Zendesk vs Intercom in 2023: Detailed Analysis of Features, Pricing, and More

You can also use Zendesk to automatically track and record sales calls, allowing you to focus your full attention on your customer rather than taking notes. With simple setup, and handy importers you’ll be up and running in no time, ready to unlock the Support Funnel and deliver fast and personal customer support. Finding the right customer experience software is nothing short of hitting the jackpot.

This section is crucial for creating automated workflows and can be used to save important information from the API response to a specific attribute, making it easily accessible in future interactions. Intercom primarily focuses on messaging but offers limited channel breadth compared to Zendesk, requiring paid add-ons for critical channels like WhatsApp. In this paragraph, let’s explain some common issues users usually ask about when choosing between Zendesk and Intercom platforms. What can be really inconvenient about Zendesk is how its tools integrate with each other when you need to use them simultaneously. To resolve common customer questions with the vendor’s new tool, Fin bot, you must pay $0.99 per resolution per month. So yeah, all the features talk actually brings us to the most sacred question — the question of pricing.

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. Zendesk has over 1,300 integrations, compared to Intercom’s 300+ apps, making it the leader in this category.

Customer interactions are often spilled all over the place and making sense of them all can be tricky. Here are the benefits of using a customer experience tool for your business. You can create an omnichannel CRM suite with a mix of productivity, collaboration, eCommerce, CRM, analytics, email marketing, social media, and other tools. Both app stores include many popular integrations, such as Salesforce, HubSpot, Mailchimp, and Zapier. Intercom offers an easy way to nurture your qualified leads (prospects) into customers with Intercom Series.

• So, bringing CX into the fold with your brand’s core promise is downright essential, not just nice-to-have.
• It is great to have CRM functionality inside your customer service platform because it helps maintain great customer experiences by storing all past customer engagements and conversation histories.
• With Zendesk Sell, you can also customize how deals move through your pipeline by setting pipeline stages that reflect your sales cycle.
• Power channel-less interactions and seamless resolution no matter the channel of contact.
• 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.

Overall, Intercom and Zendesk offer intuitive and user-friendly user interfaces, prioritizing ease of use and customization. The choice between the two may be personal preference or specific feature requirements. Intercom’s user interface is known for being modern, intuitive, and user-friendly.

What are the differences between Intercom and Zendesk?

One of the standout features of Intercom’s customer support is its chatbot functionality. The chatbot can help users with common support issues and answer frequently asked questions. This feature can reduce the workload of customer support teams and provide faster response times to users. 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.

It can filter engageable from non-engageable messages, deflect them to your agents and even alert them in case of potential PR crises, keeping your brand perception positive and proactive. A CX tool is equipped with conversational AI that can resolve a good chunk of your queries on its own. Here’s a collection of customer experience software for you to evaluate and choose from.

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. However, it is possible Intercom’s support is superior at the premium level. Compared to Zendesk and Intercom, Helpwise offers competitive and transparent pricing plans. Its straightforward pricing structure ensures businesses get access to the required features without complex tiers or hidden costs, making it an attractive option for cost-conscious organizations. 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.

Chatbots are automated customer support tools that can assist with low-level ticket triage and ticket routing in real-time. How easy it is to program a chatbot and how effective a chatbot is at assisting human reps is an important factor for this category. What sets Zendesk apart is its user-friendly interface, customizable workflows, and scalability. It caters to a wide range of industries, particularly excelling in e-commerce, SaaS, technology, and telecommunications. It is favored by customer support, helpdesk, IT service management, and contact center teams. 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.

Brief History of Zendesk

Zendesk is among the industry’s best ticketing and customer support software, and most of its additional functionality is icing on the proverbial cake. Intercom, on the other hand, is designed to be more of a complete solution for sales, marketing, and customer relationship nurturing. Intercom also uses AI and features a chatbot called Fin, but negative reviews note basic reporting and a lack of customization.

With Zendesk, even our most basic plans include a robust selection of features, including custom data fields, sales triggers, email tracking, text messaging, and call tracking and recording. CX tools now help you set up your cloud contact center so your intelligent virtual agents and live agents can work in tandem to engage with and help users remotely via text, audio, or video. Moreover, CX platforms are even simplifying remote workforce management to ensure globally distributed teams are on their A-game, all the while helping you save on operational and infrastructure costs. 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. When it comes to Sprinklr, you can rest easy knowing no piece of consumer intelligence slips through the cracks.

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. Help desk SaaS is how you manage general customer communication and for handling customer questions.

I tested both options (using Zendesk’s Suite Professional trial and Intercom’s Support trial) and found clearly defined differences between the two. Here’s what you need to know about Zendesk vs. Intercom as customer support and relationship management tools. Use ticketing systems to efficiently manage high ticket volume, deliver timely customer support, and boost agent productivity. 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.

However, over the years, Intercom has evolved into a complete customer communication platform with features like live chat, email marketing, and customer support. 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.

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But don’t just take our word for it—listen to what customers say about why they picked Zendesk. It will allow you to leverage some Intercom capabilities while keeping your account at the time-tested platform. 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.

The app includes features like automated messages and conversation routing — so businesses can manage customer conversations more efficiently. Intercom and Zendesk are excellent 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. Intercom has received generally positive customer reviews, with an overall rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars on Gartner Peer Insights. Customers appreciate the platform’s ease of use, flexibility, and robust feature set. However, some users have reported issues with the platform’s pricing and customer support.

Apart from this feature, the customer support options at Zendesk are quite limited. 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. The Zendesk chat tool has most of the necessary features, like shortcuts (saved responses), automated triggers, and live chat analytics.

The format of the request body is determined by the Content-Type header in the request, which specifies the format of the data being sent. If you’re already using Intercom and want to continue using it as the front-end CRM experience, integrating with Zendesk can improve it. Check out our chart that compares the capabilities of Zendesk vs. Intercom. If you see either of these warnings, wait 60 seconds for your Zendesk rate limit to be reset and try again. If this becomes a persistent issue for your team, we recommend contacting Zendesk.

We’ll even flag any content you need to review and give you advice on how to fix it. You’re choosing that brand because of what it stands for — maybe it’s sustainability, quality, or community. But if the CX feels, that’s supposed to be holistic, feels broken, at every twist and turn during your journey with the brand, you might feel let down. So, bringing CX into the fold with your brand’s core promise is downright essential, not just nice-to-have.

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 was founded in 2007 by Mikkel Svane, Morten Primdahl, and Alexander Aghassipour.

The last thing you want is your sales data or the contact information of potential customers to end up in the wrong hands. Because of this, you’ll want to make sure you’re selecting a cloud-based CRM, like Zendesk, with strong security features. Zendesk meets global security and privacy compliance standards and includes features like single sign-on (SSO) to help provide protection against cyberattacks and keep your data safe.

Zendesk has an app available for both Android and iOS, which makes it easy to stay connected with customers while on the go. The app includes features like push notifications and real-time customer engagement — so businesses can respond quickly to customer inquiries. Intercom also offers a 14-day free trial, after which customers can upgrade to a paid plan or use the basic free plan.

All changes must be made through Zendesk and will automatically propagate to Intercom with the next sync. However, you can configure the settings for synced articles such as enabling them for Fin or managing audience rules. Customer experiences have made major strides in the past year or so, all owing to changing expectations and market conditions. Let’s see how conversational AI in telecom helps make agents more productive.

Displaying ratings and comments directly in tickets makes it easy for agents to see feedback without switching tools. Learn all about how these integrations can help out your sales and support teams. Redefine customer service with an AI-powered platform that unifies voice, digital and social channels.

But unlike the Zendesk sales CRM, Pipedrive does not seamlessly integrate with native customer service software and relies on third-party alternatives. Many businesses turn to customer relationship management (CRM) software to help improve customer relations and assist in sales. The goal of CX software is to optimize these interactions to increase customer loyalty and retention by making the experience smoother and more responsive. Features typically include customer self-service, feedback collection and omnichannel customer service. Overall, both Intercom and Zendesk are reliable and effective customer support tools, and the choice between the two ultimately depends on the specific needs and priorities of the user. Intercom and Zendesk offer robust integration capabilities that allow businesses to streamline their workflow and improve customer support.

Additionally, Zendesk’s customizable dashboards and reporting features provide valuable insights into customer support performance. Zendesk is more robust in terms of its ticket management capabilities, it offers more customization options and advanced features like a virtual call center app. On the other hand, Intercom is more focused on conversational customer support, and has more help desk features suited for live chat and messaging. On the contrary, Intercom’s pricing is far less predictable and can cost hundreds/thousands of dollars per month. But this solution wins because it’s an all-in-one tool with a modern live chat widget, allowing you to improve your customer experiences easily.

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. Pipedrive offers five total plans, https://chat.openai.com/ 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.

Additional apps added in August

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. A customer service department is only as good as its support team members, and these highly-prized employees need to rely on one another.

Zendesk offers a free 30-day trial, after which customers will need to upgrade to one of their paid plans. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. Intercom is used by over 30,000 businesses worldwide, including Shopify, Atlassian, and New Relic. The platform is known for its user-friendly interface, powerful automation capabilities, and robust analytics tools.

• Overall, I actually liked Zendesk’s user experience better than Intercom’s in terms of its messaging dashboard.
• It consolidates data from multiple touchpoints — branch visits, online transactions and mobile app usage.
• The platform is known for its ease of use, customizable workflows, and extensive integrations with other business tools.
• To sum up this Intercom vs Zendesk battle, the latter is a great support-oriented tool that will be a good choice for big teams with various departments.

Cobrowse for Support/Chat by Blitzz helps you provide Remote Support to your customers using features like Cobrowse, Screenshare and Live Video integrated directly within apps you already use. Use them to quickly resolve customer question on, for example, how to use your product. You can then create linked tickets for any bug reports or issues that require further troubleshooting by technical teams. As a Zendesk user, you’re familiar with tickets – you’ll be able to continue using these in Intercom. Still, they are independent picks by Sprinklr’s editorial team based on our research and publicly available information on the review sites. It is crucial to note that software or platforms may evolve over time and the company may address some of these concerns in newer updates or versions.

Pipedrive has workflow automation features, like setting triggers and desired actions, scheduling customer interactions, and automating lead assignment. However, one user noted that important features like automation are often down intercom zendesk integration for an extensive amount of time. Omneo is an omnichannel Clienteling, Loyalty and CX platform that allows retailers to create and use customer data in stores and online that primarily helps customers shop more and more often.

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 puff. View your users’ Zendesk tickets in Intercom and create new ones directly from conversations. Utilizing modern CRM software can help your sales team boost their productivity and sales performance. Pipedrive also has security measures baked into its solution, offering SSO for its users.

There are many features to help bigger customer service teams collaborate more effectively, such as private notes or a real-time view of who’s handling a given ticket at the moment. At the same time, the vendor offers powerful reporting capabilities to help you grow and improve your business. The Zendesk sales CRM offers tiered pricing plans designed to support businesses of all sizes, from startups to enterprises. The Professional and Enterprise plans offer advanced features that build on those in the Team and Growth plans, including lead scoring, call scripts, and unlimited email sequences.

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. 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. You can even improve efficiency and transparency by setting up task sequences, defining sales triggers, and strategizing with advanced forecasting and reporting tools. Starting at $19 per user per month, it’s also on the cheaper end of the spectrum compared to high-end CRMs like ActiveCampaign and HubSpot.

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. 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.

However, some users have reported issues with the platform’s customer support and pricing. Intercom was founded in 2011 by Eoghan McCabe, Ciaran Lee, Chat GPT Des Traynor, and David Barrett. Initially, the platform was designed to help businesses communicate with their customers through targeted messaging.

Those same tools also increase customer retention by 27% while saving 23% on sales and marketing costs. 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. 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.

On the other hand, Zendesk is primarily a customer service platform that now offers a sales module. It is designed for larger enterprises and offers more comprehensive features than Intercom. Unlike Intercom, Zendesk is scalable, intuitively designed for CX, and offers a low total cost of ownership.

This data can help eliminate unwanted surprises and give your sales team valuable insights to improve their strategy. Pipedrive uses historical data to help predict cash flow and provide performance metrics for your sales team. With Zendesk, you can use lead tracking features to filter and segment your leads in real time. For example, you can create a smart list that only includes leads that haven’t responded to your message, allowing you to separate prospects for lead nurturing.

Intercom’s integration with these tools allows businesses to track customer interactions, personalize messaging, and automate workflows. Pipedrive is limited to third-party customer service integrations and, unlike Zendesk, does not offer customer service software. 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.

This will provide live data on who your users are and what they do in your app. This means you can use the Help Desk Migration product to import data from a variety of source tools (e.g. Zendesk, ZOHOdesk, Freshdesk, SFDC etc) to Intercom tickets. As we explore the latest CX trends for 2024, there’s a need to bridge the gap between what businesses perceive and what customers actually experience. Our ebook delves into these discrepancies and walks you through the precise way you can use AI and automation to bring your experiences at par with what your customers expect.

From streamlining tasks to delivering real-time insights, these apps empower customer support teams to work smarter and shine brighter. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central brings customer experience to the forefront for small to medium-sized businesses. It integrates customer interactions across finance, sales, service and operations into one easy-to-use platform, making it simpler to deliver great service and make precise, data-driven decisions. In general, Zendesk offers a wide range of live chat features such as customizable chat widgets, automatic greetings, offline messaging, and chat triggers. In addition to these features, Intercom offers messaging automation and real-time visitor insights.

The Zendesk sales CRM integrates seamlessly with the Zendesk Suite, our top-of-the-line customer service software. Unlike Zendesk, Pipedrive is limited to third-party integrations and doesn’t connect with native customer support software. Podium simplifies customer interactions with tools for text marketing, payment handling, review collection, live chat and an integrated agent inbox.

The platform was created to provide a simple and effective way for businesses to manage customer support tickets. Over the years, Zendesk has expanded its offerings to include features such as live chat, knowledge base, and customer feedback. Zendesk is an AI-powered platform designed to optimize customer experience across all touchpoints.

After struggling with different customer service solutions, Missouri Star Quilt Company turned to Zendesk for service and sales. Connecting Zendesk Support and Zendesk Sell allows its customer service and sales-oriented wholesale team to work together effortlessly. Zendesk has sales forecasting features that leverage previous sales data to help predict future outcomes, including revenue growth, cash flow, and the likelihood of winning a deal.

Intercom, on the other hand, was built for business messaging, so communication is one of their strong suits. Combine that with their prowess in automation and sales solutions, and you’ve got a really strong product that can handle myriad customer relationship needs. 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.