Zendesk vs Intercom: Which Is Right For Your Business in 2023?

With Intercom, businesses can engage in real-time chats, schedule meetings, and strategically deploy chat boxes to specific customer segments. What truly sets Intercom apart is its data-driven approach to customer engagement. It actively collects and utilizes customer data to facilitate highly personalized conversations. For instance, it can use past interactions and behaviors to tailor recommendations or responses. 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.

For standard reporting like response times, leads generated by source, bot performance, messages sent, and email deliverability, you’ll easily find all the metrics you need. Beyond that, you can create custom reports that combine all of the stats listed above (and many more) and present them as counts, columns, lines, or tables. Support conversations contain qualitative data about the most pressing areas of friction. You can use this support desk to help customers or you can forward potential new users to your sales department. You can create a help platform to assist users in guiding themselves, or you can use AI-enabled responses to create a more “human” like effect.

It’s where customers ask the questions that may result in the largest sales in your company’s history. But, if you just need a secure and quick data transfer, opt for Help Desk Migration. Pricing starts at $39 and varies based on the number of records you want to migrate. Our team is experienced in consolidating Zendesk instances and merging instances of other help desk and service desk systems. Zendesk chat vs Intercom offers similar chat features but still has a couple of differences.

Zendesk vs Intercom: Choosing the best tool for your business

To determine which is cheaper, highlight your needs and check out what the necessary tools will cost you. We commit to the fresh requirements, run constant advancements, and consistently audit all facilities. To sum things up, one can get really confused trying to make sense of the Zendesk suite pricing, let alone calculate costs. When you migrate your articles intercom to zendesk from Zendesk, we’ll retain your organizational structure for you.

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. Other customer service add-ons with Zendesk include custom training and professional services. To select the ideal fit for your business, it is crucial to compare these industry giants and assess which aligns best with your specific requirements. In this article, we will explore the key differences between Intercom and Zendesk, two popular customer support platforms. Both Intercom and Zendesk offer a range of features to help businesses manage customer interactions, but there are some distinct differences between the two.

It tends to perform well on the marketing and sales side of things, which is key for a growing company. And considering that its tools (including live chat options) are so easy to use, it’s probably going to be easier for a small business to get integrated and set up. Finally, if you want even more advanced features, you can upgrade to their Premium package. However, do take note that this comes with custom pricing, so you will need to contact them to learn more. Pick out the must-have features for your organization and filter out of the software that provides you with those services within your budget.

At all tiers, there is an additional fee to work with a member of the Zendesk success team on unique engagements. Messagely also provides you with a shared inbox so anyone from your team can follow up with your users, regardless of who the user was in contact with first. Both Zendesk and Intercom have their own “app stores” where users can find all of the integrations for each platform. Users report feeling as though the interface is outdated and cluttered and complain about how long it takes to set up new features and customize existing ones. Intercom works with any website or web-based product and aims to be your one-way stop for all of your customer communication needs. Don’t miss out on the latest tips, tools, and tactics at the forefront of customer support.

Intercom VS. Zendesk: Which Live Chat Software is the Best?

With its CRM, you have the ability to place your clients in your sales funnels and follow through with them until conversion. Messagely’s pricing starts at just $29 per month, which includes live chat, targeted messages, shared inbox, mobile apps, and over 750 powerful integrations. Intercom is better designed for smaller companies and teams, while Zendesk is suitable for large companies to skyrocket customer support. In addition, Intercom offers omnichannel inbox, robust reporting, and automated workflows. Moreover, Intercom bots can converse naturally with customers by using conversation starters, and respond with self-help, and knowledge base articles.

Zendesk lets you chat with customers through email, chat, social media, or phone. We hope that this Intercom VS Zendesk comparison helps you choose one that matches your support, marketing, and sales needs. But in case you are in search of something beyond these two, then ProProfs Chat can be an option. 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. 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.

This serves the dual benefit of adding convenience to the customer experience and lightening agents’ workloads. 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 vs Intercom – Who’s the leading helpdesk solutions?

ActiveCampaign is difficult to learn on your own since it is so full featured. We sell a high-touch, high ASP product (caskets) and have scaled to where we’re adding several more customer service agents to our company. Customers often call or chat with us multiple times prior to the purchase and post-purchase, as these are emotional, time-sensitive purchases. Messagely’s chatbots are powerful tools for qualifying and converting leads while your team is otherwise occupied or away. With chatbots, you can generate leads to hand over to your sales team and solve common customer queries without the need of a customer service representative behind a keyboard.

• Zendesk allows for the creation of predefined rules and workflows that efficiently route tickets to the appropriate agents, ensuring swift and precise issue resolution.
• It divides all articles into a few main topics so you can quickly find the one you’re looking for.
• You can construct an omnichannel suite by combining productivity, e-commerce, CRM, analytics, social media, and other applications.
• 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.

Intercom costs can go even higher with custom add-ons such as Product Tours (from $199/month, Advanced lead generation (from $499/month), Advanced customer engagement (from $499/month), etc. With Zendesk, you can easily sort or filter your tickets using parameters such as date, ticket priority, tags, source, and more. Now, when it comes to customizing your dashboard and making it suitable for your unique needs, Zendesk does a good job.

Zendesk also offers a straightforward interface to operators that helps them identify the entire interaction pathway with the customers. Compared to being detailed, Zendesk gives a tough competition to Intercom. Operators can easily switch from one conversation to another, therefore helping operators manage more interactions simultaneously. For an area of focus as critical as customer support, it can mean the difference between a satisfied customer and a lost account. When it comes to customer support software, Zendesk is #1 in popularity and brand recognition.

• 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.
• As well as Intercom, it allows sharing of private notes with other support agents.
• When comparing Zendesk and Intercom, various factors come into play, each focusing on different aspects, strengths, and weaknesses of these customer support platforms.
• As a result, you’ll be able to see the sender, anyone who replied, and the dates of their interaction.
• Intercom, on the other hand, was built for business messaging, so communication is one of their strong suits.

For instance, customers and staff alike can channel messages through it. The methods that help desks use, however, are meant to cater to possibly thousands to millions of messages. Because there could be a thousand customers complaining at any given hour to all your staff having problems with business protocols.

Both tools also allow you to connect your email account and manage it from within the application to track open and click-through rates. In addition, Zendesk and Intercom feature advanced sales reporting and analytics that make it easy for sales teams to understand their prospects and customers more deeply. Both Zendesk Messaging and Intercom Messenger offer live chat features and AI-enabled chatbots for 24/7 support to customers. Additionally, you can trigger incoming messages to automatically assign an agent and create dashboards to monitor the team’s performance on live chat. Zendesk takes the slight lead here because it offers some advanced help desk features, which Intercom does not. Did you know that integrations between Zendesk and Intercom are possible?

So, if you have customers who prefer to call service with an Intercom, it wouldn’t be possible. You would rather have to integrate it with third-party apps like Appy Pie Connect. 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. Moreover, research says that companies can reduce customer resolution times upto a great percentage through the helpdesk software. Today, thanks to the virtual technology revolution, you can find numerous help desk software, but our vote goes for Zendesk and Intercom.

With only the Enterprise tier offering round-the-clock email, phone, and chat help, Zendesk support is sharply separated by tiers. 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. The learning and knowledgebase category is another one where it is a close call between Zendesk and Intercom.

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. Determining whether Intercom can effectively replace Zendesk depends on your specific customer support and engagement requirements. Whether Zendesk can fully replace Intercom depends on your specific customer support and engagement requirements. And that’s why it offers a long list of customization options like workflow automation, ticket management system, and layouts.

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. If you’re a huge corporation with a complicated customer support process, go Zendesk for its help desk functionality. Even better, it’s the most cost-effective, lightweight, and speedy live chat solution available for Shopify business owners. If money is limited for a help desk that can be a Zendesk alternative or an Intercom alternative is ThriveDesk.

As a Zendesk Sell user, you’ll get a unified platform with access to everything you need to manage leads and contacts and monitor them through a sales process. It’s best used when you need a centralized platform to manage customer support operations, whether through email, chat, social media, or phone. 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. On the other hand, Intercom, starting at a lower price point, could be more attractive for very small teams or individual users.

You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. 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. Broken down into custom, resolution, and task bots, these can go a long way in taking repetitive tasks off agents’ plates.

Altogether, this can significantly impact affordability in the long term. No matter how a customer contacts your business, your agents will have access to the tools and information they need to continue and close conversations on any channel. 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. The price levels can even be much higher if we’re talking of a larger company. Just like Zendesk, Intercom also offers its Operator bot, which will automatically suggest relevant articles to clients right in a chat widget.

If you don’t go with ActiveCampaign, then Zoho would be my second choice. But their support and quality is not as good, they feel like a new product even though they have been in business a while. You keep having to get around their bugs, which you can, it is just annoying. Finally, with Zendesk Chat you can interact intercom versus zendesk with your customers through multiple channels. Previous conversations and progress will all follow them around, making it easier for you to help your customers no matter where they are. Rather than waiting for a customer to start a conversation with you, you can initiate it if you think the customer needs some help.

Yes—as your business’s needs grow, you will require a more sophisticated case management system. But that doesn’t mean you have to completely switch from your current provider if you’re not quite ready. Sendcloud adopted these solutions to replace siloed systems like Intercom and a local voice support provider in favor of unified, omnichannel support. Intercom is the new guy on the block when it comes to help desk ticketing systems. This means the company is still working out some kinks and operating with limited capabilities.

Zendesk has over 1,300 integrations, compared to Intercom’s 300+ apps, making it the leader in this category. However, you can browse their respective sites to find which tools each platform supports. Intercom does not offer a native call center tool, so it cannot handle calls through a cloud-based phone system or calling app on its own.

You can create these knowledge base articles in your target audience’s native language as their software is multilingual. Zendesk and Intercom also both offer analytics and reporting capabilities that allow businesses to analyze and monitor customer agents’ productivity. As a result, companies can identify trends and areas for improvement, allowing them to continuously improve their support processes and provide better service to their customers. Users can benefit from using Intercom’s CX platform and AI software as a standalone tool for business messaging. We make it easy for anyone within your company to access contextual customer information—including their conversation and purchase history—to provide better experiences. In fact, the Zendesk Marketplace has 1,300+ apps and integrations, from billing software to marketing automation tools.

The strength of Zendesk’s UI lies in its structured and comprehensive environment, adept at managing numerous customer interactions and integrating various channels seamlessly. However, compared to the more contemporary designs like Intercom’s, Zendesk’s UI may appear outdated, particularly in aspects such as chat widget and customization options. This could impact user experience and efficiency for new users grappling with its complexity​​​​​​. In addition to Intercom vs Zendesk, alternative helpdesk solutions are available in the market. ThriveDesk is a feature-rich helpdesk solution that offers a comprehensive set of tools to manage customer support effectively. However, if you are looking for a robust messaging solution with customer support features, go for Intercom.

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. One study found that 67% of customers prefer calling an agent to help solve their query. Some help desk software provides call center tools as one of customer communication channels. 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. So, Intercom Articles will be opposed to Zendesk Suite — in that way the contrast is (more or less) fair.

Intercom has Articles as a knowledge base solution for self-support, as well as internal support. This feature is available on all the channels your customers use to get in touch with your brand. For instance, Intercom can guide a new software user through each feature step by step, providing context and assistance along the way. In contrast, Zendesk primarily relies on a knowledge base, housing articles, FAQs, and self-help resources.

If you are looking for more integration options and budget is not an issue, Intercom can be the perfect live chat solution for your business. 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.

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.

Pricing for both services varies based on the specific needs and scale of your business. When comparing the automation and AI features of Zendesk and Intercom, both platforms come with unique strengths and weaknesses. 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.

Zendesk’s tried and true approach to ticketing is both familiar and effective. While both Zendesk and Intercom offer ways to track your sales pipeline, each platform handles the process a bit differently. Zendesk and Intercom both have an editor preview feature that makes it easier to add images, videos, call-to-action buttons, and interactive guides to your help articles. 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.

That means automating customer service and sales processes so the people visiting your website don’t actually have to interact with anyone before they take action. Yes, you can replace Zendesk with Intercom as both platforms have a rich set of features and integrations. Zendesk stands out as a champion of customer support due to its easy-to-use work-frame, many useful add-ons, and features in all tiers. Therefore, to gauge if your chosen help desk is effective or not, you use analytics. In this case, each customer service software has a unique way of generating reports such as scheduling, the scope of the analysis, and more.