Zendesk vs Intercom: Which Solution to Choose in 2024?

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. Zendesk is a ticketing system before anything else, and its ticketing functionality is overwhelming in the best possible way. They’ve been marketing themselves as a messaging platform right from the beginning.

• What can be really inconvenient about Zendesk, though is how their tools integrate with each other when you need to use them simultaneously.
• In this segment, Dominic explores the outbound capabilities of Zendesk and Intercom.
• When reviewing a product, users are asked to assess the product’s overall quality, which includes assigning specific ratings for ease of use, value for money, customer support, and functionality.
• The best part about Zendesk is that, along with its amazing features, it also provides its users with a magical wand for customizing them.

Let us look at the type and size of business for which Zednesk and Intercom are suitable. The help center in Intercom is also user-friendly, enabling agents to access content creation easily. It does help you organize and create content using efficient tools, but Zendesk is more suitable if you want a fully branded customer-centric experience.

Intercom also charges additional charges for specific features, such as charging $0.99 for every resolution. This eventually adds to overall business costs, so they carefully need to consider all plans and budgets before making a decision. The Expert plan, which offers collaboration, real-time dashboard, security, and reporting tools for large teams, costs $139. The Essential customer support plan for individuals, startups, and businsses costs $39. Yes, you can use Intercom on the front end for customer communication and Zendesk on the back end for managing support tickets and workflows.

Experience magic with JustReply.

In contrast, Intercom follows a pricing structure that can be straightforward for businesses looking for specific functionalities. However, it’s important to note that Intercom’s pricing can vary depending on factors such as the number of users, conversations, and additional features you require. In some cases, Zendesk may be considered a more cost-effective option compared to Intercom, particularly for businesses with smaller budgets or those looking for more predictable pricing. So yeah, two essential things that Zendesk lacks in comparison to Intercom are in-app messages and email marketing tools. Intercom on the other hand lacks many ticketing functionality that can be essential for big companies with a huge customer support load. 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.

Intercom also uses AI and features a chatbot called Fin, but negative reviews note basic reporting and a lack of customization. Fin is priced at $0.99 per resolution, so companies handling large volumes of queries might find it costly. In comparison, https://chat.openai.com/ Zendesk customers pay a fixed price of $50 per agent—and only Zendesk AI is modeled on the world’s largest CX-specific dataset. Both Zendesk and Intercom offer customer service software with AI capabilities—however, they are not created equal.

The Zendesk chat tool has the most necessary features like shortcuts to saved responses, chatbots, and live chat analytics. Yes, you can replace Zendesk with Intercom as both customer support platforms have a rich set of features and integrations. The Intercom vs. Zendesk pricing may be justified by the value-added services and zendesk vs. intercom minor features that they have for their all-in-one pricing. For example, for businesses that want just a couple of features, there are subscription packages. Each of such packages contains a set of tools from basic to advanced features. One study found that 67% of customers prefer calling an agent to help solve their queries.

However, this is somewhat subjective, and depending on your business needs and favorite tools, you may argue we got it all mixed up, and Intercom is truly superior. Some startups and small businesses may prefer one app, while large companies and enterprise operations will have their own requirements. Integrations are the best way to enhance the toolkit of your apps by connecting them for interoperable actions and features. Both Zendesk and Intercom have integration libraries, and you can also use a connecting tool like Zapier for added integrations and add-ons. Zendesk’s mobile app is also good for ticketing, helping you create new support tickets with macros and updates.

Essential Plan

However, customer service (and the ways how a company delivers it) creates a centerpiece of a brand. But if you’re not familiar with them, think of the software as an online human resource department. 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.

Pop-up chat, in-app messaging, and notifications are some of the highly-rated features of this live chat software. For smaller teams that have to handle multiple tasks, do not forget to check JustReply.ai, which is a user-friendly customer support tool. It will seamlessly integrate with Slack and offers everything you need for your favorite communication platform.

• Imagine having the power to connect your helpdesk solution with a wide range of tools and applications that your team already uses.
• It uses artificial intelligence (AI) to assist customers through self-help options or access to the relevant articles before connecting them to your team.
• With mParticle, you can connect your Zendesk and Intercom data with other marketing, analytics, and business intelligence platforms without any custom engineering effort.
• For smaller teams that have to handle multiple tasks, do not forget to check JustReply.ai, which is a user-friendly customer support tool.

Customize your brand, set up communication channels, configure business rules, and easily integrate with third-party platforms. Save money and time by relying on our expert onboarding team to assist you in building and implementing your personalized Dixa setup. Moving on, Dominic delves into the features offered by Zendesk and Intercom.

This feature is available on all the channels your customers use to get in touch with your brand. They’ve been rated as one of the easy live chat solutions with more integrated options. This live chat software provider also enables your business to send proactive chat messages to customers and engage effectively in real-time. This is one of the best ways to qualify high-quality leads for your business and improve your chances of closing a sale faster. Before choosing the customer support software, it is crucial to consider the size of the business. Some software only works best for startups, while others have offerings only for large enterprises.

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. While both platforms focus on enhancing customer support, their approaches and specialized functionalities differ.

This combination maximizes the strengths of both help desk platforms, providing a seamless experience for managing customer accounts from initial interaction to issue resolution. Assessing the performance and functionality of both platforms enables businesses to make informed decisions based on their specific requirements. While Zendesk offers an intuitive approach to customer support management, Intercom provides powerful tools for fostering deeper customer relationships through personalized communication.

Sales pipeline and lead nurturing

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. After this live chat software comparison, you’ll get a better picture of what’s better for your business.

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. Unlike Zendesk, the prices for Intercom are based on the number of seats and contacts, with each plan tailored to each customer, meaning that the pricing can be quite flexible. This is especially helpful for smaller businesses that may not need a lot of features.

A collection of these reports can enable your business to identify the right resources responsible for bringing engagement to your business. On the other hand, Intercom may have a lower ROI when compared to Zendesk due to the limited depth of features it offers. Although it provides businesses with valuable messaging and automation tools, they may require more than this to achieve a higher level of functionality. Companies might assume that using Intercom increases costs, potentially impacting businesses’ ROI.

Save 15 hours a week on sales research

Zendesk’s advanced automation features make it the preferred choice for businesses seeking to optimize their workflow and enhance customer support efficiency. Intercom distinguishes itself by excelling in real-time customer engagement. It offers a comprehensive suite of features that empowers businesses to foster immediate connections with their customers.

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. 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. 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.

While Intercom excels in certain aspects of customer communication, Zendesk offers its own set of strengths that cater to different aspects of customer support and engagement. 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. Zendesk takes the slight lead here because it offers some advanced help desk features, which Intercom does not. Zendesk and Intercom also both offer analytics and reporting capabilities that allow businesses to analyze and monitor customer agents’ productivity.

Zendesk

Use HubSpot Service Hub to provide seamless, fast, and delightful customer service. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. Now that we’ve covered a bit of background on both Zendesk and Intercom, let’s dive into the features each platform offers. See how leading multi-channel consumer brands solve E2E customer data challenges with a real-time customer data platform. Databeys Consultant expert will be knowledgeable about a variety of available products and can assist you in selecting the ideal one for your unique business requirements. Whether Intercom is cheaper than Zendesk depends on your specific usage, feature requirements, and the number of users in your organization. Say what you will, but Intercom’s design and overall user experience are leaving all its competitors far behind.

Zendesk and Intercom are tailored to enhance your customer support and engagement, providing robust tools for managing customer inquiries, automating responses, and facilitating communication. However, a fundamental difference between them is their scope and focus. While Zendesk’s emphasis is entirely on customer support, Intercom’s features extend into marketing and sales. Zendesk started as a customer support request SaaS, a legacy that continues today with its robust ticketing and customer messaging solutions. In contrast, Intercom aims to provide an all-in-one business communication platform to support, engage, and convert customers with sales and marketing functions. An example of the platforms’ different focus is that Intercom includes an email marketing feature, whereas Zendesk doesn’t.

But don’t just take our word for it—listen to what customers say about why they picked Zendesk. View the attached screenshots to easily evaluate the similarities and differences between Intercom and Zendesk Chat user interfaces. Experience the amazing capabilities of Intercom and Zendesk Chat on desktop and mobile devices for unparalleled productivity and flexibility. In the specs, Intercom and Zendesk Chat provide complementing benefits.

But that’s not it, if you want to resolve customer common questions with the help of the vendor’s new tool – Fin bot, you will have to pay $0.99 per resolution per month. But it’s designed so well that you really enjoy staying in their inbox and communicating with clients. The Zendesk chat tool has most of the necessary features like shortcuts (saved responses), automated triggers, and live chat analytics. 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.

Intercom’s AI has the transformative power to enhance customer service by offering multilingual support and contextual responses. Fin uses seamless communication across customer bases, breaking language barriers and catering to global audiences. The integration of apps plays a significant role in creating a seamless experience or a 360-degree view of customers across the company. Zendesk allows the integration of 1300 apps ranging from billing apps, marketing tools, and other software, adding overall to the value of the business. It also excels in the silo approach in a company and allows easy access to information to anyone in the company through this integration.

What better way to start a Zendesk vs. Intercom than to compare their features? If you go through Zendesk’s reviews and ratings section, you will get to see a long list of positive appraisals. And we all know that receiving such continuous positive Customer feedback isn’t easy at all.

Both Zendesk and Intercom have positioned themselves as key players in this arena, offering unique features tailored to address diverse business requirements. By delving into a detailed comparison, businesses can gain valuable insights into choosing the most suitable customer support software for their specific needs. ThriveDesk is a feature-rich helpdesk solution that offers a comprehensive set of tools to manage customer support effectively.

Its easy navigability allows you to switch between different sections smoothly. And you would be surprised to know that the Intercom does not have a VOIP call service. 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. But, you would not be able to experience such a good in-app messaging service on Zendesk.

In addition to its service features, Zendesk offers a fully integrated CRM solution, Zendesk Sell, available for an additional cost, starting at $19/agent/month. 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. In this context, Zendesk and Intercom emerge as key contenders, each offering distinct features tailored to dynamic customer service environments. 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.

However, if businesses seek a more personalized customer experience, Intercom’s advanced features could be beneficial. The ease of use and customization options play a significant role in the seamless integration of a customer support platform within existing business operations. Analyzing the user-friendliness and customizability of Zendesk and Intercom provides insights into their adaptability to diverse business environments. Intercom focuses on providing personalized customer messaging and support at every stage of the customer lifecycle. Its conversational support approach, powerful automation capabilities, and in-depth analytics empower businesses to deliver tailored and effective customer experiences.

Intercom charges the price based on representative seats and people reached, with additional expenses for add-ons. Zendesk offers various features, which may differ according to the plan. Zendesk started in 2007 as a web-based SaaS product for managing incoming customer support requests. Since then, it has evolved into a full-fledged CRM that offers a suite of software applications to its over 160,000 customers like Uber, Siemens, and Tesco. While both platforms have a significant presence in the industry, they cater to varying business requirements. Zendesk, with its extensive toolkit, is often preferred by businesses seeking an all-encompassing customer support solution.

Those same tools also increase customer retention by 27% while saving 23% on sales and marketing costs. These plans make Hiver a versatile tool, catering to a range of business sizes and needs, from startups to large enterprises looking for a comprehensive customer support solution within Gmail. Intercom’s solution aims to streamline high-volume ticket influx and provide personalized, conversational support. It also includes extensive integrations with over 350 CRM, email, ticketing, and reporting tools. The platform is recognized for its ability to resolve a significant portion of common questions automatically, ensuring faster response times.

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. Zendesk is designed with the agent in mind, delivering a modern, intuitive experience. The customizable Zendesk Agent Workspace enables reps to work within a single browser tab with one-click navigation across any channel. Intercom, on the other hand, can be a complicated system, creating a steep learning curve for new users.

Intercom’s automation features enable businesses to deliver a personalized experience to customers and scale their customer support function effectively. 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. Zendesk may be unable to give the agents more advanced features or customization options for chatbots. Zendesk has a strong customer support reputation, a helpful community, and extensive resources.

Several decision-making factors, such as budget constraints, specific business requirements, and long-term goals, influence the choice between Zendesk and Intercom. Understanding these factors assists businesses in making a well-informed decision that aligns with their unique needs and objectives. As businesses expand and evolve, the scalability and flexibility of their customer support platform becomes important. Examining the scalability and flexibility of Zendesk and Intercom helps businesses determine which platform can accommodate their growth trajectory and changing needs. While Intercom also provides a user-friendly interface, some users may find it a tad overwhelming, especially when juggling multiple support requests.

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. Community managers can also escalate posts to support agents when one-on-one help is needed. Intercom recently ramped up its features to include helpdesk and ticketing functionality. Zendesk, on the other hand, started as a ticketing tool, and therefore has one of the market’s best help desk and ticket management features.

It will help you understand your customer’s issue and solve it instantly. Although you cannot be with your customers all the time in real-time, through Desku’s live chatting, you can actually have their back. The offers that appear on the website are from software companies Chat GPT 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). This site does not include all software companies or all available software companies offers.

Intercom is a customer relationship management (CRM) software company that provides a suite of tools for managing customer interactions. The company was founded in 2011 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California. Intercom’s products are used by over 25,000 customers, from small tech startups to large enterprises. MParticle is a Customer Data Platform offering plug-and-play integrations to Zendesk and Intercom, along with over 300 other marketing, analytics, and data warehousing tools. With mParticle, you can connect your Zendesk and Intercom data with other marketing, analytics, and business intelligence platforms without any custom engineering effort.

What’s worse, Intercom doesn’t offer a free trial to its prospect to help them test the product before onboarding with their services. 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. If compared to Intercom’s chatbot, Zendesk offers a relatively latest platform that makes support automation possible.