Zendesk vs Intercom: In-Depth Features & Price Comparison

Hivers offers round-the-clock proactive support across all its plans, ensuring that no matter the time or issue, expert assistance is always available. This 24/7 support model is designed to provide continuous, real-time solutions to clients, enhancing the overall reliability and responsiveness of Hivers’ services. Choose Zendesk for a scalable, team-size-based pricing model and Intercom for initial low-cost access with flexibility in adding advanced features. In a nutshell, none of the customer support software companies provide decent assistance for users.

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. Intercom does not offer a native call center tool, so it cannot handle calls through a cloud-based phone system or calling app on its own. However, you can connect Intercom with over 40 compatible phone and video integrations. It’s much easier if you decide to go with the Zendesk Suite, which includes Support, Chat, Talk, and Guide tools.

The software also comes with basic reporting, automation and AI, and some apps and integrations. Intercom, a leading player in the customer support software landscape, offers a diverse range of solutions tailored to modern customer service needs. Its comprehensive suite of customer support tools is designed to address the dynamic and evolving requirements of businesses across various industries. With a focus on versatility and adaptability, Intercom’s offerings aim to provide an integrated approach to managing customer interactions and support processes. The increasing significance of chatbot integration underscores the need for comprehensive customer support solutions that can effectively leverage this technology.

Intercom vs Zendesk: overall impression

Intercom has a dark mode that I think many people will appreciate, and I wouldn’t say it’s lacking in any way. But I like that Zendesk just feels slightly cleaner, has easy online/away toggling, more visual customer journey notes, and a handy widget for exploring the knowledge base on the fly. 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.

While Zendesk offers a wide array of support features, many more than Intercom, there are a couple of major features it lacks that Intercom has. The first is proactive, in-app messaging, and the second is email marketing capabilities. With Zendesk’s Answer Bot, relevant articles are automatically suggested to your customers, saving them time while they look for solutions.

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. Also, this software offers a feature called ‘Business Messenger’ that comes with its own AI chatbot. Moreover, Intercom bots can converse naturally with customers by using conversation starters, and respond with self-help, and knowledge base articles. Zendesk outshines Intercom for customer support workflows with its core feature, the ticketing system. Zendesk’s ticketing system is renowned for its highly organized approach, which empowers businesses to manage customer support requests with unparalleled efficiency.

It’s crucial to weigh the long-term scalability and potential for enhancing customer service operations offered by Zendesk and Intercom. Agents can quickly grasp the context of customer interaction through these Chat GPT support tickets and sentiment analysis that AI facilitates. Intercom is also a customer service software that integrates entirely with third-party vendors, especially those offering messaging services.

Whether it’s about communicating via phone, email, or social media, Zendesk will always stay upfront. 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. 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.

Evaluating how each platform aligns with your business’s unique needs will guide you towards selecting the most suitable option. When evaluating customer service software such as Zendesk and Intercom, it’s essential to consider various factors that align with your specific business requirements. Understanding the unique needs of your organization is crucial in making an informed decision about the most suitable customer support solution.

In contrast, Zendesk primarily relies on a knowledge base, housing articles, FAQs, and self-help resources. While this resource center can reduce the dependency on agent assistance, it lacks the interactive element found in Intercom’s onboarding process. When it comes to ease-of-use, Zendesk undeniably takes the lead over Intercom.

Zendesk vs Intercom: Which is the best for your business?

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. Intercom live chat is modern, smooth, and has many advanced features that other chat tools don’t. It’s highly customizable, too, so you can adjust it according to your website or product’s style. The Zendesk chat tool has most of the necessary features like shortcuts (saved responses), automated triggers, and live chat analytics.

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. It allows businesses to automate repetitive tasks, such as ticket routing and in-built responses, freeing up time for support agents to deal with more crucial cases requiring more agent attention. This automation enhances support teams’ productivity as they do not have to spend too much responding to similar complaints they have already dealt with. Helplama positions itself as a cloud-based helpdesk solution that helps brands turn customer service into a marketing pipeline.

For a deeper insight into the functionality of Intercom and Zendesk Chat, explore the videos provided below. Review the video content to make an informed decision and select the option that best suits your needs. In the specs, Intercom and Zendesk Chat provide complementing benefits. Evaluate your company’s criteria to determine which set of standards best matches your goals.

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. The integration of apps plays a significant role in creating a seamless experience or a 360-degree view of customers across the company.

Zendesk is built to grow alongside your business, resulting in less downtime, better cost savings, and the stability needed to provide exceptional customer support. Many customers start using Zendesk as small or mid-sized businesses (SMBs) and continue to use our software as they scale their operations, hire more staff, and serve more customers. Our robust, no-code integrations enable you to adapt our software to new and growing use cases. Compared to Zendesk, Intercom offers few integrations, which may hinder its scalability. Both Zendesk and Intercom offer customer service software with AI capabilities—however, they are not created equal. With Zendesk, you get next-level AI-powered support software that’s intuitively designed, scalable, and cost-effective.

This SaaS leader entered into the competition in 2011, intending to help its clients reach their target audiences and engage them in a conversation right away. For small companies and startups, Intercom offers a Starter plan — with a balanced suite of features from each of the solutions below — at $74 per month per user, billed annually. On the other hand, Intercom, starting at a lower price point, could be more attractive for very small teams or individual users. However, additional costs for advanced features can quickly increase the total expense. When comparing the reporting and analytics features of Zendesk and Intercom, both platforms offer robust tools, but with distinct focuses and functionalities.

In this article, we will directly compare two customer service providers—Zendesk vs Intercom, to help you evaluate what would work best for your business. Founded in 2011, Intercom has quickly become one of the most versatile and comprehensive customer support tools on the market and they are showing no signs of slowing down. Zendesk offers a free 30-day trial, after which customers will need to upgrade to one of their paid plans. Gathering insights from customer reviews and testimonials offers a comprehensive understanding of the first-hand experiences of businesses using Zendesk and Intercom.

However, there are occasional criticisms regarding the effectiveness of its AI chatbot and some interface navigation challenges. The overall sentiment from users indicates a satisfactory level of support, although opinions vary. Intercom’s UI excels in modern design and intuitive functionality, particularly noted for its real-time messaging and advanced features. It is tailored for automation and quick access to insights, offering a user-friendly experience.

Zendesk may be unable to give the agents more advanced features or customization options for chatbots. While the company is smaller than Zendesk, Intercom has earned a reputation for building high-quality customer service software. The company’s products include a messaging platform, knowledge base tools, and an analytics dashboard. Many businesses choose to work with Intercom because of its focus on personalization and flexibility, allowing companies to completely customize their customer service experience. 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.

• 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.
• If I had to describe Intercom’s helpdesk, I would say it’s rather a complementary tool to their chat tools.
• It’s much easier if you decide to go with the Zendesk Suite, which includes Support, Chat, Talk, and Guide tools.

The live chat app lets agents and customers communicate in real time. It offers automatic routing with prewritten responses and triggers, but for reporting and self-service options, you’ll need to turn to integrations to flesh it out. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. 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.

The more expensive Intercom plans offer AI-powered content cues, triage, and conversation insights. There is a simple email integration tool for whatever email provider you regularly use. This gets you unlimited email addresses and email templates in both text form and HTML. There is automatic email archiving and incoming email authentication. Although Zendesk does not have an in-app messaging service, it does have one unique feature, and that is its built-in virtual call assistant, Zendesk Talk. It is a totally cloud-based service; you can operate this VOIP technology by sitting in any corner of the world.

You will be able to find the most common chatting system with a single communication channel. So, communicating with customers on different communication channels would be difficult on Intercom. Both the platforms have the knowledge base feature, and in my opinion, both of them are becoming winners. Though expensive and quality are synonymous in some worlds, such a principle cannot define Desku where it stands out as one of such affordable companies. However, competitive pricing is a promise and not a compromise to make decent customer support accessible for all. Zendesk also allows Advanced AI and Advanced data privacy and protection plans, which cost $50 per month for each Advanced add-on.

Helplama For All Your Customer Support Needs

It isn’t as adept at purer sales tasks like lead management, list engagement, advanced reporting, forecasting, and workflow management as you’d expect a more complete CRM to be. The highlight of Zendesk’s ticketing software is its omnichannel-ality (omnichannality?). Whether agents are facing customers via chat, email, social media, or good old-fashioned phone, they can keep it all confined to a single, easy-to-navigate dashboard.

Despite its multichannel ticketing system, Freshdesk provides a disjointed agent experience by having different interfaces for each channel. That means agents must toggle between apps to manage tickets received via chat vs. phone. In addition to its cluttered, slow, and buggy interface, it offers limited and complicated reporting, and help center tools that make it difficult to update and edit content. By leveraging the out-of-the-box Netomi virtual agent integration, companies enhance both the agent and customer experience, while also reducing costs.

Zendesk’s intuitive design caters to beginners and non-technical users, offering a seamless experience right from the start. For instance, when you need to access specific features or information, Zendesk’s organized interface ensures that everything is easily locatable, reducing search time and user frustration. On the other hand, if you prioritize customer engagement, sales, and personalized messaging, Intercom is a compelling option, especially for startups and rapidly scaling businesses. Designed for all kinds of businesses, from small startups to giant enterprises, it’s the secret weapon that keeps customers happy.

It brings all your customer interactions to a single dashboard so that you can track all your support requests, answer questions quickly, and monitor performance from one place. This approach aligns well with Intercom’s emphasis on direct customer communication. 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. We give the edge to Zendesk here, as it’s typically aimed for more complex environments. It’s also more exclusively focused on providing help support, whereas Intercom sometimes moonlights as being part-time sales.

Pricing Comparison: Zendesk vs. Intercom

Why don’t you try something equally powerful yet more affordable, like HelpCrunch? But they also add features like automatic meeting booking (in the Convert package), and their custom inbox rules and workflows just feel a little more, well, custom. I’ll dive into their chatbots more later, but their bot automation features are also stronger. 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.

There are two options there — Professional for $109 or Enterprise for $179 if you pay monthly. The difference between the two is that the Professional subscription lacks some things like chat widget unbranding, custom agent roles, multiple help centers, etc. 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). With Intercom you can send targeted email, push, and in-app messages which can be based on the most relevant time or behavior triggers.

With custom correlation and attribution, you can dive deep into the root cause behind your metrics. We also provide real-time and historical reporting dashboards so you can take action at the moment and learn from past trends. Meanwhile, our WFM software enables businesses to analyze employee metrics and performance, helping them identify improvements, implement strategies, and set long-term goals. Our customer experience solution is designed to handle use cases for companies of all shapes, sizes, and industries.

Because there could be a thousand customers complaining at any given hour to all your staff having problems with business protocols. Generally, humans can’t handle this volume of exchange, that’s why help desk software was made. In this case, all customer requests will be routed properly, leaving no gaps in your customer service operations. However, it’s essential to consider the strengths of Zendesk, which offers a comprehensive and versatile customer support platform. 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. In summary, choosing Zendesk and Intercom hinges on your business’s unique requirements and priorities.

While Zendesk incorporates live chat and messaging functionalities to facilitate proactive customer engagement, it falls short of matching Intercom’s level of personalization. Intercom also excels in real-time chat solutions, making it a strong contender for businesses seeking dynamic customer interaction. This unpredictability in pricing might lead to higher costs, especially for larger companies.

We will compare those customer service solutions in terms of functionality and price. However, if your organization heavily relies on Intercom’s real-time communication features, in-app messaging, and chat-based support, transitioning entirely to Zendesk may not cover all your needs. Intercom’s focus on instant interactions and personalized engagement is particularly valuable for businesses prioritizing chat-first customer support and real-time communication. Its chat-based approach, automation capabilities, and chatbots are ideal for handling routine inquiries efficiently. Luckily, a range of customer service solutions is available that enables you to communicate directly with your customers in real-time. These tools are ideal for personalizing the customer experience and building better customer relationships.

The sophisticated nature of its chatbot makes it more than a task automation tool — it takes customer interactions to the next level. What makes Desku unique is that it has competitively priced services with similar features as those provided by other companies but at a lower cost. 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. Intercom’s AI capabilities extend beyond the traditional chatbots; Fin is renowned for solving complex problems and providing safer, accurate answers.

Intercom stands out here due to its ability  to tailor sales workflows. You can also set up interactive product tours to highlight new features in-product and explain how they work. https://chat.openai.com/ Now that we’ve discussed the customer service-focused features of Zendesk and Intercom, let’s turn our attention to how these platforms can support sales and marketing efforts.

Customers can skip the self-service options and get routed to a live agent through customizable routing rules, templates, and response timers. Agents can also start a voice or video chat with customers from the chat window. HelpCrunch features customer profiles that allow businesses to collect and save relevant customer data.

We’ve put together an average user rating for Intercom and Zendesk Chat based on all the reviews and scores they’ve gotten on our site. Intercom has a community forum where users can engage with each other and gain insights from their experiences. With only the Enterprise tier offering round-the-clock email, phone, and chat help, Zendesk support is sharply separated by tiers.

Therefore, a helpdesk with a good inbox can make your team efficient in solving problems. Intercom’s pricing typically includes different plans designed to accommodate businesses of various sizes and needs. While Intercom offers a free trial, it’s important to note that the cost can increase as you scale and add more features or users. Ultimately, the choice between Intercom and Zendesk depends on your specific needs and priorities.

Founded in 2007, Zendesk started as a ticketing tool for customer success teams. It was later that they started adding all kinds of other features, like live chat for customer conversations. They bought out the Zopim live chat solution and integrated it with their toolset. 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.

Its robust workflows streamline the ticket resolution system and efficiently handle all customer complaints. It also enables agents to perform customized workflow management, assign tickets to the right agent for request handling, and track the ticket’s progress. Zendesk and Intercom offer basic features, including live chat, a help desk, and a pre-built knowledge base. They have great UX and a normal pricing range, making it difficult for businesses to choose one, as both software almost looks similar in their offerings. Zendesk on the other hand offers tools that support a wide variety of customer service functions including robust ticket management capabilities. However, the right fit for your business will depend on your particular needs and budget.

The software also features self-service options, including a customer portal and branded help center with self-help articles, videos, FAQs, and community forums. Zendesk offers tiered pricing based on the level of service you need, the size of your teams, and other factors. Every feature is available in the broadest option, Zendesk Suite, which is the version most companies would be implementing. After all, most businesses find it easier to use one solution for all of their needs rather than parceling duties out to different tools.

Zendesk also packs some pretty potent tools into their platform, so you can empower your agents to do what they do with less repetition. Agents can use basic automation (like auto-closing tickets or setting auto-responses), apply list organization to stay on top of their tasks, or set up triggers to keep tickets moving automatically. Intercom is an all-in-one solution, and compared to Zendesk, Intercom has a less intuitive design and can be complicated for new users to learn. It also offers a confusing pricing structure and fewer integrations, making it less scalable and cost-effective.

Intercom’s user interface is also quite straightforward and easy to understand; it includes a range of features such as live chat, messaging campaigns, and automation workflows. Additionally, the platform allows for customizations such as customized user flows and onboarding experiences. 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.

Zendesk offers various features, which may differ according to the plan. Intercom also provides fast time to value for smaller and mid-sized businesses with limitations for large-scale companies. It may have limited abilities regarding the scalability or support of an enterprise-level company.

They offer an omnichannel chat solution that integrates with multiple messaging platforms and marketing channels and even automates incoming support processes with bots. It is quite the all-rounder as it even has a help center and ticketing system that completes its omnichannel support cycle. Whichever solution you choose, mParticle can help integrate your data.

Optimizing the utilization of Zendesk and Intercom involves implementing effective strategies and best practices. Providing actionable tips for businesses to maximize the potential of these platforms enables them to leverage advanced functionalities and enhance their overall customer support operations. Yes, Zendesk offers zendesk chat vs intercom an integration with Intercom available through the Zendesk Marketplace. This integration enables you to access live customer data from Intercom within Zendesk, customize the information displayed, and sync user tags between the two platforms. Additionally, you can forward Intercom conversations to Zendesk as tickets.

We are easy-going yet knowledgeable team of experts who will make sure that what’s important gets done skillfully. Sure, you can have a front desk—but you don’t necessarily have to plunk down the cost it would take to buy that desk, train an employee, and add them to your payroll. Let’s compare Zendesk vs. Intercom using the help desk features they have. Rated 5 stars out of 5 on G2, ThriveDesk is highly regarded by users. Rest assured, ThriveDesk’s lightweight design and speed won’t impact the performance of your Wix-powered eCommerce website. The optimized agent interface ensures rapid responses for maximum efficiency, all while keeping your website running smoothly.