Zendesk vs Intercom: the ultimate comparison by Ana Khlystova HelpCrunch

There is a really useful one for Shopify to provide customer support for e-commerce operations. HubSpot and Salesforce are also available when support needs to work with marketing and sales teams. 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 bills itself first and foremost as a platform to make the business of customer service more personalized, among other things. They offer an advanced feature for customer data management that goes beyond basic CRM stuff.

Admins will also like the fact that they can see the progress of all their teams and who all are actively answering a customer’s query in real-time. Messagely’s live chat platform is smooth, effective, and easy to set up. With Messagely, you can increase your customer satisfaction and solve customers’ issues while they’re still visiting your site. In short, Zendesk is perfect for large companies looking to streamline their customer support process; Intercom is great for smaller companies looking for advanced customer service features.

This way, your clients will never have to repeat themselves or get frustrated because their new representative doesn’t know their background. You don’t have to pay per contact on your database, and you there are many free features you can use. Zendesk, on the other hand, has revamped its security since its security breach in 2016.

Intercom is geared toward sales, whereas Zendesk includes everything a customer service rep desires. Personalized messaging, in-app messaging, product tours, and chatbot capabilities set Intercom apart from Zendesk. 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. Overall, Zendesk empowers businesses to deliver exceptional customer support experiences across channels, making it a popular choice for enhancing support operations. However, customers can purchase multiple Intercom plans to use together, or purchase add-ons to select just the features they want. Zendesk wins the self-service tools category because it provides extensive help center customization options.

Which tool should you choose? Intercom or Zendesk?

It’s highly customizable, so you can adjust it according to your website or product’s style. 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. 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.

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. In summary, choosing Zendesk and Intercom hinges on your business’s unique requirements and priorities. If you seek a comprehensive customer support solution with a strong emphasis on traditional ticketing, Zendesk is a solid choice, particularly for smaller to mid-sized businesses. Zendesk receives positive feedback for its intuitive interface, wide range of integrations, and robust reporting tools.

Intercom’s chat tool, also called the Intercom Messenger, looks quite modern and offers advanced features that many chat tools don’t have. However, with Zendesk, agents can gain relevant context by viewing a customer’s profile and past interactions. Moreover, features such as typing indicators, delivery events, and rich message types like emojis, GIFs, etc. can give life to any conversation. The overall design of Zendesk’s chat widget looks outdated and offers very limited customization options. 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).

They have offices all around the world including countries such as Mexico City, Tokyo, New York, Paris, Singapore, São Paulo, London, and Dublin. We hope this list has provided you with a better grasp of each platform and its features. Remember that there is no one-size-fits-all solution, and the optimal platform for you will be determined by your individual demands. 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.

Even reviewers who hadn’t used the platform highlight how beautifully designed it is and how simple it is to interact with for both users and clients alike. 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 construct an omnichannel suite by combining productivity, e-commerce, CRM, analytics, social media, and other applications. Having more connectors accessible gives organizations the flexibility to select software that meets their specific needs. Zendesk is primarily a ticketing system, and its ticketing capability is overwhelming in the best conceivable manner.

• That being said the customer support for both Zendesk and Intercom is lacking.
• Lastly, Intercom offers an academy that offers concise courses to help users make the most out of their Intercom experience.
• But we doubled down and created a truly full-service CX solution capable of handling any support request.
• Intercom also offers scalability within its pricing plans, enabling businesses to upgrade to higher tiers as their support needs grow.

Just like Intercom, Zendesk’s customer service is quite disappointing. One of the most significant downsides of Intercom is its customer support. 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.

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. 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. 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.

Team-oriented

However, Intercom has fewer integration options than Zendesk, which may limit its capabilities for businesses seeking extensive integrations. While in Intercom, advanced chatbots, a modern and well-developed chat widget, email marketing services, product demonstrations, and in-app messaging all contribute to a better customer experience. From the inbox, live agents and chatbots can refer to and link knowledge base articles, to elaborate on replies and help customers locate answers. While administrators can automatically assign tickets to certain agents or teams, they can also manually assign tickets to members of sales or customer service teams. Team inboxes aggregate tickets applicable to the whole team–or a specific department–that any agent can address.

With the Team Inbox, your support agents can manage and reply to conversations, wherever they’re happening- Email, live chat, Twitter, Facebook, and more. Has live chat analytics to monitor customer satisfaction, employee performance. Overall, Zendesk’s Chat is less customizable than Intercom’s but still has all the essentials. In 2018, Intercom raised $125 million in funding, which brought its value up to $1.25 billion and provided the company with all the rights to call itself a unicorn. First of all, Intercom positions itself as a business messenger, the primary aim of which is to deliver modern and reliable customer communication tool.

However, some users find customization challenging, and the platform is considered expensive, requiring careful cost evaluation. Streamline support processes with Intercom’s ticketing system and knowledge base. Efficiently manage customer inquiries and empower customers to find answers independently. You get a dashboard that makes creating, tracking, and organizing tickets easy.

You can set office hours, live chat with logged-in users via their user profiles, and set up a chatbot. Customization is more nuanced than Zendesk’s, but it’s still really straightforward to implement. You can opt for code via JavaScript or Rails or even integrate directly with the likes of Google Tag Manager, WordPress, or Shopify. 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.

In an omnichannel contact center, agents can manage customer interactions across channels, no matter which channel a customer uses to contact the company. Intercom and Zendesk are two of the most popular customer service platforms, each with its own set of distinct advantages and drawbacks. 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. Email marketing, for example, is a big deal, but less so when it comes to customer service. Still, for either of these platforms to have some email marketing or other email functionality is common sense.

Just a quick glance at the pricing plans and you can easily calculate how much your team will spend upfront as there are no hidden costs. ProProfs takes knowledge management to a whole different level by allowing you to create an online knowledge base, user manuals, documentation, and more. Zendesk’s help center is feature-rich and helps you organize and store knowledge in a central location.

Pricing for both services varies based on the specific needs and scale of your business. When comparing the automation and AI features of Zendesk and Intercom, both platforms come with unique strengths and weaknesses. When comparing the user interfaces zendesk or intercom (UI) of Zendesk and Intercom, both platforms exhibit distinct characteristics and strengths catering to different user preferences and needs. You can also follow up with customers after they have left the chat and qualify them based on your answers.

For automation and messaging at scale, you can choose from two plans- Accelerate ($499) or Scale ($999) per month for up to ten users, depending on your business needs. Intercom costs can go even higher with custom add-ons such as Product Tours (from $199/month, Advanced lead generation (from $499/month), Advanced customer engagement (from $499/month), etc. With Zendesk, you can easily sort or filter your tickets using parameters such as date, ticket priority, tags, source, and more. Now, when it comes to customizing your dashboard and making it suitable for your unique needs, Zendesk does a good job. The tool can be integrated with 500+ business apps including Zendesk Explore, which offers you relevant omnichannel analytics and customer engagement metrics. However, if you look at Zendesk’s high pricing and complicated features, the tool doesn’t work well for small businesses that have limited needs.

Considering its affordable pricing, ProProfs can be a great option for small to medium-scale businesses. Moreover, you can tailor your content to different audiences such as visitors or paid customers. Customization options for color, logo, header, domain, etc. can also come in handy. With the Intercom Messenger widget on every article, your customers can instantly connect with an agent if they need further help. As a leading cloud-based help desk software, Zendesk is home to many popular businesses such as Siemens, Mailchimp, Tesco, GrubHub, and more. The tool is extremely scalable and can be used to match your growing business needs.

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. Intercom stands out for its modern and user-friendly messenger functionality, which includes advanced features with a focus on automation and real-time insights. Its AI Chatbot, Fin, is particularly noted for handling complex queries efficiently. When comparing Zendesk and Intercom, various factors come into play, each focusing on different aspects, strengths, and weaknesses of these customer support platforms. Again, Zendesk has surpassed the number of reviewers when compared to Intercom.

Other issues mentioned by the customer may be omitted and nuances are lost. Manual tagging is also subjective as agents may interpret the content of tickets differently. When you are talking to customers via the in-app chat, you can type like it’s facebook messenger and it feels natural. ProProfs Help Desk offers all the necessary ticket management and reporting features that any help desk manager will find useful. No matter if your team receives just 10 customer requests via live chat or a thousand customer issues via email, you can easily manage an influx of customer conversations over multiple channels.

The more expensive Intercom plans offer AI-powered content cues, triage, and conversation insights. Intercom has a very robust advanced chatbot set of tools for your business needs. There is a conversation routing bot, an operator bot, a lead qualification bot, and an article-suggesting bot, among others.

Plan Flexibility: Which One Has More Flexible Pricing Options?

Users also point out that it can take a couple of hours to get used to the flow of tickets, which doesn’t happen in CRM, and they aren’t pleased with the product’s downtime. Although Zendesk isn’t hard to use, it’s not a perfectly smooth experience either. Users report feeling as though the interface is outdated and cluttered and complain about how long it takes to set up new features and customize existing ones. Intercom also does not offer a free trial period for users to examine the software prior to joining up for their services. That being said the customer support for both Zendesk and Intercom is lacking.

• One of the most significant downsides of Intercom is its customer support.
• You need a complete customer service platform that’s seamlessly integrated and AI-enhanced.
• However, there are occasional criticisms regarding the effectiveness of its AI chatbot and some interface navigation challenges.

Zendesk provides similar support options and also has a vast knowledge base with helpful articles and tutorials. Check customer reviews and ratings to gauge the quality of support offered by each platform. Zendesk and Intercom offer help desk management solutions to their users. 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 users complain that Intercom’s help is unavailable the majority of the time, forcing them to repeatedly ask the same question to a bot. When they do respond, they’re usually unhelpful or want to immediately transfer you to the sales department. While both offer a wide number of integration options, Zendesk wins the top spot in this category. Whatever you think of Intercom’s design and general user experience, you can’t deny that it outperforms all of its competitors. Everything, from the tools to the website, reflects their meticulous attention to detail.

Instead, using it and setting it up is very easy, and very advanced chatbots and predictive tools are included to boost your customer service. With a multi-channel ticketing system, Zendesk Support helps you and your team to know exactly who you’re talking to and keep track of tickets throughout all channels without losing context. The setup is designed to seamlessly connect your customer support team with customers across all platforms. 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.

In this article, we’ll compare Zendesk vs Intercom to find out which is the right customer support tool for you. The platform is evolving from a platform for engaging with consumers to a tool that assists you in automating every element of your daily routine. Zendesk is a customer service platform that allows you to communicate with customers via any channel. That being said, in your search for the best customer support tool, you must have come across Zendesk and Intercom. Here is a Zendesk vs. Intercom based on the customer support offered by these brands.

Zendesk is a much larger company than Intercom; it has over 170,000 customers, while Intercom has over 25,000. 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. In order to obtain an idea of the financial consequences that will be incurred by your team as well as the predicted number of clients, it is essential to compare their plans in a meticulous manner. Before you jump to any conclusions, we suggest you take a free trial to get a better look and feel of the product.

What is the difference between Zendesk and Intercom?

It’s beautifully crafted and thought through, and their custom-made illustrations are just next level stuff. You can see their attention to detail in everything — from their tools to their website. If you’d want to test Zendesk and Intercom before deciding on a tool for good, they both provide free trials. Intercom has a standard trial period for a SaaS product which is 14 days, while Zendesk offers a 30-day trial. It’s modern, it’s smooth, it looks great and it has so many advanced features. It has very limited customization options in comparison to its competitors.

In today’s world of fast-paced customer service and high customer expectations, it’s essential for business leaders to equip their teams with the best support tools available. Zendesk and Intercom both offer noteworthy tools, but if you’re looking for a full-service solution, there is one clear winner. 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.

Although many people tout it as the solution for large businesses, its bottom pricing tier is a nice entry for any small business looking to add customer service to its front page. 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. Hivers offers round-the-clock proactive support across all its plans, ensuring that no matter the time or issue, expert assistance is always available.

Users can benefit from using Intercom’s CX platform and AI software as a standalone tool for business messaging. 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. Today, both companies offer a broad range of customer support features, making them both strong contenders in the market. Zendesk offers more advanced automation capabilities than Intercom, which may be a deciding factor for businesses that require complex workflows. Both companies provide a set of services that are intended to simplify communication, support, and the overall customer experience.

Small businesses who prioritize collaboration will also enjoy Zendesk for Service. For very small companies and startups, Intercom also offers a Starter plan–with a balanced suite of features from each of the above solutions–at $74 monthly per user. The Zendesk Admin Center panels allow administrators to control settings, accessibility, automations, and workflows for everything from chatbots to integrations and custom APIs. Intercom’s large series of bots obviously run on automations as well. As mentioned before, the bot builder is a visual drag-and-drop system that requires no coding knowledge; this is also how other basic workflows are designed.

Another feature Intercom offers that Zendesk doesn’t is email marketing tools. Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to communicate with your customers. Both Intercom and Zendesk provide you with their own Operator bot, which immediately suggests relevant material to clients via the chat widget.

People who work in fields like e-commerce or SaaS, where quick responses and personalised exchanges are very important, may benefit the most from this. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. Zendesk users, on the other hand, usually say good things about its powerful support system. With this feature, businesses can easily handle and keep track of customer requests, making sure that no issues get lost.

With its CRM, you have the ability to place your clients in your sales funnels and follow through with them until conversion. You can also contact Zendesk support 24/7, whereas Intercom support only has live agents during business hours. With all accounted for, it seems that Zendesk still has a number of user interface issues. Then, you can begin filling in details such as your account’s name and icon and your agents’ profiles and security features. Since Zendesk has many features, it takes a while to learn how to use the options you’ll be needing. Zendesk has over 150,000 customer accounts from 160 countries and territories.