Zendesk vs Intercom: A comparison guide for 2024

If you thought Zendesk prices were confusing, let me introduce you to the Intercom charges. It’s virtually impossible to predict what you’ll pay for Intercom at the end of the day. 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. Zendesk also has an Answer Bot, which instantly takes your knowledge base game to the next level.

The software enables omnichannel support for communication channels, including email, phone, live chat, and social media. HappyFox is a cloud-based IT help desk solution designed to help support teams stay organized and deliver customer service. The help desk features a ticketing system that creates tickets from email, voice, live chat, messaging, social media, and web form requests and routes them to its shared inbox. 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.

Zendesk offers more flexibility with its pricing options and also has free services. In addition, the costs of Zendesk’s services are slightly easier to calculate. However, regardless of whether your choice is Zendesk or Intercom, you will be spending some time trying to figure out how much you will pay for the services. 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. Zendesk also has the Answer Bot, which can take your knowledge base game to the next level instantly.

Finally, you’ll have to choose your reporting preferences including details about what you’ll be tracking and how often you want to be reported of changes. By the end of the article, you’ll not only know all of the main differences between Zendesk and Intercom, but you’ll know which is the right tool for you. Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page.

• They’re customizable and easy to interoperate with your company’s internal systems.
• 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.
• One place Intercom really shines as a standalone CRM is its data utility.
• Chat agents also get a comprehensive look at their entire customer’s journey, so they will have a better idea of what your customers need, without needing to ask many questions.

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. 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. Now that we know a little about both tools, it is time to make an in-depth analysis and identify which one of these will be perfect for your business.

Integrations are the best way to enhance the toolkit of your apps by connecting them for interoperable actions and features. Both Zendesk and Intercom have integration libraries, and you can also use a connecting tool like Zapier for added integrations and add-ons. Zendesk’s mobile app is also good for ticketing, helping you create new support tickets with macros and updates. It’s also good for sending and receiving notifications, as well as for quick filtering through the queue of open tickets. The main idea here is to rid the average support agent of a slew of mundane and repetitive tasks, giving them more time and mental energy to help customers with tougher issues. You get call recording, muting and holding, conference calling, and call blocking.

Keeps your business in sync

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)? You can create articles, share them internally, group them for users, and assign them as responses for bots—all pretty standard fare. Intercom can even integrate with Zendesk and other sources to import past help center content.

With a very streamlined design, Intercom’s interface is far better than many alternatives, including Zendesk. It has a very intuitive design that goes far beyond its platform and into its articles, product guides, and even its illustrations. Users also point out that it can take a couple of hours to get used to the flow of tickets, which doesn’t happen in CRM, and they aren’t pleased with the product’s downtime.

For example, Zendesk offers expertise and guidance to help you deploy the software seamlessly and works with you so you can get the most value out of it. With quality support, you can grow your network, learn best practices, and strengthen your business strategy. Help desk software with out-of-the-box functionality can help your business see a faster return on investment (ROI). Look for help desk software that features an intuitive, agent-friendly interface with easy customization options and simple admin. Consider help desk software that offers a variety of pre-built, third-party integrations.

Intercom has a dark mode that I think many people will appreciate, and I wouldn’t say it’s lacking in any way. But I like that Zendesk just feels slightly cleaner, has easy online/away toggling, more visual customer journey notes, and a handy widget for exploring the knowledge base on the fly. Triggers should prove especially useful for agents, allowing them to do things like automate notifications for actions like ticket assignments, ticket closing/reopening, or new ticket creation. Their template triggers are fairly limited with only seven options, but they do enable users to create new custom triggers, which can be a game-changer for agents with more complex workflows. Zendesk also packs some pretty potent tools into their platform, so you can empower your agents to do what they do with less repetition.

If you’re looking for a comprehensive solution with lots of features and integrations, then Zendesk would be a good choice. On the other hand, if you need something that is more tailored to your customer base and is less expensive, then Intercom might be a better fit. Intercom stands out for its modern and user-friendly messenger functionality, which includes advanced features with a focus on automation and real-time insights.

A help desk primarily provides assistance and resolves specific user issues or incidents. Consider an open, flexible, and agile help desk solution that easily integrates with the rest of your tech stack. It should scale with your growing business and evolve with the changing technology.

Zendesk has traditionally been more focused on customer support management, while Intercom has been more focused on live support solutions like its chat solution. 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.

You can also contact Zendesk support 24/7, whereas Intercom support only has live agents during business hours. Since Zendesk has many features, it takes a while to learn how to use the options you’ll be needing. We hope this list has provided you with a better grasp of each platform and its features. Remember that there is no one-size-fits-all solution, and the optimal platform for you will be determined by your individual demands.

Intercom Alternatives for 2024: Discover Budget-Friendly Solutions

Meanwhile, our WFM software enables businesses to analyze employee metrics and performance, helping them identify improvements, implement strategies, and set long-term goals. Help desk workflows are predefined sequences of actions and rules that automate and guide the processing of support tickets or tasks. These workflows streamline the resolution process, ensuring the consistently efficient handling of customer issues. Users can design custom workflows to automate repetitive tasks, route and assign tickets to the right agents or teams, and implement predefined actions based on certain triggers or conditions. The right integrations can extend the functionality and capabilities of your help desk systems to get a 360-degree view of the customer.

• Some of the links that appear on the website are from software companies from which CRM.org receives compensation.
• However, it is possible Intercom’s support is superior at the premium level.
• The platform offers a ticketing system, allowing users to create, categorize, and prioritize support tickets.
• The cheapest (aka Essential) ‘All of Intercom’ package will cost you $136 per month, but if you only need their essential chat tools only, you can get them for $49 per month.

Unlike Intercom, Zendesk is scalable, intuitively designed for CX, and offers a low total cost of ownership. 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. Both Zendesk and Intercom offer compelling features and capabilities aimed at improving customer service through efficient ticketing systems. Zendesk is a robust choice for businesses seeking quick setup, scalability, and powerful AI-driven support.

With intelligence infused across the entire service experience, Zendesk helps your support team resolve issues faster with innovative AI-powered tools. Zendesk sets up fast and integrates seamlessly with the wider business ecosystem, resulting in a lower total cost of ownership and faster time to value. Though often referred to interchangeably, help desk software and service desk software have a few differences.

Zendesk, on the other hand, has revamped its security since its security breach in 2016. It is now trusted by multiple Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 companies. 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. It’s divided into about 20 topics with dozens of articles each, so navigating through it can be complicated. There are many powerful integrations included, such as Salesforce, HubSpot, Mailchimp, Slack, and Zapier.

What can be really inconvenient about Zendesk is how their tools integrate with each other when you need to use them simultaneously. The Help Center software by Intercom is also a very efficient tool. You can publish your self-service resources, divide them by categories, and integrate them with your messenger to accelerate the whole chat experience. You can create dozens of articles in a simple, intuitive WYSIWYG text editor, divide them by categories and sections, and customize with your custom themes. 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.

If you’d want to test Zendesk and Intercom before deciding on a tool for good, they both provide free trials. Intercom has a standard trial period for a SaaS product which is 14 days, while Zendesk offers a 30-day trial. It’s modern, it’s smooth, it looks great and it https://chat.openai.com/ has so many advanced features. I’m pretty sure it’s a benchmark for other chat widgets out there. 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.

That being said the customer support for both Zendesk and Intercom is lacking. Intercom’s chatbots and product tours differentiate it from Zendesk. The platform is evolving from a platform for engaging with consumers to a tool that assists you in automating every element of your daily routine. Customers of Zendesk can purchase priority assistance at the enterprise tier, which includes a 99.9% uptime service level agreement and a 1-hour service level goal. At all tiers, there is an additional fee to work with a member of the Zendesk success team on unique engagements. Leave your email below and a member of our team will personally get in touch to show you how Fullview can help you solve support tickets in half the time.

It can automatically suggest relevant articles for agents during business hours to share with clients, reducing your support agents’ workload. If delivering an outstanding customer experience and employee experience is your top priority, Zendesk should be your top pick over Intercom. Zendesk has the CX expertise to help businesses of all sizes scale their service experience without compromise. In today’s environment, where customer expectations are constantly evolving, choosing the right ticketing tool that aligns with your business needs is crucial.

Just like Intercom, Zendesk can also integrate with multiple messaging platforms and ensure that your business never misses out on a support opportunity. Zendesk is one of the biggest players in the realm of customer support platforms. In 2016, Zendesk reported that 87,000 paid customers from over 150 countries used its products.

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. So you see, it’s okay to feel dizzy when comparing Zendesk vs Intercom platforms. 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.

With AI and automation, help desk software can help teams reduce manual work. Businesses constantly strive to implement systems that help their teams provide great employee and customer experiences. According to the Zendesk Customer Experience Trends Report 2024, 80 percent of customers expect chat agents and support representatives to assist them with everything they need. Implementing help desk software using the right tools and channels is crucial to meet evolving customer expectations. Zendesk, just like its competitor, offers 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.

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. Basically, you can create new articles, divide them by categories and sections — make it a high end destination for customers when they have questions or issues. If you’re a huge corporation with a complicated customer support process, go Zendesk for its help desk functionality. If you’re smaller more sales oriented startup with enough money, go Intercom.

Hivers offers round-the-clock proactive support across all its plans, ensuring that no matter the time or issue, expert assistance is always available. This 24/7 support model is designed to provide continuous, real-time solutions to clients, enhancing the overall reliability and responsiveness of Hivers’ services. When comparing the reporting and analytics features of Zendesk and Intercom, both platforms offer robust tools, but with distinct focuses and functionalities.

Zendesk AI was modeled on the world’s largest CX-specific dataset. With Zendesk, you get next-level AI-powered support software that’s intuitively designed, scalable, and cost-effective. Compare Zendesk vs. Intercom and future-proof your business with reliable, easy-to-use software.

Intercom’s dashboards may not be as aesthetically pleasing as Zendesk’s, but they still allow users to navigate their tools with few distractions. Zendesk has more pricing options, and its most affordable plan is likely cheaper Chat GPT than Intercom’s, although without exact Intercom numbers, it is not easy to truly know the cost. As for Intercom’s general pricing structure, there are three plans, but you’ll have to contact them to get exact prices.

Intercom is a customer support messenger, bot, and live chat service provider that empowers its clients to provide instant support in real-time. This SaaS leader entered into the competition in 2011, intending to help its clients reach their target audiences and engage them in a conversation right away. So yeah, two essential things that Zendesk lacks in comparison to Intercom are in-app messages and email marketing tools.

I just found Zendesk’s help center to be slightly better integrated into their workflows and more customizable. 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.

Broken down into custom, resolution, and task bots, these can go a long way in taking repetitive tasks off agents’ plates. 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.

With Intercom, you can keep track of your customers and what they do on your website in real time. Like Zendesk, Intercom allows you to chat with online visitors and assist with their issues. If you want both customer support and CRM, you can choose between paying $79 or $125 per month per user, depending on how many advanced features you require.

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. What’s really nice about this is that even within a ticket, you can switch between communication modes without changing views. So if an agent needs to switch from chat to phone to email (or vice versa) with a customer, it’s all on the same ticketing page. There’s even on-the-spot translation built right in, which is extremely helpful. You need a complete customer service platform that’s seamlessly integrated and AI-enhanced.

Key takeaways 🔑🥡🍕

Both Zendesk and Intercom have knowledge bases to help customers get the most out of their platforms. In this article, we’ll compare Zendesk vs Intercom to find out which is the right customer support tool for you. Zendesk is primarily a ticketing system, and its ticketing capability is overwhelming in the best conceivable manner. All client contacts, whether via phone, chat, email, social media, or any other channel, land in one dashboard, where your agents can quickly and efficiently resolve them.

Key offerings include automated support with help center articles, a messenger-first ticketing system, and a powerful inbox to centralize customer queries. Choosing the right customer service platform is pivotal for enhancing business-client interactions. In this context, Zendesk and Intercom emerge as key contenders, each offering distinct features tailored to dynamic customer service environments. The primary function of Intercom’s mobile app is the business messenger suite, including personalized messaging, real-time support tools, push notifications, in-app messaging and emailing. Intercom also does mobile carousels to help please the eye with fresh designs. Intercom, of course, allows its customer support team to collaborate and communicate too, but overall, Zendesk wins this group.

Help Scout also offers over 100 integrations in their app marketplace. Satisfy customers by meeting them where they are via the Zendesk Agent Workspace, a unique tool that provides a unified view of the entire customer journey. Zendesk directly competes with Intercom when zendesk vs intercom it comes to integrations. This live chat service provider offers 200+ integrations to its user base. With a mix of productivity, collaboration, eCommerce, CRM, analytics, email marketing, social media, and other tools, you get the option to create an omnichannel suite.

In this paragraph, let’s explain some common issues that users usually ask about when choosing between Zendesk and Intercom platforms. 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. 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 I had to describe Intercom’s helpdesk, I would say it’s rather a complementary tool to their chat tools.

Zendesk offers a free 30-day trial, after which customers will need to upgrade to one of their paid plans. 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. Zendesk has many amazing team collaboration and communication features, like whisper mode, which lets multiple agents chime in to help each other without the customer knowing. There is also something called warm transfers, which let one rep add contextual notes to a ticket before transferring it to another rep. You also get a side conversation tool.

You could technically consider Intercom a CRM, but it’s really more of a customer-focused communication product. It isn’t as adept at purer sales tasks like lead management, list engagement, advanced reporting, forecasting, and workflow management as you’d expect a more complete CRM to be. 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.

This enables them to speed up the support process and build experiences that customers like. With a multi-channel ticketing system, Zendesk Support helps you and your team to know exactly who you’re talking to and keep track of tickets throughout all channels without losing context. The setup is designed to seamlessly connect your customer support team with customers across all platforms. The customer support platform starts at just $5 per agent per month, which is a very basic customer support tool. If you want dashboard reporting and integrations, you’ll need to pay $19 per agent per month. Multilingual content and other advanced features come with a $49 price per agent per month.

These plans make Hiver a versatile tool, catering to a range of business sizes and needs, from startups to large enterprises looking for a comprehensive customer support solution within Gmail. 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. When comparing Zendesk and Intercom, various factors come into play, each focusing on different aspects, strengths, and weaknesses of these customer support platforms.

You can use it for customer support, but that’s not its core strength. Founded in 2007, Zendesk started as a ticketing tool for customer success teams. It was later that they started adding all kinds of other features, like live chat for customer conversations. They bought out the Zopim live chat solution and integrated it with their toolset. Zendesk is built to grow alongside your business, resulting in less downtime, better cost savings, and the stability needed to provide exceptional customer support. Many customers start using Zendesk as small or mid-sized businesses (SMBs) and continue to use our software as they scale their operations, hire more staff, and serve more customers.

Intercom also uses AI and features a chatbot called Fin, but negative reviews note basic reporting and a lack of customization. Fin is priced at $0.99 per resolution, so companies handling large volumes of queries might find it costly. In comparison, Zendesk customers pay a fixed price of $50 per agent—and only Zendesk AI is modeled on the world’s largest CX-specific dataset.

It offers automation capabilities and customizable ticket fields to help categorize and route incoming customer inquiries and requests. Additionally, users can define custom ticket statuses for greater visibility into the ticket’s progress. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. SysAid is also customizable and offers integrations with third-party tools and applications. Salesforce Service Cloud is a customer service platform that provides a single view of customer information and history.

Our robust, no-code integrations enable you to adapt our software to new and growing use cases. Compared to Zendesk, Intercom offers few integrations, which may hinder its scalability. Both Zendesk and Intercom offer customer service software with AI capabilities—however, they are not created equal.

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 automation and AI features of Zendesk and Intercom, both platforms come with unique strengths and weaknesses.

As I’ve already mentioned, they started as a help desk/ticketing tool, and honestly, they perfected every bit of it over the years. As it turns, it’s quite difficult to compare Zendesk against Intercom as they serve different purposes and will fit different businesses. So when I realized lots of companies actually prefer Zendesk over Intercom, I was surprised. This way, your clients will never have to repeat themselves or get frustrated because their new representative doesn’t know their background.

Its strength in creating a comprehensive self-service knowledge base and its extensive integration ecosystem make it a versatile option. Help desks allow users to set specific SLAs and OLAs for different types of tickets or issues, outlining the expected response and resolution times. The software tracks and monitors the status of tickets in real time, ensuring that response and resolution times align with the defined SLAs. SLA and OLA management typically include automated notifications that alert support teams or managers when SLA or OLA agreements are at risk. IT help desk software eliminates the swivel-chair effect by putting everything support agents need at their fingertips.