Zendesk vs Intercom: Which is Better for Customer Care

For example, say, a bank uses its CX platform to analyze the spending habits and financial goals of its customers. It consolidates data from multiple touchpoints — branch visits, online transactions and mobile app usage. The platform identifies a group of customers with steadily increasing account balances but little to no recent investment activity.

Intercom’s reporting is less focused on getting a fine-grained understanding of your team’s performance, and more on a nuanced understanding of customer behavior and engagement. While clutter-free and straightforward, it does lack some of the more advanced features and capabilities that Zendesk has. While both Zendesk and Intercom offer strong ticketing systems, they differ in the depth of automation capabilities. According to G2, Intercom has a slight edge over Zendesk with a 4.5-star rating, but from just half the number of users. Similar to Zendesk, though, users praise its ease of use and feature set.

All interactions with customers be it via phone, chat, email, social media, or any other channel are landing in one dashboard, where your agents can solve them fast and efficiently. There’s a plethora of features to help bigger teams collaborate more effectively — like private notes or real-time view of who’s handling a given ticket at the moment, etc. Zendesk also offers digital support during business hours, and their website has a chatbot. Premiere Zendesk plans have 24/7 proactive support with faster response times.

While Fin AI Copilot – is included in all paid Intercom plans, you only get to use it for only ten conversations per agent each month. If your team needs Fin to help with more than that, you’ll need to pay an extra $35 per agent per month for unlimited use. Test any of HelpCrunch pricing plans for free for 14 days and see our tools in action right away. Say what you will, but Intercom’s design and overall user experience are leaving all its competitors far behind. It’s beautifully crafted and thought through, and their custom-made illustrations are just next level stuff. You can see their attention to detail in everything — from their tools to their website.

G2 ranks Intercom higher than Zendesk for ease of setup, and support quality—so you can expect a smooth transition, effortless onboarding, and continuous success. Whether you’re starting fresh with Intercom or migrating from Zendesk, set up is quick and easy. Now that we know the differences between Intercom vs. zendesk vs intercom Zendesk, let’s analyze which one is the better service option. Grow faster with done-for-you automation, tailored optimization strategies, and custom limits. Automatically answer common questions and perform recurring tasks with AI. You can try Customerly without any risk to you as we offer a 14-day free trial.

Zendesk is a much larger company than Intercom; it has over 170,000 customers, while Intercom has over 25,000. While this may seem like a positive for Zendesk, it’s important to consider that a larger company may not be as agile or responsive to customer needs as a smaller company. Customer experiences have made major strides in the past year or so, all owing to changing expectations and market conditions. When selecting a CX tool, it’s crucial to verify its financial impact and ongoing costs. Ensure the tool offers a clear return on investment and is cost-effective throughout its lifecycle. On the other hand, building guided workflows on Sprinklr is a breeze, thanks to its no-code, drag-and-drop interface.

As you dive deeper into the world of customer support and engagement, you’ll discover that Zendesk and Intercom offer some distinctive features that set them apart. Let’s explore these unique offerings and see how they can benefit your business. You get a dashboard that makes creating, tracking, and organizing tickets easy. 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.

In terms of customer service, Zendesk fails to deliver an exceptional experience. One of the most significant downsides of Intercom is its customer support. Existing customers have complained consistently about how they aren’t available at the right time to offer support to customers. There are even instances where customers don’t receive the first response in more than seven days. Compared to Intercom, Zendesk’s pricing starts at $49/month, which is still understandable but not meant for startups looking for affordable pricing plans. These plans are not inclusive of the add-ons or access to all integrations.

It’s built for function over form — the layout is highly organized and clearly designed around ticket management. You get an immediate overview of key metrics, such as ticket volume and agent performance as well as a summary of key customer data points. The Zendesk chat tool has most of the necessary features, like shortcuts (saved responses), automated triggers, and live chat analytics. Founded in 2007, Zendesk started as a ticketing tool for customer success teams.

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. There are 3 Basic support plans at $19, $49 and $99 per user per month billed annually, and 5 Suite plans at $49, $79, $99, $150, and $215 per user per month billed annually. Intercom is a complete customer communication platform for small businesses.

However, if you aim to nurture leads and grow sales, then Intercom is the better option. Its AI-powered tools and virtual assistants make it a formidable CRM-powered software. Zendesk fully utilizes AI tools to enhance user experiences at every stage of the customer journey. Its AI chatbots leverage machine learning to gain a deeper understanding of customer interactions.

Introducing Zendesk and Intercom

Multilingual content and other advanced features come with a $49 price per agent per month. Zendesk excels with its AI-enhanced user experience and robust omnichannel support, making it ideal for businesses focused on customer service. On the other hand, Intercom shines with its advanced AI-driven automation and insightful analytics, perfect for those who value seamless communication and in-app messaging. Consider which features align best with your business needs to make the right choice. Zendesk offers your agents a unified workspace to collaborate on support tickets. This single window allows your team members to combine several channels for better efficiency and improved customer experience.

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. So yeah, all the features talk actually brings us to the most sacred question — the question of pricing.

Final Verdict: Which Live Chat is Compatible for Your Business?

In summary, Intercom and Zendesk are powerful customer support tools offering various features to help businesses communicate with their customers effectively. While Intercom has a more modern and user-friendly interface, Zendesk has a broader range of features and integrations. Ultimately, the choice between Intercom and Zendesk will depend on the specific needs of your business. Intercom is the go-to solution for businesses seeking to elevate customer support and sales processes. With its user-friendly interface and advanced functionalities, Intercom offers a comprehensive suite of tools designed to effectively communicate and engage with customers. On the other hand, Intercom brings a dynamic approach to customer support.

When you combine the help desk with Intercom Messenger, you get added channels for customer engagement. Zendesk offers its users consistently high ROI due to its comprehensive product features, firm support, and advanced customer support, automation, and reporting features. It allows businesses to streamline operations and workflows, improving customer satisfaction and eventually leading to increased revenues, which justifies the continuous high ROI.

Help desk SaaS is how you manage general customer communication and for handling customer questions. When it comes to self-service portals for things like knowledgebases, Intercom has a useful set of resources. Intercom also has a community forum where users can help one another with questions and solutions. Every CRM software comes with some limitations along with the features it offers. You can analyze if that weakness is something that concerns your business model.

While there are some universal things to look out for, like the range of features, ease of use, and a seamless omnichannel experience, it’s also about your subjective experience. While both Zendesk and Intercom tick both those boxes, they each have their own distinct style. 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.

Like Intercom, Zendesk has received generally positive customer reviews, with an overall rating of 4.4 out of 5 stars on Gartner Peer Insights. Customers appreciate the platform’s ease of use, customization options, and https://chat.openai.com/ robust reporting capabilities. However, some users have reported issues with the platform’s customer support and pricing. Intercom was founded in 2011 by Eoghan McCabe, Ciaran Lee, Des Traynor, and David Barrett.

Pricing plans: Pipedrive vs. Zendesk

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. Startups usually have low budgets for such investments, making it easier for these small businesses to choose the right plan.

Zendesk offers more advanced automation capabilities than Intercom, which may be a deciding factor for businesses that require complex workflows. Pipedrive is limited to third-party customer service integrations and, unlike Zendesk, does not offer customer service software. Birdeye is a versatile platform designed for both local and multi-location businesses looking to boost their online reputation and manage customer interactions seamlessly. It helps businesses get noticed online with tools for managing reviews, social media and customer communications — all from one place. HubSpot’s Service Hub enhances customer experience with AI-driven tools, offering a unified help desk and robust self-service options. It delivers clear efficiency reports alongside deep insights into customer health, helping teams make informed decisions to improve retention and streamline interactions.

In terms of pricing, both Intercom and Zendesk offer a range of plans to fit different business needs and budgets. However, Zendesk’s pricing is generally more affordable for smaller businesses, while Intercom’s pricing tends to be higher but offers more advanced features and capabilities. Intercom and Zendesk are excellent Chat GPT customer support tools offering unique features and benefits. However, when it comes to choosing between the two, it ultimately depends on the specific needs and preferences of the user. When choosing a customer support tool, it’s essential to consider what other users have to say about their experience with the platform.

You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. If your business requires a centralized platform to manage a high volume of customer inquiries across various channels, Zendesk is a solid choice. There are four different subscription packages you can choose from, all of which also have Essential, Pro, and Premium options for businesses of different sizes. You’d need to chat with Intercom sales team for get the costs for the Premium subscription, though.

Zendesk vs Intercom: Choosing the Best Customer Service Software

You can share these reports one-time or on a recurring basis with anyone in your organization. Zendesk Explore allows you to create custom reports and visualizations in order to gain deeper insights into your support operations and setup. Similarly, if you require Fin AI Agent – to resolve customer queries without human intervention, you’ll need to pay an additional $0.99 per resolution.

Intercom offers just over 450 integrations, which can make it less cost-effective and more complex to customize the software and adapt to new use cases as you scale. The platform also lacks transparency in displaying reviews, install counts, and purpose-built customer service integrations. When it comes to which company is the better fit for your business, there’s no clear answer. It really depends on what features you need and what type of customer service strategy you plan to implement.

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)? 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. 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.

Conversely, some Pipedrive users have issues working with Pipedrive, with users describing their support and onboarding experiences as slow and limited. Security is crucial to everyone and so your CX tool needs to be responsible and compliant with international standards like GDPR and CCPA. Moreover, it’s best you also check for the following to ensure customer service security. Intercom and Zendesk offer competitive pricing plans with various features to suit different business needs.

Zendesk Sell provides robust CRM features such as lead tracking, task management, and workflow automation. Not to mention its advanced reporting capabilities, customizable dashboards, and seamless mobile app experience for an always-on approach to service. 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. With industry-leading AI that infuses intelligence into every interaction, robust integrations, and exceptional data security and compliance, it’s no wonder why Zendesk is a trusted leader in CX.

Intercom’s CRM features include customer journey tracking, custom data parameters, and list segmentation, which are useful for targeted marketing and engagement. You can use these features to create custom funnels, segment users based on specific behaviors, and automate personalized communications. You’ll still be able to get your eyes on basic support metrics, like response times and bot performance, that will help you improve your service quality. However, Intercom’s real strength lies in generating insights into areas like customer journey mapping, product performance, and retention. Far from impersonalizing customer service, chatbots offer an immediate and efficient way to address common queries that end in satisfaction. Nowadays, it’s a crucial component in helping businesses focus on high-priority interactions and scale their customer service.

This site does not include all software companies or all available software companies offers. So, by now, you can see that according to this article, Zendesk inches past Intercom as the better customer support platform. Integrations are the best way to enhance the toolkit of your apps by connecting them for interoperable actions and features.

On the other hand, Intercom’s dark mode is a noteworthy aesthetic feature, providing a visually appealing interface for users who prefer darker hues. The offers that appear on the website are from software companies from which CRM.org receives compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site (including, for example, the order in which they appear).

Welcome to another blog post that helps you gauge which live chat solution is compatible with your customer support needs. And in this post, we will analyze two popular names in the SaaS industry – Intercom & Zendesk. On the other hand, if you prioritize customer engagement, sales, and personalized messaging, Intercom is a compelling option, especially for startups and rapidly scaling businesses.

• On the other hand, Intercom’s chatbots have more advanced features but do not sacrifice simplicity and ease of use.
• If you own a business, you’re in a fierce battle to deliver personalized customer experiences that stand out.
• The company’s products are built with an emphasis on simplicity and usability.
• These features can add significant value for businesses aiming to implement more sophisticated support capabilities as they scale.

Zendesk supports teams that can then field these issues from a nice unified dashboard. AI is integral to customer relationship management software and facilitates consumer interactions. AI helps businesses gain detailed insight into consumer data in real-time.

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. To resolve common customer questions with the vendor’s new tool, Fin bot, you must pay $0.99 per resolution per month.

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 than Intercom’s, although without exact Intercom numbers, it is not easy to truly know the cost. For those of you who have been waiting for the big showdown between these two customer support heavyweights, we are glad to present the ultimate Zendesk vs Intercom comparison article. We’d also recommend checking out this blog on suspended ticket management in ZenDesk. As we delve into the features of Zendesk, we can identify the following weaknesses regarding user experience.

It allows companies to track, oversee and organize every interaction between a customer and the organization through analytics and real-time data insights. Zendesk provides a range of customer support options, including email, phone, and live chat support. They also offer a comprehensive knowledge base that includes articles, videos, and tutorials to help users get the most out of the platform. 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.

Intercom’s advanced chatbots, coupled with customizability, give it an edge over Zendesk in this category. Some of the links that appear on the website are from software companies from which CRM.org receives compensation. Every single bit of business SaaS in the world needs to leverage the efficiency power of workflows and automation. Customer service systems like Zendesk and Intercom should provide a simple workflow builder as well as many pre-built automations which can be used right out of the box. You get call recording, muting and holding, conference calling, and call blocking. Zendesk also offers callback requests, call monitoring and call quality notifications, among other telephone tools.

In today’s environment, where customer expectations are constantly evolving, choosing the right ticketing tool that aligns with your business needs is crucial. This comparison will delve into the features, similarities, differences, pros, cons, and use cases of Zendesk and Intercom, providing you with the insights needed to make an informed decision. It starts with as low as $19/user/month and can go up to $49/user/ month. This means, even when you choose a higher plan, you’ll be paying considerably less than what you would have to pay for Zendesk or intercom.

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. 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. Intercom, on the other hand, excels in providing a seamless customer service experience by merging automation with human support.

These are both still very versatile products, so don’t think you have to get too siloed into a single use case. To sum up, one can get really confused trying to understand the Zendesk pricing, let alone calculate costs. Zendesk is a ticketing system before anything else, and its ticketing functionality is overwhelming in the best possible way. Yes, Zendesk has an Intercom integration that you can find in the Zendesk Marketplace—it’s free to install. So, you can get the best of both worlds without choosing between Intercom or Zendesk. Check out our chart that compares the capabilities of Zendesk vs. Intercom.

• Zendesk’s reporting tools are arguably more advanced while Intercom is designed for simplicity and ease of use.
• With Intercom you can send targeted email, push, and in-app messages which can be based on the most relevant time or behavior triggers.
• Intercom is a complete customer communication platform for small businesses.
• Intercom, on the other hand, offers more advanced automation features than Zendesk.
• Picking customer service software to run your business is not a decision you make lightly.

They offer an advanced feature for customer data management that goes beyond basic CRM stuff. It gives detailed contact profiles enriched by company data, behavioral data, conversation data, and other custom fields. Zendesk wins the major category of help desk and ticketing system software. It lets customers reach out via messaging, a live chat tool, voice, and social media.

Zendesk is perfect for businesses looking for comprehensive customer support tools. Its primary focus on ticketing and a robust help center makes it a good fit for companies with heavy customer interaction. Effective customer support is the backbone of any successful business, akin to frying eggs for the perfect omelette.

That being said, it sometimes lacks the advanced customization and automation offered by other AI-powered chatbots, like Intercom’s. Zendesk’s Answer Bot is capable of helping customers with common queries by providing canned responses and links to relevant help articles. It relies on fairly basic automation while routing more complex issues to live agents. As the more recent of the two, offering a modern look-and-feel and frictionless experience is a key magnet for Intercom. It effortlessly brings together in-app chat, automated chatbots, and a unified inquiry inbox in its help center.

Intercom does not have a dedicated workforce management solution, either. Pipedrive offers five total plans, with their entry-level Essential plan offering significantly fewer features than the others. For example, bulk email send, email templates, email scheduling, and automation features are only available to those who purchase the Advanced plan and above.

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. The Expert plan, which offers collaboration, real-time dashboard, security, and reporting tools for large teams, costs $139. In addition to all these features, Suite Growth Plan offers light agents, multilingual support, multiple ticket forms, and a self-service customer portal. However, it is a great option for businesses seeking efficient customer interactions, as its focus on personalized messaging compensates for its lack of features. Intercom’s messaging platform is very similar to Zendesk’s dashboard, offering seamless integration of multiple channels in one place for managing customer interactions.

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. 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.

This comparison is going to help you understand the features of both tools. 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.