Zendesk vs Intercom: An Honest Comparison in 2024

Zendesk’s reporting tools are arguably more advanced while Intercom is designed for simplicity and ease of use. Zendesk also prioritizes operational metrics, while Intercom focuses on behavior and engagement. Their help desk software has a single inbox to handle customer inquiries.

• Self-service resources always relieve the burden on customer support teams, and both of our subjects have this tool in their packages.
• Every single bit of business SaaS in the world needs to leverage the efficiency power of workflows and automation.
• When selecting a sales CRM, you’ll want to consider its total cost of ownership (TCO).
• If you’re looking for a comprehensive solution with lots of features and integrations, then Zendesk would be a good choice.
• The only other downside is that the chat widget can feel a bit static and outdated.

This makes it easy for teams to prioritize tasks, stay aligned, and deliver superior service. Customerly’s Helpdesk is designed to boost efficiency and collaboration with the help of AI. Agents can easily view ongoing interactions, and take over from Aura AI at any moment if they feel intervention is needed.

With Messagely, you can increase your customer satisfaction and solve customers’ issues while they’re still visiting your site. Its sales CRM software starts at $19 per month per user, but you’ll have to pay $49 to get Zapier integrations and $99 for Hubspot integrations. Finally, you can pay $199 per month per user for unlimited sales pipelines and advanced reporting along with other features. Its $99 bracket includes advanced options, such as customer satisfaction prediction and multi-brand support, and in the $199 bracket, you also get advanced security and other very advanced features. Yes, you can continue using Intercom as the consumer-facing CRM experience, but integrate with Zendesk for customer service in the back end for more customer support functionality.

You can use these features to create custom funnels, segment users based on specific behaviors, and automate personalized communications. Furthermore, Intercom offers advanced automation features such as custom inbox rules, targeted messaging, and dynamic triggers based on customer segments. Zendesk AI is the intelligence layer that infuses CX intelligence into every step of the customer journey. In addition to being pre-trained on billions of real support interactions, our AI powers bots, agent and admin assist, and intelligent workflows that lead to 83 percent lower administrative costs. Customers have also noted that they can implement Zendesk AI five times faster than other solutions. As a result, customers can implement the help desk software quickly—without the need for developers—and see a faster return on investment.

So when it comes to chatting features, the choice is not really Intercom vs Zendesk. The latter offers a chat widget that is simple, outdated, and limited in customization options, while the former puts all of its resources into its messenger. The Intercom versus Zendesk conundrum is probably the greatest problem in customer service software. They both offer some state-of-the-art core functionality and numerous unusual features. 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.

Many businesses turn to customer relationship management (CRM) software to help improve customer relations and assist in sales. To sum things up, Zendesk is a great customer support oriented tool which will be a great choice for big teams with various departments. Intercom feels more wholesome and is more customer success oriented, but can be too costly for smaller companies. You can publish your knowledge base articles and divide them by categories and also integrate them with your messenger to accelerate the whole chat experience. Also, their in-app messenger is worth a separate mention as it’s one of their distinctive tools (especially since Zendesk doesn’t really have one).

Intercom vs Zendesk: pricing

This eventually adds to overall business costs, so they carefully need to consider all plans and budgets before making a decision. The pricing structure of Intercom is complex, making it difficult for Intercom users to understand their final costs. Intercom charges the price based on representative seats and people reached, with additional expenses for add-ons. Businsses need to do a cost analysis whenever they select customer service software for their business. You cannot invest much in this software if you are a small business, as it would exceed the budget requirements. Zendesk is an all-in-one omnichannel platform offering various channel integrations in one place.

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. You can test any of HelpCrunch’s pricing plans for free for 14 days and see our tools in action immediately. 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.

You can create dozens of articles in a simple, intuitive WYSIWYG text editor, divide them by categories and sections, and customize them with your custom themes. Using this, agents can chat across teams within a ticket via email, Slack, or Zendesk’s ticketing system. This packs all resolution information into a single ticket, so there’s no extra searching or backtracking needed to bring a ticket through to resolution, even if it involves multiple agents. What’s really nice about this is that even within a ticket, you can switch between communication modes without changing views. So if an agent needs to switch from chat to phone to email (or vice versa) with a customer, it’s all on the same ticketing page. There’s even on-the-spot translation built right in, which is extremely helpful.

While it provides necessary reporting features that help businesses track performance and identity key metrics, this will not be a sufficient option if they want something more sophisticated and advanced. Its analytics do not provide deeper insights into consumer interactions as well. Zendesk offers robust reporting capabilities, providing businesses with detailed insights into consumer interactions, ticketing systems, agent performance, and more. 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.

They have offices all around the world including countries such as Mexico City, Tokyo, New York, Paris, Singapore, São Paulo, London, and Dublin. Zendesk has excellent reporting and analytics tools that allow you to decipher the underlying issues behind your help desk metrics. Boost your lead gen and sales funnels with Flows – no-code automation paths that trigger at crucial moments in the customer journey.

Help desk SaaS is how you manage general customer communication and for handling customer questions. As for Intercom’s general pricing structure, there are three plans, but you’ll have to contact them to get exact prices. For those of you who have been waiting for the big showdown between these two customer support heavyweights, we are glad to present the ultimate Zendesk vs Intercom comparison article. As we delve into the features of Zendesk, we can identify the following weaknesses regarding user experience. Zendesk also allows Advanced AI and Advanced data privacy and protection plans, which cost $50 per month for each Advanced add-on.

The company was founded in 2007 and today serves over 170,000 customers worldwide. Zendesk’s mission is to build software designed to improve customer relationships. 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. Zendesk and Intercom also both offer analytics and reporting capabilities that allow businesses to analyze and monitor customer agents’ productivity.

Zendesk vs Intercom: functionality

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. Although the Intercom chat window claims that their team responds within a few hours, user reviews have stated that they had to wait for a few days. Intercom is the clear victor in terms of user experience, leaving all of its competitors in the dust. Many use cases call for different approaches, and Zendesk and Intercom are but two software solutions for each case. Intercom’s native mobile apps are good for iOS, Android, React Native, and Cordova, while Zendesk only has mobile apps for iPhones, iPads, and Android devices.

The difference between the two is that the Professional subscription lacks some things like chat widget unbranding, custom agent roles, multiple help centers, etc. Intercom is 4 years younger than Zendesk and has fancied itself as a messaging platform right from the beginning. 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. You can also add apps to your Intercom Messenger home to help users and visitors get what they need, without having to start a conversation.

Before you make your choice, check out Messagely’s features and compare them to discover which platform is best for you. Messagely pulls together all of the information about the customer contacting you and gives your representatives information on each interaction they’ve had with them, all within a streamlined platform. This way, your clients will never have to repeat themselves or get frustrated because their new representative doesn’t know their background. Zendesk, on the other hand, has revamped its security since its security breach in 2016.

How to Connect Intercom to Zendesk Integration

Missouri Star Quilt Company is one of the world’s largest online retailers of fabric and quilting supplies, shipping thousands of orders a day. 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. intercom and zendesk 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. You can then leverage customizable sequences, email automation, and desktop text messaging to help keep these prospects engaged.

Intercom, of course, allows its customer support team to collaborate and communicate too, but overall, Zendesk wins this group. Zendesk TCO is lower than Intercom due to its ability to scale, which does not require additional cost to update the software for a growing business. It also has a transparent pricing model so businesses know the price they will incur. Lastly, the tool is easy to set up and implement, meaning no additional knowledge or expertise makes the businesses incur additional costs.

To determine which one takes the cake, let’s dive into a feature comparison of Pipedrive vs. Zendesk. Honestly, when it comes to Zendesk, it is not the most modern tool out there. What can be really inconvenient about Zendesk, though is how their tools integrate with each other when you need to use them simultaneously. The cheapest (aka Essential) ‘All of Intercom’ package will cost you $136 per month, but if you only need their essential chat tools only, you can get them for $49 per month. To sum things up, one can get really confused trying to make sense of Zendesk’s pricing, let alone to calculate costs.

Powered by AI, Intercom’s Fin chatbot is purportedly capable of solving 50% of all queries autonomously — in multiple languages. At the same time, Fin AI Copilot background support to agents, acting as a personal, real-time AI assistant for dealing with inquiries. Zendesk’s Answer Bot is capable of helping customers with common queries by providing canned responses and links to relevant help articles. It relies on fairly basic automation while routing more complex issues to live agents. While its integrations are not as far-reaching as Zendesk’s, it seamlessly works with modern communication and business tools, like WhatsApp and the most prominent CRMS. Not to mention marketing and sales tools, like Salesforce, Hubspot, and Google Analytics.

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. While both Zendesk and Intercom are great and robust platforms, none of them are able to provide you with the same https://chat.openai.com/ value Messagely gives you at such an  affordable price. However, if you’re looking for a streamlined, all-in-one messaging platform, there is no better option than Messagely. You don’t have to pay per contact on your database, and you there are many free features you can use. You can also contact Zendesk support 24/7, whereas Intercom support only has live agents during business hours.

This gets you unlimited email addresses and email templates in both text form and HTML. The best help desks are also ticketing systems, which lets support reps create a support ticket out of issues that can then be tracked. When it comes to self-service portals for things like knowledgebases, Intercom has a useful set of resources. Intercom also has a community forum where users can help one another with questions and solutions. Intercom has limited scalability compared to Zendesk, which is unsuitable for large-scale enterprises. If transparency in pricing is not an issue for you and you are a small business, contact Intercom.

The setup is designed to seamlessly connect your customer support team with customers across all platforms. With industry-leading AI that infuses intelligence into every interaction, robust integrations, and exceptional data security and compliance, it’s no wonder why Zendesk is a trusted leader in CX. Both Zendesk and Intercom offer customer service software with AI capabilities—however, they are not created equal.

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. This feature ensures that each customer request is handled by the best-suited agent, improving the overall efficiency of the support team. Intercom’s CRM can work as a standalone CRM and requires no additional service to operate robustly.

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. 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. Intercom’s dashboards may not be as aesthetically pleasing as Zendesk’s, but they still allow users to navigate their tools with few distractions.

Compared to Zendesk, Intercom offers few integrations, which may hinder its scalability. Why don’t you try something equally powerful yet more affordable, like HelpCrunch? 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 can even integrate with Zendesk and other sources to import past help center content. I just found Zendesk’s help center to be slightly better integrated into their workflows and more customizable. 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.

You can contact the sales team if you’re just looking around, but you will not receive decent customer support unless you buy their service. However, you’ll likely end up paying more for Zendesk, and in-app messenger and other advanced customer communication tools will not be included. Intercom isn’t as great with sales, but it allows for better communication. With Intercom, you can keep track of your customers and what they do on your website in real time. Like Zendesk, Intercom allows you to chat with online visitors and assist with their issues. These include chatbot automation features, customer segmentation, and targeted SMS messaging to reach the right audience efficiently.

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. As any free tool, the functionalities there are quite limited, but nevertheless. If you’re a really small business or a startup, you can benefit big time from such free tools.

While clutter-free and straightforward, it does lack some of the more advanced features and capabilities that Zendesk has. Intercom primarily focuses on messaging but offers limited channel breadth compared to Zendesk, requiring paid add-ons for critical channels like WhatsApp. 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. Say what you will, but Intercom’s design and overall user experience leave all its competitors far behind.

• If you’re smaller more sales oriented startup with enough money, go Intercom.
• You can also follow up with customers after they have left the chat and qualify them based on your answers.
• While most of Intercom’s ticketing features come with all plans, it’s most important AI features come at a higher cost, including its automated workflows.
• 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 automated messages and conversation routing — so businesses can manage customer conversations more efficiently.

Similar to Zendesk, Intercom’s pricing reserves its most powerful automations for higher-paying customers, the good news is that Fin AI comes with all plans. You can then add features like advanced AI agents, workforce management, and QA. They fall within roughly the same price range, that most SMEs and larger enterprises should find within their budget. Both also use a two-pronged pricing system, based on the number of agents/seats and the level of features needed. As the name suggests, it’s a more sales-oriented solution with robust contact and deal management tools as well. With this data, businesses identify friction points where the customer journey breaks down as well as areas where it’s performing smoothly.

Intercom works with any website or web-based product and aims to be your one-way stop for all of your customer communication needs. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. In this article, we’ll compare Zendesk vs Intercom to find out which is the right customer support tool for you. If you require a robust helpdesk with powerful ticketing and reporting features, Zendesk is the better choice, particularly for complex support queries. Customerly’s CRM is designed to help businesses build stronger relationships by keeping customer data organized and actionable.

What’s more, we support live video support for moments when your customers need in-depth guidance. Intercom’s reporting is less focused on getting a fine-grained understanding of your team’s performance, and more on a nuanced understanding of customer behavior and engagement. 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. But don’t just take our word for it—listen to what customers say about why they picked Zendesk.

If you’re exploring popular chat support tools Zendesk and Intercom, you may be trying to understand which solution is right for you. In this detailed comparison, we’ll explore the features and characteristics of Intercom and Zendesk, highlighting each of their unique capabilities, so you can identify the right solution for your needs. 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.

Zendesk vs Intercom for customer support

If you thought Zendesk’s pricing was confusing, let me introduce you to Intercom’s pricing. It’s virtually impossible to predict what you’re going to pay for Intercom at end of the day. But it’s designed and crafted so well that I can’t seem to get enough of it. It’s highly customizable, so you can adjust it according to your website or product’s style.

It’s built for function over form — the layout is highly organized and clearly designed around ticket management. You get an immediate overview of key metrics, such as ticket volume and agent performance as well as a summary of key customer data points. Zendesk’s automation is centered around streamlining ticket management by bringing together customer inquiries from various sources—email, phone, web, chat, and social media—into a single platform.

While this may seem like a positive for Zendesk, it’s important to consider that a larger company may not be as agile or responsive to customer needs as a smaller company. The right sales CRM can help your team close more deals and boost your business. 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.

While it’s a separate product with separate costs, it does integrate seamlessly with Zendesk’s customer service platform. Far from impersonalizing customer service, chatbots offer an immediate and efficient way to address common queries that end in satisfaction. Nowadays, it’s a crucial component in helping businesses focus on high-priority interactions and scale their customer service. Today, amid the rise of omnichannel customer service, it offers a centralized location to manage interactions via email, live chat, social media, or voice calls. Zendesk boasts robust reporting and analytics tools, plus a dedicated workforce management system.

HubSpot helps seamlessly integrate customer service tools that you and your team already leverage. If you own a business, you’re in a fierce battle to deliver personalized customer experiences that stand out. Keep up with emerging trends in customer service and learn from top industry experts. Master Tidio with in-depth guides and uncover real-world success stories in our case studies. Discover the blueprint for exceptional customer experiences and unlock new pathways for business success.

Many businesses choose to work with Intercom because of its focus on personalization and flexibility, allowing companies to completely customize their customer service experience. Pipedrive is limited to third-party customer service integrations and, unlike Zendesk, does not offer customer service software. Zendesk for sales makes integrating with the tools you already use easy. Whether you want to integrate Slack for internal team communication or PandaDoc to send and track sales proposals, Zendesk supports easy-to-set-up app integrations to help boost employee productivity. Additionally, the Zendesk sales CRM seamlessly integrates with the Zendesk Support Suite, allowing your customer service and sales teams to share information in a centralized place. When it comes to utility, Zendesk’s utility may not be as robust as a pure CRM solution.

All customer questions, whether via phone, chat, email, social media, or any other channel, are landed in one dashboard, where your agents can solve them quickly and efficiently. This guarantees continuous omnichannel support that meets customer expectations. So, you see, it’s okay to feel dizzy when comparing Intercom vs Zendesk. Given that we’re neither Intercom nor Zendesk, we ourselves were curious to see how these two titans of customer service differ.

Meanwhile, Intercom excels with its comprehensive AI automation capabilities, all built on a unified AI system. You can access detailed customer data at a glance while chatting, enabling you to make informed decisions in real time. The customer journey timeline provides a clear view of customer activities, helping you understand behaviors and tailor your responses accordingly. If you want to get to the nitty-gritty of your customer service team’s performance, Zendesk is the way to go.

To sum up, one can get really confused trying to understand the Zendesk pricing, let alone calculate costs. 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. Currently based in Albuquerque, NM, Chat GPT 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, reliving his barista days in his own kitchen, camping, and being bad at carpentry.