketing efforts. 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.

But the most important thing is that you get a help desk that you believe in—and that you integrate it into a website as thoroughly as possible. With both tools, you can also use support bots to automatically suggest specific articles, track customers’ ratings, and localize help center content to serve your customers in their native language. 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 comparing Zendesk and Intercom, various factors come into play, each focusing on different aspects, strengths, and weaknesses of these customer support platforms. Intercom, on the other hand, is ideal for those focusing on CRM capabilities and personalized customer interactions.

In today’s business world, customer service is fast-paced, and customers have higher expectations. To enhance customer satisfaction, businesses must equip their teams with customer support solutions and customer service software. Its chat-based approach, automation capabilities, and chatbots are ideal for handling routine inquiries efficiently.

When comparing Zendesk and Intercom, evaluating their core features and functionalities is essential to determine which platform best suits your organization’s customer support needs. Let’s explore how Zendesk and Intercom stack up in terms of basic functionalities required by a helpdesk software. Experience targeted communication with Intercom’s automation and segmentation features. Create personalized messages for specific customer segments, driving engagement and satisfaction. You get a dashboard that makes creating, tracking, and organizing tickets easy. Onboard, educate, and notify customers with proactive messages on your website, mobile app, email, mobile push, or SMS.

Zendesk and Intercom offer help desk management solutions to their users. Intercom also offers scalability within its pricing plans, enabling businesses to upgrade to higher tiers as their support needs grow. With its integrated suite of applications, Intercom provides a comprehensive solution that caters to businesses seeking a unified ecosystem to manage customer interactions. This scalability ensures businesses can align their support infrastructure with their evolving requirements, ensuring a seamless customer experience. Intercom’s pricing typically includes different plans designed to accommodate businesses of various sizes and needs.

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. Intercom is the go-to solution for businesses seeking to elevate customer support and sales processes.

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. Plus, Zendesk’s integration with various channels ensures customers can always find a convenient way to reach out. Intercom, on the other hand, offers more advanced automation features than Zendesk. It allows businesses to automate a wide range of business interactions. Its automation tools help companies see automated responses and triggers based on the customer journey and response time.

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. They have a 2-day SLA, no phone support, and the times I have had to work with them they have been incredibly difficult to work with. Very rarely do they understand the issue (mostly with Explore) that I am trying to communicate to them.

Rest assured, ThriveDesk’s lightweight design and speed won’t impact the performance of your Wix-powered eCommerce website. The optimized agent interface ensures rapid responses for maximum efficiency, all while keeping your website running smoothly. This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data.

Although many people tout it as the solution for large businesses, its bottom pricing tier is a nice entry for any small business looking to add customer service to its front page. Zendesk’s Help Center and Intercom’s Articles both offer features to easily embed help centers into your website or product https://chat.openai.com/ using their web widgets, SDKs, and APIs. With help centers in place, it’s easier for your customers to reliably find answers, tips, and other important information in a self-service manner. Discover the differences between Zendesk’s all-around customer support solutions and Helpshift’s mobile-first…

If, after the additional prices they charge, the plan works for you, Intercom is a great way to manage your customer relationships. 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. Help desk software creates a sort of “virtual front desk” for your business.

• And we all know that receiving such continuous positive Customer feedback isn’t easy at all.
• AI helps businesses gain detailed insight into consumer data in real-time.
• Zendesk receives positive feedback for its intuitive interface, wide range of integrations, and robust reporting tools.
• Zendesk is designed with the agent in mind, delivering a modern, intuitive experience.

But keep in mind that Zendesk is viewed more as a support and ticketing solution, while Intercom is CRM functionality-oriented. Which means it’s rather a customer relationship management platform than anything else. 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.

It offers a chat-first approach, making it ideal for companies looking to prioritize interactive and personalized customer interactions. 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.

You can set up email sequences that specify how and when leads and contacts are engaged. With Zendesk Sell, you can also customize how deals move through your pipeline by setting pipeline stages that reflect your sales cycle. Using Zendesk, you can create community forums where customers can connect, comment, and collaborate, creating a way to harness customers’ expertise and promote feedback.

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. To that end, you can import themes or apply your own custom themes to brand your help center the way you want it. From there, you can include FAQs, announcements, and article guides and then save them into pre-set lists for your customers to explore. You can even moderate user content to leverage your customer community.

You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. Any business knows that the front desk is where everything happens. It’s where customers ask the questions that may result in the largest sales in your company’s history. But Intercom’s friendliness for growing companies is something you can’t afford to ignore. If your business is established and you need to cut down on those ticket resolution times, Zendesk may be worth it. See how leading multi-channel consumer brands solve E2E customer data challenges with a real-time customer data platform. Zendesk has over 1,300 integrations, compared to Intercom’s 300+ apps, making it the leader in this category.

Zendesk’s intuitive design caters to beginners and non-technical users, offering a seamless experience right from the start. 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. When comparing the pricing of Zendesk and Intercom, there are significant differences to take into account.

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. 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. Zendesk also packs some pretty potent tools into their platform, so you can empower your agents to do what they do with less repetition.

Intercom’s AI capabilities extend beyond the traditional chatbots; Fin is renowned for solving complex problems and providing safer, accurate answers. Fin’s advanced algorithm and machine learning enable the precision handling of queries. Fin enables businesses to set new standards for offering customer service. In addition to all these features, Suite Growth Plan offers light agents, multilingual support, multiple ticket forms, and a self-service customer portal.

Given that both of these platforms seem aimed at one sort of market or another, it shouldn’t surprise you that we might find a few gaps in the sorts of services they provide. But it’s also a given that many people will approach their reviews to Zendesk and Intercom with some specific missions in mind, and that’s bound to change how they feel about the platforms. 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 also offers a sales pipeline feature through its Zendesk Sell product.