Zendesk vs Intercom: In-Depth Features & Price Comparison

This is an AI assistant that will help anyone navigate Guide by providing results as you type your query. The bot also ensures that the customer or employee will find the right article before contacting an agent. Thus, it leaves your team to solve more important customer requests. Knowledge Base is one of the self-service sections that includes articles or documents providing technical help to customers and employees. To make a comparison of Zendesk vs Intercom knowledge base features is quite tricky.

Like with many other apps, Zapier seems to be the best and most simple way to connect Intercom to Zendesk. The Zendesk marketplace is also where you can get a lot of great add-ons. There are also several different Shopify integrations to choose from, as well as CRM integrations like HubSpot and Salesforce. No matter what Zendesk Suite plan you are on, you get workflow triggers, which are simple business rules-based actions to streamline many tasks. 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.

As two of the most popular and effective customer support solutions on the market, Intercom and Zendesk often compete head-to-head to win the business of companies like yours. The cheapest plan costs about $74/month (when billed annually) and consists of one seat and 1,000 people reached/month. In-app messages are notifications sent to users while they’re engaged with an app on mobile or PC. It allows companies to interact with customers while they’re active in the app, delivering information based on time or behavior. They may be utilized to alert consumers about product updates, provide assistance, and promote specials that are relevant to them.

What is Zendesk?

Save money and time by relying on our expert onboarding team to assist you in building and implementing your personalized Dixa setup. Intercom offers a unique pricing model based on the number of people you engage with, which includes both customers and team members. On the other hand, Zendesk offers plans based on the number of support agents, making it more suitable for businesses that have a dedicated support team. Zendesk is a comprehensive CRM and support suite that offers a variety of features for customer support, sales, and marketing.

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. For businesses aiming to seamlessly integrate customer communication with sales efforts, the sales functionalities of Zendesk and Intercom become paramount. Dominic evaluates the CRM capabilities, lead generation tools, and overall sales support offered by each platform, giving viewers a clear picture of which one aligns better with their business goals.

The ProProfs Live Chat Editorial Team is a diverse group of professionals passionate about customer support and engagement. We update you on the latest trends, dive into technical topics, and offer insights to elevate your business. 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.

Since both are such well-established market leader companies, you can rest assured that whichever one you choose will offer a quality customer service solution. Zendesk is popular due to its user-friendly interface, extensive customization options, scalability, multichannel support, robust analytics, and seamless integration capabilities. These features make it suitable for businesses of all sizes, helping them streamline their support operations and enhance the overall customer experience. The company’s products include a ticketing system, live chat software, knowledge base software, and a customer satisfaction survey tool. Zendesk also offers a number of integrations with third-party applications.

Say what you will, but Intercom’s design and overall user experience leave all its competitors far behind. So you see, it’s okay to feel dizzy when comparing Zendesk vs Intercom platforms. You could say something similar for Zendesk’s standard service offering, so it’s at least good to know they have Zendesk Sell, a capable CRM option to supplement it. You can use Zendesk Sell to track tasks, streamline workflows, improve engagement, nurture leads, and much more. Discover how Intercom and Zendesk Chat can integrate to improve user experience overall and optimize workflow efficiency.

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 intercom vs. zendesk which is 14 days, while Zendesk offers a 30-day trial. If I had to describe Intercom’s help desk, I would say it’s rather a complementary tool to their chat tools.

Zendesk vs. Intercom: Features Comparison

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 Chat GPT great way to manage your customer relationships. Zendesk also allows Advanced AI and Advanced data privacy and protection plans, which cost $50 per month for each Advanced add-on.

Though some complained that it’s not easy to check the tickets using the apps. Because it’s something they believe the developers should fine-tune. However, the most common complaint is the pricing of some features. Therefore, to gauge if your chosen help desk is effective or not, you use analytics.

Intercom lets businesses send their customers targeted in-app messages. Zendesk’s per-agent pricing structure makes it a budget-friendly option for smaller teams, allowing costs to scale with team growth. When comparing the automation and AI features of Zendesk and Intercom, both platforms come with unique strengths and weaknesses. When comparing Zendesk and Intercom, various factors come into play, each focusing on different aspects, strengths, and weaknesses of these customer support platforms. So yeah, all the features talk actually brings us to the most sacred question — the question of pricing. You’d probably want to know how much it costs to get each of the platforms for your business, so let’s talk money now.

• However, the right fit for your business will depend on your particular needs and budget.
• However, if businesses seek a more personalized customer experience, Intercom’s advanced features could be beneficial.
• You can even moderate user content to leverage your customer community.

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. Intercom has a full suite of email marketing tools, although they are part of a pricier package. With Intercom, you get email features like targeted and personalized outbound emailing, dynamic content fields, and an email-to-inbox forwarding feature.

However, users often find Intercom’s live chat more user-friendly and feature rich. Intercom’s live chat functionality goes beyond the basics, incorporating targeted messaging, proactive messaging, and sophisticated chatbot capabilities. It’s an invaluable tool for businesses aiming to enhance customer satisfaction, increase conversions, and build lasting relationships. However, it’s essential to recognize that Zendesk has its own array of strengths, particularly in its comprehensive and versatile customer support platform. Intercom’s pricing structure offers different plans to cater to various customer support and engagement needs, accommodating users with different budgets.

Find the Intercom App

Once you add them all to the picture, their existing plans can turn out to be quite expensive. Zendesk has also introduced its chatbot to help its clients send automated answers to some frequently asked questions to stay ahead in the competitive marketplace. What’s more, it helps its clients build an integrated community forum and help center to improve the support experience in real-time. 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.

Zendesk is ideal for businesses seeking to enhance their customer service processes and maintain a high level of customer satisfaction across all communication channels. While both Intercom and Zendesk excel in customer support and engagement, the decision between the two depends on your specific requirements. It’s well-suited for organizations aiming to enhance customer engagement through real-time communication.

Zendesk vs. Intercom: Call Center Tools

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. 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 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. Understanding your budget constraints, specific business requirements, and long-term goals is crucial.

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. The Intercom versus Zendesk conundrum is probably the greatest problem in the customer service software world. They both offer some state-of-the-art core functionality and numerous unusual features.

In terms of pricing, Intercom is considered one of the hardest on your pocket. Zendesk can be more flexible and predictable in this area as you can buy different tools separately (or even use their limited versions for free). Though Intercom chat window says that their team typically replies in a few hours, I received the answer in a couple of minutes. Their agent was always trying to convert me into a lead along the way, but heck, that’s a side effect of our job. What can be really inconvenient about Zendesk, though is how their tools integrate with each other when you need to use them simultaneously.

Broken down into custom, resolution, and task bots, these can go a long way in taking repetitive tasks off agents’ plates. 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 need a complete customer service platform that’s seamlessly integrated and AI-enhanced.

Businesses can also track their performance, identify trends, and make informed decisions using its advanced analytics tool and creative dashboards that can customized according to the business needs. On the other hand, Intercom’s chatbots have more advanced features but do not sacrifice simplicity and ease of use. It helps businesses create highly personalized chatbots for interactive customer communication. It allows businesses to automate repetitive tasks, such as ticket routing and in-built responses, freeing up time for support agents to deal with more crucial cases requiring more agent attention. This automation enhances support teams’ productivity as they do not have to spend too much responding to similar complaints they have already dealt with. Intercom’s live chat reports aren’t just offering what your customers are doing or whether they are satisfied with your services.

That’s true, businesses vary by industry, size, purposes, the software they need, a budget for that software, and the list can go on. To sum it all up, you need to consider various aspects of your business before choosing CRM software. While deciding between Zendesk and Intercom, you should ensure the customization, AI automation, and functionalities align with your business goals.

Compare Intercom Vs Zendesk Chat

Zendesk, less user-friendly and with higher costs for quality vendor support, might not suit budget-conscious or smaller businesses. Pricing for both services varies based on the specific needs and scale of your business. Test any of HelpCrunch pricing plans for free for 14 days and see our tools in action right away. What can be really inconvenient about Zendesk is how their tools integrate with each other when you need to use them simultaneously. Besides, the prices differ depending on the company’s size and specific needs.

So, by now, you can see that according to this article, Zendesk inches past Intercom as the better customer support platform. 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. 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.

In the domain of customer onboarding, Intercom takes a definitive lead with its distinctive feature – the ability to create interactive product tours. These tours serve as virtual guides, leading customers through a website and product offerings in an engaging and personalized manner. This approach not only enhances user understanding but also significantly boosts user engagement.

So, Intercom Articles will be opposed to Zendesk Suite – in that way the contrast is (more or less) fair. Intercom Inbox has customer support features that vaguely remind Zendesk Support, but the offered package Acquire customer (Messages and Inbox) is more paralleled with Zendesk Support + Chat. Intercom is a complete customer communication platform for small businesses.

Moreover, these are new prices as they’re in the middle of changing their pricing policy right now (and they’re definitely not getting cheaper). While doing my research for this article, I’ve not only tested both Intercom and Zendesk myself, but also read a pile of different articles, comparisons, guides, showdowns and all this kind of stuff. What really struck me though is that people seemed to like Zendesk more. Struck not in a bad way, more like in a very neutral ‘huh, this may be interesting’ way. All plans come with a 7-day free trial, and no credit card is required to sign up for the trial.

This makes it a great choice for businesses that want to provide their customers with a more personal experience. As a conversational relationship platform, Zendesk gives you the option of live chatting with customers via your website, mobile, and messaging. Though, if you compare Zendesk chat vs Intercom, the plugin is a bit hard to use as reviewed by customers. Installing it might take some technical skill and even when installed, could malfunction a bit. 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.

Very rarely do they understand the issue (mostly with Explore) that I am trying to communicate to them. In this paragraph, let’s explain some common issues that users usually ask about when choosing between Zendesk and Intercom platforms. To sum things up, one can get really confused trying to make sense of the Zendesk suite pricing, let alone calculate costs. 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 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, unlike Intercom, is a more affordable and predictable customer service platform. Also, it’s the pioneer in the support and communication tools market.

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.

To enhance customer satisfaction, businesses must equip their teams with customer support solutions and customer service software. Zendesk https://chat.openai.com/ directly competes with Intercom when it comes to integrations. This live chat service provider offers 200+ integrations to its user base.

On the other hand, Intercom’s AI-powered chatbots and messaging are designed to enhance your marketing and sales efforts, giving you an edge in the competitive market. Streamline support processes with Intercom’s ticketing system and knowledge base. Efficiently manage customer inquiries and empower customers to find answers independently. It’s an opportunity for Zendesk to differentiate itself, but unfortunately it didn’t get very high marks from users, either. Reviewers were frustrated by how long it took for their tickets to get resolved, as well as the complexity with which they were tossed around from department to department.

Instead, they offer a product demo when prospects reach out to learn more about their pricing structure. It enables them to engage with visitors who are genuinely interested in their services. You get to engage with them further and get to know more about their expectations. This becomes the perfect opportunity to personalize the experience, offer assistance to prospects as per their needs, and convert them into customers. Intercom offers a simplistic dashboard with a detailed view of all customer details in one place. Operators will find its dashboard quite beneficial as it will take them seconds to find necessary features during an ongoing chat with the customers.

If you are looking for a comprehensive customer support solution with a wide range of features, Zendesk is a good option. If money is limited for your business, a help desk that can be a Zendesk alternative or an Intercom alternative is ThriveDesk. They offer straightforward pricing plans designed to meet the diverse needs of businesses, with only 2 options to choose from; it makes it easier for business owners to make a decision regarding pricing. Choose the plan that suits your support requirements and budget, whether you’re a small team or a growing enterprise.

Zendesk offers various features, which may differ according to the plan. Intercom also provides fast time to value for smaller and mid-sized businesses with limitations for large-scale companies. It may have limited abilities regarding the scalability or support of an enterprise-level company. Thus, due to its limited agility, businesses with complex business models may not find it appropriate. 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.

You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. You can use this with the push notification of the app to keep your customers in the loop of possible promos, rewards, and more. The final prices are revealed after engaging in sales demos and are not revealed upfront. This lack of transparency can create budgeting problems for businesses. Let us dive deeper into the offerings of Zendesk and Intercom to make a comparison at a glance. This comparison is going to help you understand the features of both tools. Just like Intercom, Zendesk’s customer service is quite disappointing.

Dominic breaks down the outbound features, helping viewers understand how each platform supports ongoing conversations with customers. Intercom provides an extensive range of automation tools and workflows, allowing businesses to automate repetitive tasks and streamline their customer support processes. In contrast, while Zendesk does offer some automation capabilities, it may not be as robust and customizable as Intercom.

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. On the other hand, Intercom brings a dynamic approach to customer support.

At Dixa, our complete focus is on improving the overall customer experience. We are confident that our partners will achieve their objectives with our advanced tools and comprehensive resources. Let us collaborate to transform customer service into an excellent experience.

Overall, Intercom is a better option if personalized and robust chatbots are something you are looking for when managing customer support strategy. Its messaging also has real-time notifications and automated responses, enhancing customer communication. Zendesk excels in its ticketing system, offering users an intuitive platform for collaboration among support agents. Its robust workflows streamline the ticket resolution system and efficiently handle all customer complaints.

It includes tools for lead management, sales forecasting, and workflow management and automation. Its customer data platform lets you manage customer data, segmentation, and automated reminders. However, this may be sufficient for smaller businesses or those using an existing CRM that integrates with Intercom. Intercom is a customer messaging platform that enables businesses to engage with customers through personalized and real-time communication. Yes, you can use Intercom on the front end for customer communication and Zendesk on the back end for managing support tickets and workflows. This combination maximizes the strengths of both help desk platforms, providing a seamless experience for managing customer accounts from initial interaction to issue resolution.

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. In a nutshell, both these companies provide great customer support. I tested both of their live chats and their support agents were answering in very quickly and right to the point. Zendesk team can be just a little bit faster depending on the time of the day. Not only does Zendesk offer a free trial, it’s actually sort of a freemium tool, which means you can choose one their tools (live chat, knowledge base, call center software) and use it for free forever.

However, the right fit for your business will depend on your particular needs and budget. 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 is a customer relationship management (CRM) software company that provides a suite of tools for managing customer interactions.

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. Intercom’s dashboards may not be as aesthetically pleasing as Zendesk’s, but they still allow users to navigate their tools with few distractions. As for Intercom’s general pricing structure, there are three plans, but you’ll have to contact them to get exact prices.