Zendesk VS Intercom: In-Depth Analysis & Review

Create code-free screencast tours of products, websites, webpages, and applications within your website. The entire thread is saved within the ticket for future agents to reference. Agents can add each other to internal notes within a ticket, looping in team members to collaborate when necessary.

Powered by Explore, Zendesk’s reporting capabilities are pretty impressive. Right out of the gate, you’ve got dozens of pre-set report options on everything from satisfaction ratings and time in status to abandoned calls and Answer Bot resolutions. You can even save custom dashboards for a more tailored reporting experience. Broken down into custom, resolution, and task bots, these can go a long way in taking repetitive tasks off agents’ plates. Intercom’s chatbot feels a little more robust than Zendesk’s (though it’s worth noting that some features are only available at the Engage and Convert tiers).

You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. 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. Zendesk is designed to fit your business needs whether you’re a fast-growing startup or a well-established company.

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. As stories of AI chatbots replacing entire customer support teams… In addition to Intercom vs Zendesk, alternative helpdesk solutions are available in the market.

It’s known for its unified agent workspace which combines different communication methods like email, social media messaging, live chat, and SMS, all in one place. This makes it easier for support teams to handle customer interactions without switching between different systems. Plus, Zendesk’s integration with various channels ensures customers can always find a convenient way to reach out. Intercom and Zendesk, two of the most popular customer service platforms have gained popularity and unique clientele for themselves since their launch. While both are customer-centric, it is worth mentioning that when we dig even a little deeper, the differences and similarities become quite apparent, even to a casual observer.

Best Customer Service Apps Your Customer Service Team Will Love

Zendesk’s help center tools should also come in handy for helping customers help themselves—something Zendesk claims eight out of 10 customers would rather do than contact support. To that end, you can import themes or apply your own custom themes to brand your help center the way you want it. From there, you can include FAQs, announcements, and article guides and then save them into pre-set lists for your customers to explore. You can even moderate user content to leverage your customer community. 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.

All plans come with a 7-day free trial, and no credit card is required to sign up for the trial. This is not a huge difference; however, it does indicate that customers are generally more satisfied with Intercom’s offerings than Zendesk’s. 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.

• Intercom live chat is modern, smooth, and has many advanced features that other chat tools don’t.
• When it comes to which company is the better fit for your business, there’s no clear answer.
• But it’s also a given that many people will approach their reviews to Zendesk and Intercom with some specific missions in mind, and that’s bound to change how they feel about the platforms.
• The main idea here is to rid the average support agent of a slew of mundane and repetitive tasks, giving them more time and mental energy to help customers with tougher issues.

Both Zendesk and Intercom have integration libraries, and you can also use a connecting tool like Zapier for added integrations and add-ons. 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.

These tools are like self-help books; they let people solve common problems on their own. The knowledge bases are usually well-organized and changed on a regular basis, so users can always find the most up-to-date and useful information. Basically, provides you with a knowledge base to create, organize, and store the articles that answer your customers’ questions. Has a bot that suggests relevant articles to customers who have questions. Intercom’s chatbots not only provide automated customer support but also come with advanced features and customizability without sacrificing simplicity.

Company size: Zendesk vs. Intercom

Intercom’s solution aims to streamline high-volume ticket influx and provide personalized, conversational support. It also includes extensive integrations with over 350 CRM, email, ticketing, and reporting tools. The platform is recognized for its ability to resolve a significant portion of common questions automatically, ensuring faster response times. Intercom is a customer support platform known for its effective messaging and automation, enhancing in-context support within products, apps, or websites.

For basic chat and messaging, Intercom charges a flat fee of $39 per month for its basic plan with one user and $99 per month for its team plan with up to 5 users. If you want automated options, Intercom starts at either $499 or $999 per month for up to ten users, depending on the level of automation you’re looking for. If you want both customer support and CRM, you can choose between paying $79 or $125 per month per user, depending on how many advanced features you require.

You get a dashboard that makes creating, tracking, and organizing tickets easy. 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. The more expensive Intercom plans offer AI-powered content cues, triage, and conversation insights.

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. The overall sentiment from users indicates a satisfactory level of support, although opinions vary. Zendesk is a customer service software offering a comprehensive solution for managing customer interactions. It integrates customer support, sales, and marketing communications, aiming to improve client relationships. Known for its scalability, Zendesk is suitable for various business sizes, from startups to large corporations.

With Intercom workload management tools, administrators can ensure that incoming conversations, traffic, and workload are evenly distributed among team members. An inbound customer message through any of these channels becomes a ticket for your support agents, whose reply reaches the customer through the same channel they originally used. The Agent Workspace highlights tickets based on the issue and urgency, assigning each one a priority–agents can also tag tickets based on recency, hold-vs-open status, and urgency. Pre-selected assignment rules customize each ticket’s destination, assigning routing paths to agents or departments based on customer priority status, query type, or issue details.

Explore alternative options like ThriveDesk if you’re looking for a more budget-conscious solution that aligns with your customer support needs. 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. ThriveDesk is a help desk software tailor-made for businesses seeking extensive features and a powerful yet simple live chat assistant.

Let’s examine and compare how each platform addresses these crucial areas to ensure effective support operations and data protection. 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. The main idea here is to rid the average support agent of a slew of mundane and repetitive tasks, giving them more time and mental energy to help customers with tougher issues. There is a simple email integration tool for whatever email provider you regularly use.

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. There are many features to help bigger customer service teams collaborate more effectively — like private notes or a real-time view of who’s handling a given ticket at the moment, etc. At the same time, the vendor offers powerful reporting capabilities to help you grow and improve your business.

But this also means the customer experience ROI tends to be lower than what it would be if you went with a best-in-class solution like Zendesk. If a customer starts an interaction by talking to a chatbot and can’t find a solution, our chatbot can open a ticket and intelligently route it to the most qualified agent. Think of it this way—a 10 percent profit margin means your business earns 10 cents for every dollar of revenue.

Intercom’s chatbots and product tours differentiate it from Zendesk. 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. It’s clear that both of these tools are designed for different use cases. Intercom is geared toward sales, whereas Zendesk includes everything a customer service rep desires. Zendesk is a customer service platform that allows you to communicate with customers via any channel. Choose Zendesk for a scalable, team-size-based pricing model and Intercom for initial low-cost access with flexibility in adding advanced features.

Both Zendesk and Intercom offer varying flavors when it comes to curating the whole customer support experience. When comparing Zendesk and Intercom, evaluating their core features and functionalities is essential to determine which platform best suits your organization’s customer support needs. Let’s explore how Zendesk and Intercom stack up in terms of basic functionalities required by a helpdesk software. Seamlessly integrate Intercom with popular third-party tools and platforms, centralizing customer data and improving workflow efficiency. The offers that appear on the website are from software companies from which CRM.org receives compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site (including, for example, the order in which they appear).

But with perks like more advanced chatbots, automation, and lead management capabilities, Intercom could have an edge for many users. AI and ML make customer service functionalities like chatbots, sentiment analysis, ticket creation, and workflow automation possible. All these features are necessary for operational efficiency and help agents deliver fast, personalized customer experiences.

Zendesk, less user-friendly and with higher costs for quality vendor support, might not suit budget-conscious or smaller businesses. When comparing the user interfaces (UI) of Zendesk and Intercom, both platforms exhibit distinct characteristics and strengths catering to different user preferences and needs. Leave your email below and a member of our team will personally get in touch to show you how Fullview can help you solve support tickets in half the time. Now that we’ve covered a bit of background on both Zendesk and Intercom, let’s dive into the features each platform offers.

While Zendesk features are plenty, someone using it for the first time can find it overwhelming. 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. On the other hand, it’s nearly impossible to foresee how much Intercom will cost at the end of the day. They charge for agent seats and connections, don’t disclose their prices, and package add-ons at a premium.

Intercom is praised as an affordable option with high customization capabilities, allowing businesses to create a personalized support experience. Although the interface may require a learning curve, users find the platform effective and functional. However, Intercom has fewer integration options than Zendesk, which may limit its capabilities for businesses seeking extensive integrations. A helpdesk solution’s user experience and interface are crucial in ensuring efficient and intuitive customer support. Let’s evaluate the user experience and interface of both Zendesk and Intercom, considering factors such as ease of navigation, customization options, and overall intuitiveness.

As your business grows, so does the volume of customer inquiries and support tickets. Managing everything manually is becoming increasingly difficult, and you need a robust customer support platform to streamline your operations. A customer service department is only as good as its support team members, and these highly-prized employees need to rely on one another. Tools that allow support agents to communicate and collaborate are important aspect of customer service software. There are 3 Basic support plans at $19, $49 and $99 per user per month billed annually, and 5 Suite plans at $49, $79, $99, $150, and $215 per user per month billed annually.

On Black Friday, the socks were discounted by 20 percent, meaning each pair sold for $8. This means if Thunderpop Sox sold 100 pairs, its profit margin on an average day would total $700. Yes, both Intercom and Zendesk let you try out some of their tools for free before you decide to pay for the full version. Community boards make the support ecosystem even better by creating a place where people can work together and share their experiences, tips, and ask for help from their peers. These forums are helpful for fixing problems and learning from other people’s mistakes. Even though Zendesk’s site does not clearly specify the duration of the free trial, other web resources state that it lasts for 30 days, which is twice as long as Intercom’s free trial.

When choosing between Zendesk and Intercom for your customer support needs, it’s essential to consider various factors that align with your business goals, operational requirements, and budget. Both platforms offer distinct strengths, catering to customer support and engagement aspects. If you are looking for a comprehensive customer support solution with a wide range of features, Zendesk is a good option. As you dive deeper into the world of customer support and engagement, you’ll discover that Zendesk and Intercom offer some distinctive features that set them apart. Let’s explore these unique offerings and see how they can benefit your business. Intercom’s messaging system enables real-time interactions through various channels, including chat, email, and in-app messages.

She loves finding innovative ways for your support team to scale and grow, always putting the customer first. She also loves to run marathons and play softball in her spare time. You can use this support desk to help customers or you can forward potential new users to your sales department.

Intercom, while differing from Zendesk, offers specialized features aimed at enhancing customer relationships. Founded as a business messenger, it now extends to enabling support, engagement, and conversion. Both Zendesk and Intercom are customer support management solutions that offer features like ticket management, live chat and messaging, automation workflows, knowledge centers, and analytics. Zendesk has traditionally been more focused on customer support management, while Intercom has been more focused on live support solutions like its chat solution. Zendesk, unlike Intercom, is a more affordable and predictable customer service platform.

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 zendesk and intercom to keep tickets moving automatically. I tested both options (using Zendesk’s Suite Professional trial and Intercom’s Support trial) and found clearly defined differences between the two. Here’s what you need to know about Zendesk vs. Intercom as customer support and relationship management tools.

For standard reporting like response times, leads generated by source, bot performance, messages sent, and email deliverability, you’ll easily find all the metrics you need. Beyond that, you can create custom reports that combine all of the stats listed above (and many more) and present them as counts, columns, lines, or tables. Use HubSpot Service Hub to provide seamless, fast, and delightful customer service. The support team faced spiking ticket volumes, numerous new customer accounts, and the need to shift to remote work.