Zendesk vs Intercom: the ultimate comparison by Ana Khlystova HelpCrunch

It offers comprehensive customer data management and lead-tracking features. Some businesses may require supplemental products to meet specific needs. Intercom’s CRM utility is a solid foundation for managing customer relationships and sales in one platform.

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. For small businesses, the choice depends on the complexity of their CRM needs. Zendesk’s more affordable plans may be suitable if essential CRM functions are enough. However, if businesses seek a more personalized customer experience, Intercom’s advanced features could be beneficial.

You can create articles, share them internally, group them for users, and assign them as responses for bots—all pretty standard fare. Intercom can even integrate with Zendesk and other sources to import past help center content. I just found Zendesk’s help center to be slightly better integrated into their workflows and more customizable. Intercom’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).

At the same time, Zendesk looks slightly outdated and can’t offer some features. While Intercom offers a user-friendly interface and solid chat features, it may lack the comprehensive, modular capabilities provided by Zendesk. Intercom’s tools are packaged together, limiting customization and potentially leading to higher costs if you need only specific features. Additionally, Intercom’s call center and advanced analytics rely on third-party integrations, whereas Zendesk offers solutions like Zendesk Sell, Talk and Explore.

You can set business rules, SLA, and ticket routing based on the agent’s skills, language, and expertise. Each message will have identifiers so that they will be easy to recognize at a glance. As a result, you’ll be able to see the sender, anyone who replied, and the dates of their interaction. As well as Intercom, it allows sharing of private notes with other support agents. Intercom’s CRM can work as a standalone CRM and requires no additional service to operate robustly.

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. However, if you are looking for a robust messaging solution with customer support features, go for Intercom.

Does Intercom have ticketing?

Automated service to migrate your data between help desk platforms without programming skills — just follow simple Migration Wizard. It’s Intercom VS Zendesk, the battle of two well-known software in the help desk category. If you Chat GPT have been wondering which to choose, Intercom or Zendesk, the good news is you aren’t alone. That’s true, businesses vary by industry, size, purposes, the software they need, a budget for that software, and the list can go on.

Let’s examine and compare how each platform addresses these crucial areas to ensure effective support operations and data protection. 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. If, after the additional prices they charge, the plan works for you, Intercom is a great way to manage your customer relationships. Every CRM software comes with some limitations along with the features it offers. This weaknesses analysis will also help you make the right choice.

Zendesk vs Intercom: Key features and functionalities

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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. 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.

Intercom vs Zendesk: intro

However, compared to Zendesk, Intercom might not offer the same breadth in terms of integrating a wide range of external channels. Intercom is a customer relationship management intercom and zendesk (CRM) software company that provides a suite of tools for managing customer interactions. The company was founded in 2011 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California.

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. Willing to know more about help desk software import and export and customer service ​​enhancement? You can create dozens of articles in a simple, intuitive WYSIWYG text editor, divide them by categories and sections, and customize with your custom themes. Intercom has more customization features for features like bots, themes, triggers, and funnels.

Chatting in Zendesk and Intercom

It is quite the all-rounder as it even has a help center and ticketing system that completes its omnichannel support cycle. When making your decision, consider factors such as your budget, the scale of your business, and your specific growth plans. Explore alternative options like ThriveDesk if you’re looking for a more budget-conscious solution that aligns with your customer support needs. 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.

Zendesk lets you chat with customers through email, chat, social media, or phone. To sum it all up, you need to consider various aspects of your business before choosing CRM software. While deciding between Zendesk and Intercom, you should ensure the customization, AI automation, and functionalities align with your business goals.

The compared vendors share a strategy of delivering their services as either separate add-ons or all-in-one tools. Founded in 2007, Zendesk started off as a ticketing tool for customer support teams. It was later when they started adding all kinds of other tools like when they bought out Zopim live chat and just integrated it with their toolset. Zendesk would be a perfect option for businesses that are searching for a well-integrated support system. It offers a suite that compiles help desk, live chat, and knowledge base to their user base.

The free Intercom Platform lets you see who your customers are and what they do in your workspace. 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. Depending on the complexity of the script and the amount of your data, the transfer process can take anywhere from a few hours to several weeks. You should be prepared for this process to take an extended period of time.

This could impact user experience and efficiency for new users grappling with its complexity​​​​​​. Both Zendesk and Intercom are excellent customer service solutions. 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. On the other hand, if you need something that is more tailored to your customer base and is less expensive, then Intercom might be a better fit.

• Overall, Zendesk wins out on plan flexibility, especially given that it has a lower price plan for dipping your toes in the water.
• These weaknesses are not as significant as the features and functionalities Zendesk offers its users.
• Intercom’s reporting is average compared to Zendesk, as it offers some standard reporting and analytics tools.
• Intercom, on the other hand, was built for business messaging, so communication is one of their strong suits.
• Considering all the features of Zendesk, including robust ticketing, messaging, a help center, and chatbots, we can say that Zendesk excels in being the top customer support platform.
• Intercom’s live chat functionality goes beyond the basics, incorporating targeted messaging, proactive messaging, and sophisticated chatbot capabilities.

Intercom offers an easy way to nurture your qualified leads (prospects) into customers with Intercom Series. 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. In general, Zendesk offers a wide range of live chat features such as customizable chat widgets, automatic greetings, offline messaging, and chat triggers. In addition to these features, Intercom offers messaging automation and real-time visitor insights.

Their users can create a knowledge repository to create articles or edit existing ones as per the changes in the services or product. Zendesk, like Intercom, offers multilingual language functionality. 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. ThriveDesk empowers small businesses to manage real-time customer communications. 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.

When comparing the omnichannel support functionalities of Zendesk and Intercom, both platforms show distinct strengths and weaknesses. 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. Zendesk is a much larger company than Intercom; it has over 170,000 customers, while Intercom has over 25,000.

Intercom Inbox has customer support features that vaguely remind Zendesk Support, but the offered package Acquire customer (Messages and Inbox) is more paralleled with Zendesk Support + Chat. Intercom helps you support your customers with chat, support and management tools. It is used by over 25k companies as it helps them convert more leads, and achieve the best service for their customers. Gathering insights from customer reviews and testimonials offers a comprehensive understanding of the first-hand experiences of businesses using Zendesk and Intercom.

It’s an opportunity for Zendesk to differentiate itself, but unfortunately it didn’t get very high marks from users, either. Reviewers were frustrated by how long it took for their tickets to get resolved, as well as the complexity with which they were tossed around from department to department. Given that these are two services predicated on making you better at customer support, you’d think they’d be able to handle it better themselves. However, reading the reviews, it’s probably more accurate to say that Zendesk is “mixed” on customer support, whereas Intercom doesn’t have a stellar record.

Nevertheless, the platform’s support consistency can be a concern, and the unpredictable pricing structure might lead to increased costs for larger organizations. The strength of Zendesk’s UI lies in its structured and comprehensive environment, adept at managing numerous customer interactions and integrating various channels seamlessly. However, compared to the more contemporary designs like Intercom’s, Zendesk’s UI may appear outdated, particularly in aspects such as chat widget and customization options.

The features in Zendesk can scale with growing companies, so Startups can easily customize their plan to changing needs. Before choosing the customer support software, it is crucial to consider the size of the business. Some software only works best for startups, while others have offerings only for large enterprises. Let us look at the type and size of business for which Zednesk and Intercom are suitable.

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. Skyvia offers a number of benefits for import Intercom data to Zendesk or vice versa.

With the bulk user import option, you can efficiently import users in bulk, ensuring a swift and accurate transfer of data. We even offer a bulk organization import feature for your convenience. Help Desk Migration is your ultimate solution for a seamless Zendesk import and Zendesk data migration process. We specialize in importing data to Zendesk, utilizing our state-of-the-art Zendesk data importer. The two essential things that Zendesk lacks in comparison to Intercom are in-app messages and email marketing tools. On the other hand, Intercom lacks many ticketing functionality that can be essential for big companies with a huge client support load.

• Their chat widget looks and works great, and they invest a lot of effort to make it a modern, convenient customer communication tool.
• Zendesk also allows Advanced AI and Advanced data privacy and protection plans, which cost $50 per month for each Advanced add-on.
• After an in-depth analysis such as this, it can be pretty challenging for your business to settle with either option.
• Intercom lets businesses send their customers targeted in-app messages.
• 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.
• Zendesk facilitates efficient ticketing, live chat, and knowledge base management, ensuring timely issue resolution.

Say what you will, but Intercom’s design and overall user experience are leaving all its competitors far behind. 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. The cheapest (aka Essential) ‘All of Intercom’ package will cost you $136 per month, but if you only need their essential chat tools only, you can get them for $49 per month. If I had to describe Intercom’s help desk, I would say it’s rather a complementary tool to their chat tools.

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. 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. Here’s a list of criteria we’ve used to differentiate the two for you.

In this article, we will explore the key differences between Intercom and Zendesk, two popular customer support platforms. Both Intercom and Zendesk offer a range of features to help businesses manage customer interactions, but there are some distinct differences between the two. Zendesk, a customer service-focused tool, is renowned for its robust ticketing system and help desk capabilities. On the other hand, Intercom positions itself as a versatile solution, integrating customer communication with marketing and sales. Dominic’s insights provide viewers with a clear understanding of the primary focus of each platform.

Intercom’s products are used by over 25,000 customers, from small tech startups to large enterprises. This feature ensures that each customer request is handled by the best-suited agent, improving the overall efficiency of the support team. 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. 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.

You can use Zendesk Sell to track tasks, streamline workflows, improve engagement, nurture leads, and much more. View your users’ Zendesk tickets in Intercom and create new ones directly from conversations. If you don’t go with ActiveCampaign, then Zoho would be my second choice. But their support and quality is not as good, they feel like a new product even though they have been in business a while. You keep having to get around their bugs, which you can, it is just annoying. Finally, we also have some B2B customers (funeral homes) and expect this part of our business to grow significantly in 2021.

This tool took the “painful” and “time-consuming” factors out of the data migration. With Help Desk Migration service, you can simply import and export large amount of different records entities to or from Intercom to Zendesk. Examine the details of data types you can migrate incorporating automation service without extra assistance from tech service reps.

So far, the chatbot can transfer chats to agents or resolve less complex queries in seconds. That means all you have to do is add the code to your website and enable it right away. Welcome to another blog post that helps you gauge which live chat solution is compatible with your customer support needs. And in this post, we will analyze two popular names in the SaaS industry – Intercom & Zendesk. Intercom’s messaging system enables real-time interactions through various channels, including chat, email, and in-app messages.

Sign up for a trial through a salesperson and then ask if it is possible to get in the class for less money. It has a direct integration with Shopify and other tools including powerful B2B customer handling. It also satisfies all the requirements you’ve outlined including order history, interaction history, notes, tickets etc. Along with Omni channel integrations with chat (their own or other chat solutions), email, phone and so on. We sell a high-touch, high ASP product (caskets) and have scaled to where we’re adding several more customer service agents to our company. Customers often call or chat with us multiple times prior to the purchase and post-purchase, as these are emotional, time-sensitive purchases.

Zendesk offers a comprehensive suite of customer service features, whereas Intercom emphasizes personalized messaging and advanced sales automation tools. 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.

Its analytics do not provide deeper insights into consumer interactions as well. The integration of apps plays a significant role in creating a seamless experience or a 360-degree view of customers across the company. Zendesk allows the integration of 1300 apps ranging from billing apps, marketing tools, and other software, adding overall to the value https://chat.openai.com/ 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.

Intercom also has a mobile app available for both Android and iOS, which makes it easy to stay connected with customers even when away from the computer. The app includes features like automated messages and conversation routing — so businesses can manage customer conversations more efficiently. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. Our CSV import feature allows you to effortlessly handle large volumes of data with options to customize the import type to your specific needs.