Zendesk vs Intercom Comparison 2024: Which One Is Better?

The chatbot can help users with common support issues and answer frequently asked questions. This feature can reduce the workload of customer support teams and provide faster response times to users. Intercom and Zendesk offer a range of features to help businesses manage their customer interactions. While Intercom focuses more on customer messaging and personalization, Zendesk focuses more on traditional customer support ticket management. Ultimately, the choice between these two platforms will depend on the specific needs of the business and the type of customer interactions they are looking to manage.

Tools that allow support agents to communicate and collaborate are important aspect of customer service software. Zendesk’s automation features are limited to offering basic automation to streamline repetitive tasks. While Zeendesk provides automation services for ticket support systems, notifications, chatbots, etc., it may not be an extensive feature compared to Intercom. Considering that Zendesk and Intercom are leading the market for customer service software, it becomes difficult for businesses to choose the right tool. Sometimes, businesses do not even realize the importance of various aspects you must consider while making this choice.

Built-in tools like workflow automation and generative AI enable IT teams to do more with less, which saves costs. We are also by our customers’ side every step of the way to help them maximize the value of their investment. Zendesk offers over 1,500 apps and integrations via our Zendesk Marketplace to help you unify your tech stack and streamline your data across systems. We also provide several low-to-pro-code customization options like API and app frameworks, Zendesk SDKs, AWS Events Connector, and robust developer resources. If you can’t find the exact solution you’re looking for, your dev team can build it.

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. It’s also good for sending and receiving notifications, as well as for quick filtering through the queue of open tickets.

Zendesk vs Intercom: What are the real differences?

Moreover, the pricing model ensures customer transparency and reveals the costs that businesses will incur. 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. 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. Thus, due to its limited agility, businesses with complex business models may not find it appropriate.

It is an AI-powered assistant that functions as a knowledge base search tool, equipping agents with instant answers when they interact with customers, directly within the Intercom inbox. This helps companies resolve common customer queries without any human intervention. Since Intercom’s focus is on driving customer engagement, the interface prominently displays important features like in-app messaging and chatbots.

Zendesk also offers detailed reports that can be shared with others and enable team members to collaborate on them simultaneously. You can either track your performance on a pre-built dashboard or customize and build one for yourself. This customized dashboard will help you see metrics that you’d like to focus on regularly. Zendesk also offers a straightforward interface to operators that helps them identify the entire interaction pathway with the customers. Compared to being detailed, Zendesk gives a tough competition to Intercom. Operators can easily switch from one conversation to another, therefore helping operators manage more interactions simultaneously.

How to create a CRM strategy and why you need one in 2024

At the end of the day, the best sales CRM delivers on the features that matter most to you and your business. To determine which one takes the cake, let’s dive into a feature comparison of Pipedrive vs. Zendesk. We hope that this Intercom VS Zendesk comparison helps you choose one that matches your support, marketing, and sales needs. But in case you are in search of something beyond these two, then ProProfs Chat can be an option. After an in-depth analysis such as this, it can be pretty challenging for your business to settle with either option.

Zendesk has a broad range of security and compliance features to protect customer data privacy, such as SSO (single sign-on) and native content redaction for sensitive data. Hit the ground running – Master Tidio quickly with our extensive resource library. Learn about features, customize your experience, and find out how to set up integrations and use our apps. If you require a robust helpdesk with powerful ticketing and reporting features, Zendesk is the better choice, particularly for complex support queries.

Intelligent automated ticketing helps streamline customer service management and handling inquiries while reducing manual work. Use ticketing systems to efficiently manage high ticket volume, deliver timely customer support, and boost agent productivity. When it comes to which company is the better fit for your business, there’s Chat GPT no clear answer. It really depends on what features you need and what type of customer service strategy you plan to implement. However, the latter is more of a support and ticketing solution, while Intercom is CRM functionality-oriented. This means it’s a customer relationship management platform rather than anything else.

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. 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. You can access detailed customer data at a glance while chatting, enabling you to make informed decisions in real time.

Operators will find its dashboard quite beneficial as it will take them seconds to find necessary features during an ongoing chat with the customers. 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. Zendesk is another popular customer service, support, and sales platform that enables clients to connect and engage with their customers in seconds. Just like Intercom, Zendesk can also integrate with multiple messaging platforms and ensure that your business never misses out on a support opportunity. Intercom is a customer support messenger, bot, and live chat service provider that empowers its clients to provide instant support in real-time. 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.

The clean and professional design focuses on bold typography and contrasting colors. 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. Depending on your needs, you can set up Intercom on your website or mobile app and add your automations. Setting up Intercom help centers is also very easy and intuitive, with no previous knowledge required.

Customerly’s CRM is designed to help businesses build stronger relationships by keeping customer data organized and actionable. While clutter-free and straightforward, it does lack some of the more advanced features and capabilities that Zendesk has. According to G2, Intercom has a slight edge over Zendesk with a 4.5-star rating, but from just half the number of users. While no area of concern really stands out, there are some complaints about the company’s billing practices.

That’s why it would be better to review where both the options would be ideal to use. Now that we know a little about both tools, it is time to make an in-depth analysis and identify which one of these will be perfect for your business. In conclusion, Intercom and Zendesk have implemented robust security measures to protect their clients’ data.

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. These pricing structures are flexible enough to cater to all business sizes and types.

Their customer service management tools have a shared inbox for support teams. When you combine the help desk with Intercom Messenger, you get added channels for customer engagement. It can also handle complex interactions and provide real-time insight to customer support agents.

• Not to mention marketing and sales tools, like Salesforce, Hubspot, and Google Analytics.
• This organization is important because it brings together customer interactions from all channels in this one place.
• With a mix of productivity, collaboration, eCommerce, CRM, analytics, email marketing, social media, and other tools, you get the option to create an omnichannel suite.
• They offer an omnichannel chat solution that integrates with multiple messaging platforms and marketing channels and even automates incoming support processes with bots.
• They offer more detailed insights like lead generation sources, a complete message report to track customer engagement, and detailed information on the support team’s performance.
• The software is known for its agile APIs and proven custom integration references.

It also provides detailed reports on how each self-help article performs in your knowledge base and helps you identify how each piece can be improved further. These products range from customer communication tools to a fully-fledged CRM. Zendesk boasts incredibly robust sales capabilities and security features. This feature ensures that each customer request is handled by the best-suited agent, improving the overall efficiency of the support team. Intercom generally receives positive feedback for its customer support, with users appreciating the comprehensive features and team-oriented tools. However, there are occasional criticisms regarding the effectiveness of its AI chatbot and some interface navigation challenges.

ProProfs Live Chat Editorial Team is a diverse group of professionals passionate about customer support and engagement. We update you on the latest trends, dive into technical topics, and offer insights to elevate your business. Intercom and Zendesk offer competitive pricing plans with various features to suit different business needs. Businesses should carefully evaluate their requirements and choose the best method for their needs and budget. Zendesk also offers a community forum where users can ask questions and get help from others.

Automation Tools

Yes, Zendesk has an Intercom integration that you can find in the Zendesk Marketplace—it’s free to install. So, you can get the best of both worlds without choosing between Intercom or Zendesk. Check out our chart that compares the capabilities of Zendesk vs. Intercom. To sum up, one can get really confused trying to understand the Zendesk pricing, let alone calculate costs.

You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. On the other hand, Intercom enables agents to convert a conversation into a ticket with one click. This helps support teams to resolve customer issues without losing context. 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.

To enhance customer satisfaction, businesses must equip their teams with customer support solutions and customer service software. 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.

With Explore, you can share and collaborate with anyone customer service reports. You can share these reports one-time or on a recurring basis with anyone in your organization. Similarly, if you require Fin AI Agent – to resolve customer queries without human intervention, you’ll need to pay an additional $0.99 per resolution. Intercom, on the other hand, focuses on automating tasks that help improve customer engagement.

Having easy-to-use software is far more controllable and saves time whether you’re a tiny and growing business or a massive multinational. Intercom offers an easy way to nurture your qualified leads (prospects) into customers with Intercom Series. Because Intercom started as a live chat service, its messenger functionality is very robust.

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. Overall, I actually liked Zendesk’s user experience better than Intercom’s in terms of its messaging dashboard. 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. 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.

However, it is a great option for businesses seeking efficient customer interactions, as its focus on personalized messaging compensates for its lack of features. Intercom’s messaging platform is very similar to Zendesk’s dashboard, offering seamless integration of multiple channels in one place for managing customer interactions. Although Intercom offers an omnichannel messaging dashboard, it has slightly less functionality than Zendesk. Intercom offers fewer integrations, supporting just over 450 third-party apps. This makes it challenging to customize the software as your business grows. Furthermore, data on customer reviews, installation numbers, and ecommerce integrations is not readily available.

Use HubSpot Service Hub to provide seamless, fast, and delightful customer service. You can also follow up with customers after they have left the chat and qualify them based on your answers. Chat agents also get a comprehensive look at their entire customer’s journey, so they will have a better idea of what your customers https://chat.openai.com/ need, without needing to ask many questions. Both Zendesk and Intercom have their own “app stores” where users can find all of the integrations for each platform. Intercom users often mention how impressed they are with its ease of use and their ability to quickly create useful tasks and set up automations.

Intercom’s CRM features include customer journey tracking, custom data parameters, and list segmentation, which are useful for targeted marketing and engagement. You can use these features to create custom funnels, segment users based on specific behaviors, and automate personalized communications. 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.

• Intercom is ideal for personalized messaging, while Zendesk offers robust ticket management and self-service options.
• So when it comes to chatting features, the choice is not really Intercom vs Zendesk.
• Since Intercom’s focus is on driving customer engagement, the interface prominently displays important features like in-app messaging and chatbots.
• As expected, the right choice between Zendesk and Intercom will depend on your budget, your company, and your needs.
• Zendesk lacks in-app messages and email marketing tools, which are essential for big companies with heavy client support loads.

When factoring in AI-first tools for all agents, multi-channel campaigns, and proactive support, it could easily cost significantly more than Zendesk. 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. 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.

Some of the popular integrations include Salesforce, HubSpot, Marketo, and Google Analytics. Zendesk’s integration with these tools allows businesses to track customer interactions, personalize messaging, and automate workflows. Intercom offers a wide range of integrations with various third-party tools, including CRMs, marketing automation platforms, and analytics tools. Intercom’s integration with these tools allows businesses to track customer interactions, personalize messaging, and automate workflows. When deciding on choosing between Zendesk or Pipedrive for your business, there is a lot to keep in mind.

Sales pipeline and lead nurturing

However, businesses must choose between Zendesk vs Intercom based on their needs and requirements. The Suite Team plan, priced at $69 per agent, adds features like live chat and messaging, while the Suite Growth plan at $115 per agent introduces automation and advanced analytics. The top-tier Suite Professional plan, available at $149 per agent, provides the full range of Zendesk’s capabilities, including custom reporting, advanced AI features, and enterprise-grade support. When comparing Zendesk and Intercom, it’s essential to understand their core features and their differences to choose the right solution for your customer support needs. These include ticketing, chatbots, and automation capabilities, to name just a few.Here’s a side-by-side comparison to help you identify the strengths and weaknesses of each platform. Unlike Intercom, Zendesk is scalable, intuitively designed for CX, and offers a low total cost of ownership.

With Zendesk, you can connect your sales and support teams, empowering them with the information they need to deliver better customer experiences. On the other hand, Pipedrive doesn’t offer a customer service solution, limiting users to third-party integrations. Whether you want to integrate Slack for internal team communication or PandaDoc to send and track sales proposals, intercom vs zendesk 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. One of the standout features of Intercom’s customer support is its chatbot functionality.

At first glance, they seem like simple three packages for small, medium, and big businesses. But it’s virtually impossible to predict what you’ll pay for Intercom at the end of the day. They charge not only for customer service representative seats but also for feature usage and offer tons of features as custom add-ons at additional cost.

Intercom and Zendesk offer integration capabilities to help businesses streamline their workflow and improve customer support. In this section, we will take a closer look at the integration capabilities of both platforms. Intercom is used by over 30,000 businesses worldwide, including Shopify, Atlassian, and New Relic. The platform is known for its user-friendly interface, powerful automation capabilities, and robust analytics tools. Intercom, on the other hand, excels in providing a seamless customer service experience by merging automation with human support. Its proactive support features, unified inbox, and customizable bots are highly beneficial for businesses looking to engage customers dynamically and manage conversations effortlessly.

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. The company’s products include a ticketing system, live chat software, knowledge base software, and a customer satisfaction survey tool.

Instead, Aura AI continuously learns from your knowledge base and canned responses, growing and learning — just like a real-life agent. Not to brag 😏, but we specifically developed our platform to address the shortcomings in the current market. By going with Customerly for your customer service needs, you can get the best of both worlds (Zendesk and Intercom), plus some extra features and benefits you haven’t even thought of, yet. As the place where your agents will be spending most of their time, a functional and robust Helpdesk will be critical to their overall performance and experience. While there are some universal things to look out for, like the range of features, ease of use, and a seamless omnichannel experience, it’s also about your subjective experience. While both Zendesk and Intercom tick both those boxes, they each have their own distinct style.

This enables them to speed up the support process and build experiences that customers like. Intercom is an excellent option for businesses prioritizing personalized communication and customer engagement. Its live chat feature and ability to send targeted messages and notifications make it a powerful tool for customer engagement.

Intercom focuses on real-time customer messaging, while Zendesk provides a comprehensive suite for ticketing, knowledge base, and self-service support. To select the ideal fit for your business, it is crucial to compare these industry giants and assess which aligns best with your specific requirements. Intercom’s app store has popular integrations for things like WhatsApp, Stripe, Instagram, and Slack. 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.

Overall, Intercom is a better option if personalized and robust chatbots are something you are looking for when managing customer support strategy. Zendesk excels in its ticketing system, offering users an intuitive platform for collaboration among support agents. 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. In today’s business world, customer service is fast-paced, and customers have higher expectations.

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. 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.

Compare Zendesk vs. Intercom and future-proof your business with reliable, easy-to-use software. However, the right fit for your business will depend on your particular needs and budget. If you’re looking for a comprehensive solution with lots of features and integrations, then Zendesk would be a good choice.

Zendesk also offers a number of integrations with third-party applications. It allows businesses to organize and share helpful documentation or answer customers’ common questions. Self-service resources always relieve the burden on customer support teams, and both of our subjects have this tool in their packages. Zendesk also offers various integrations with third-party tools, including CRMs, marketing automation platforms, and analytics tools.

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. Whether your customers prefer to communicate via phone, chat, email, social media, or any other channel, Zendesk unifies all of your customer interactions into one platform. The software helps you to keep track of all support requests, quickly respond to questions, and track the effectiveness of your customer service reps. You can also set up interactive product tours to highlight new features in-product and explain how they work. Zendesk takes the slight lead here because it offers some advanced help desk features, which Intercom does not.

If you need a solution that can rapidly scale and offer strong self-service features, Zendesk may be the best fit. However, if your focus is on creating a seamless, automated customer service experience with proactive engagement, Intercom could be the ideal choice. 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. Intercom isn’t as great with sales, but it allows for better communication.

Zendesk offers so much more than you can get from free CRMs or less robust options, including sales triggers to automate workflows. For example, you can set a sales trigger to automatically change the owner of a deal based on the specific conditions you select. That way, your sales team won’t have to worry about manually updating these changes as they work through a deal. ProProfs Live Chat Editorial Team is a passionate group of customer service experts dedicated to empowering your live chat experiences with top-notch content. We stay ahead of the curve on trends, tackle technical hurdles, and provide practical tips to boost your business.

Zendesk has also introduced its chatbot to help its clients send automated answers to some frequently asked questions to stay ahead in the competitive marketplace. What’s more, it helps its clients build an integrated community forum and help center to improve the support experience in real-time. After this live chat software comparison, you’ll get a better picture of what’s better for your business. Zendesk’s user interface is also modern and user-friendly but with a slightly different design aesthetic than Intercom. The dashboard is highly customizable, allowing users to access the features they use most frequently easily.

From analytics to apps and integrations, Spiceworks has restricted capabilities compared to the comprehensive features available with Zendesk. These product limitations may come with the costs of poor support experiences, low efficiency, migrations, and re-implementations. At Zendesk, we prioritize the safety of your employee and customer data just as highly as you do.