Zendesk vs Intercom: Which is better?

Some people like Intercom’s conversational support tool, which lets customers talk to you in a more personalised and interactive way. Users like that the platform lets them have talks in real time, which makes it easier to answer customer questions quickly and correctly. People have also said nice things about Intercom’s proactive message features, which let businesses talk to users before they even complain, which improves the overall customer experience.

Zendesk also makes it easy to customize your help center, with out-of-the-box tools to design color, theme, and layout–both on mobile and desktop. The ticket display’s Side Conversations tab allows agents to initiate internal conversations via email, Slack, or ticketing system notes–without leaving the ticket. Automatic assignment rules establish criteria that automatically route tickets to the intercom vs. zendesk right agent or team, based on message or user data. Zendesk for Service transforms customer queries and conversations from all channels–call, web chat, tweet, text, or email–into tickets in the Agent Workspace. Pre-selected assignment rules customize each ticket’s destination, assigning routing paths to agents or departments based on customer priority status, query type, or issue details.

Use ticketing systems to manage the influx and provide your customers with timely responses. Provide self-service alternatives so customers can resolve their own issues. This serves the dual benefit of adding convenience to the customer experience and lightening agents’ workloads.

And there’s still no way to know how much you’ll pay for them since the prices are only revealed after you go through a few sale demos with the Intercom team. Zendesk is a ticketing system before anything else, and its ticketing functionality is overwhelming in the best possible way. Understanding these fundamental differences should go a long way in helping you pick between the two, but does that mean you can’t use one platform to do what the other does better?

You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. If your business has an app, in-app messaging can be used to send messages to customers. You can use this with the push notification of the app to keep your customers in the loop of possible promos, rewards, and more. To sum things up, Zendesk is a great customer support oriented tool which will be a great choice zendesk vs. intercom for big teams with various departments. Intercom feels more wholesome and is more customer success oriented, but can be too costly for smaller companies.

With over 100,000 customers across all industries and regions, Zendesk knows what it takes to interact with customers while retaining and growing relationships. Check out the research-backed comparison below to better understand how each solution can add value to your organization. Compare Zendesk versus Intercom to determine who will be the best partner for your business at every phase of the customer journey.

Customer Support: Zendesk vs Intercom

I’ll dive into their chatbots more later, but their bot automation features are also stronger. Those same tools also increase customer retention by 27% while saving 23% on sales and marketing costs. When choosing between Zendesk and Intercom for your customer support needs, it’s essential to consider various factors that align with your business goals, operational requirements, and budget. Both platforms offer distinct strengths, catering to customer support and engagement aspects.

Community boards make the support ecosystem even better by creating a place where people can work together and share their experiences, tips, and ask for help from their peers. These forums are helpful for fixing problems and learning from other people’s mistakes. The internal notes tool makes working together even better by giving team members a place to add context, share insights, or talk about specifics within the platform. This feature is great for keeping communication clear and organised because it lets team members work together on jobs, projects, or interactions with clients without any problems.

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It’s divided into about 20 topics with dozens of articles each, so navigating through it can be complicated. Zendesk has over 150,000 customer accounts from 160 countries and territories. They have offices all around the world including countries such as Mexico City, Tokyo, New York, Paris, Singapore, São Paulo, London, and Dublin.

There’s a 14-day free trial that starts directly with the plan and number of people that you need. After your free trial ends, Intercom’s products start at $49/mo, but if you cancel in the first 14 days you won’t be charged. Many use cases call for different approaches, and Zendesk and Intercom are but two software solutions Chat PG for each case. 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. Zendesk, less user-friendly and with higher costs for quality vendor support, might not suit budget-conscious or smaller businesses.

Mobile app: Zendesk Vs. Intercom

Zendesk wins the omnichannel capabilities category because it offers voice as a service, which we think is absolutely critical. Agents can use the desktop chatbox to respond to customers in any outbound channel. You can also contact Zendesk support 24/7, whereas Intercom support only has live agents during business hours.

Zendesk’s user face is quite intuitive and easy to use, allowing customers to quickly find what they are looking for. Additionally, the platform allows users to customize their experience by setting up automation workflows, creating ticket rules, and utilizing analytics. Intercom also has a mobile app available for both Android and iOS, which makes it easy to stay connected with customers even when away from the computer. The app includes features like automated messages and conversation routing — so businesses can manage customer conversations more efficiently. Zendesk has an app available for both Android and iOS, which makes it easy to stay connected with customers while on the go.

Intercom understands very well that email marketing is no more than a magic wand for building strong customer relations. Customers will stay with you long if they are not getting any support from your company, especially when you are new to them. As mentioned before, the bot builder is a visual drag-and-drop system that requires no coding knowledge; this is also how other basic workflows are designed.

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. We’re big fans of Zendesk’s dashboard with built-in collaboration tools, but we wish the Agent Workspace came with the Team or Growth plans–not just Professional. Zendesk for Sales offers three plans, ranging from $19 to $99 monthly per user, with free trials available for each plan.

Zendesk for Service, a customer service solution, provides unified customer-facing communication channels, self-service, collaboration, customer routing, and analytics–all organized in one dashboard. But keep in mind that Zendesk is viewed more as a support and ticketing solution, while Intercom is CRM functionality-oriented. This multichannel approach is especially important for companies that support customers in different regions and countries as access to communication tools can vary. Chat tools are the foundation of customer support software in 2023 and can serve as a key differentiator when choosing the right vendor. With both tools, you can also use support bots to automatically suggest specific articles, track customers’ ratings, and localize help center content to serve your customers in their native language.

Intercom vs Zendesk: Pros & Cons

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. 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.

Customers can search the help center by query keywords and sort through articles in 40 languages. Users with light access–such as knowledgeable agents and supervisors–can be added to tickets for browsing and feedback. While light agents cannot interact with the customer on the ticket, they can make notes and interact privately with other team members and agents involved with the ticket. With Intercom, you can keep track of your customers and what they do on your website in real time.

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. Their help desk is a single inbox to handle customer requests, where your customer support agents can leave private notes for each other and automatically assign requests to the right people. Ultimately, it’s important to consider what features each platform offers before making a decision, as well as their pricing options and customer support policies. 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.

With Intercom, you get email features like targeted and personalized outbound emailing, dynamic content fields, and an email-to-inbox forwarding feature. Email marketing, for example, is a big deal, but less so when it comes to customer service. Still, for either of these platforms to have some email marketing or other email functionality is common sense.

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Inside a ticket, the workspace center console displays the ticket’s conversation. The right side of the screen displays all customer contact information and company interaction history, and the agent can contact the customer via any channel with just a few clicks. Zendesk wins the self-service tools category because it provides extensive help center customization options. Zendesk’s chatbot, Answer Bot, automatically answers customer questions asynchronously in up to 40 languages–via any text-based channel.

Two leading contenders in the customer service platform space, Zendesk and Intercom, have transformed businesses’ customer engagement by offering powerful software solutions that enhance support systems. 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. 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.

It is handy for both sides since users can get in touch with customer support teams via a chat widget placed right on the website. 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.

Zendesk also has multiple security filters that range from where it stores its files to the people it hires. With this kind of organization, you will not only find your favorite apps but also discover new ones to meet your needs. However, the Intercom app store is far more intuitive and is much easier to navigate. It not only shows you all of the apps you can use, but it also divides these into topics and categories. With all accounted for, it seems that Zendesk still has a number of user interface issues. 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.

In fact, the Zendesk Marketplace has 1,300+ apps and integrations, from billing software to marketing automation tools. The former is one of the oldest and most reliable solutions on the market, while the latter sets the bar high in terms of innovative and out-of-the-box features. Zendesk’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. Zendesk also packs some pretty potent tools into their platform, so you can empower your agents to do what they do with less repetition.

With Intercom workload management tools, administrators can ensure that incoming conversations, traffic, and workload are evenly distributed among team members. Design and send out mobile push messages–phone pop-ups containing text and images that prompt customers to take action and redirect to a specific app page when clicked. Zendesk wins the ticketing system category due to its easy-to-use interface and side conversations tool. The Agent Workspace highlights tickets based on the issue and urgency, assigning each one a priority–agents can also tag tickets based on recency, hold-vs-open status, and urgency. Zendesk for Sales, or Zendesk Sell, is Zendesk’s sales pipeline and CRM tool with its own dashboard for lead generation and conversion. While both Zendesk and Intercom are great and robust platforms, none of them are able to provide you with the same value Messagely gives you at such an  affordable price.

Currently based in Albuquerque, NM, Bryce Emley holds an MFA in Creative Writing from NC State and nearly a decade of writing and editing experience. When he isn’t writing content, poetry, or creative nonfiction, he enjoys traveling, baking, playing music, https://chat.openai.com/ reliving his barista days in his own kitchen, camping, and being bad at carpentry. 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.

Customers increasingly expect to receive fast, convenient, and personalized support. 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. There is a better user experience with Intercom because the layout is more streamlined. The goal is to make it easier for new users to get around the site and use all of its features without having to go through extra steps.

• The dashboard’s left-hand column organizes and sorts all tickets by urgency.
• The price levels can even be much higher if we’re talking of a larger company.
• Intercom has a very robust advanced chatbot set of tools for your business needs.

On the other hand, Zendesk’s customer database may not offer the same level of depth and richness as Intercom. 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. You can use Zendesk Sell to track tasks, streamline workflows, improve engagement, nurture leads, and much more.