Zendesk vs Intercom in 2023: Detailed Analysis of Features, Pricing, and More

But Intercom’s friendliness for growing companies is something you can’t afford to ignore. If your business is established and you need to cut down on those ticket resolution times, Zendesk may be worth it. Zendesk also offers a sales pipeline feature through its Zendesk Sell product. You can set up email sequences that specify how and when leads and contacts are engaged.

This could impact user experience and efficiency for new users grappling with its complexity​​​​​​. 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.

The best thing about this plan is that it is eligible for an advanced AI add-on, has integrated community forums, side conversations, skill-based routing, and is HIPAA-enabled. 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. Thus, due to its limited agility, businesses with complex business models may not find it appropriate.

After an in-depth exploration of Zendesk and Intercom, Dominic wraps up the video with his conclusions. He summarizes the key points, discusses the strengths and weaknesses of each platform, and provides recommendations based on different business needs. Viewers are equipped with the knowledge to make an informed choice that aligns with their specific requirements. Overall, Zendesk empowers businesses to deliver exceptional customer support experiences across channels, making it a popular choice for enhancing support operations.

Intercom feels more wholesome and is more client-success-oriented, but it can be too costly for smaller companies. If you thought Zendesk prices were Chat GPT confusing, let me introduce you to the Intercom charges. It’s virtually impossible to predict what you’ll pay for Intercom at the end of the day.

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. Zendesk on the other hand offers tools that support a wide variety of customer service functions including robust ticket management capabilities. Intercom and Zendesk both offer comprehensive customer support solutions. Intercom is a fully-featured customer support platform that provides powerful automation and AI tools to enable more efficient and effective customer engagement.

A collection of these reports can enable your business to identify the right resources responsible for bringing engagement to your business. Live chat add-on provides you with personal customer communication (via the web, mobile, and conversational messaging) without interrupting their experience. Once you add live chat to your website, your visitors will be able to reach you through the chat widget. However, customer service (and the ways how a company delivers it) creates a centerpiece of a brand. But if you’re not familiar with them, think of the software as an online human resource department.

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. The comparison of whether Intercom is better than Zendesk depends on your specific customer support and engagement needs and objectives.

It’s like having a toolkit for lead generation, customer segmentation, and crafting highly personalized messages. This makes it an excellent choice if you want to engage with support and potential and existing customers in real time. Ultimately, the choice between Intercom and Zendesk depends on your specific needs and priorities. If you prioritize real-time messaging and customer engagement, Intercom may be the better option for you.

And considering that its tools (including live chat options) are so easy to use, it’s probably going to be easier for a small business to get integrated and set up. 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. Founded in 2007, Zendesk started off as a ticketing tool for customer support teams.

Its analytics do not provide deeper insights into consumer interactions as well. Intercom is also a customer service software that integrates entirely with third-party vendors, especially those offering messaging services. Using any plan, this integration is available to all customers, making the customer support experience and onboarding smooth. Zendesk excels in its ticketing system, offering users an intuitive platform for collaboration among support agents.

Which tool should you choose? Intercom or Zendesk?

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 this solution is great because it’s an all-in-one tool with a modern live chat widget, allowing you to easily improve your customer experiences.
• While Zeendesk provides automation services for ticket support systems, notifications, chatbots, etc., it may not be an extensive feature compared to Intercom.
• Intercom offers a simplistic dashboard with a detailed view of all customer details in one place.
• 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.
• Unlike Intercom, Zendesk is scalable, intuitively designed for CX, and offers a low total cost of ownership.
• Intercom’s CRM can work as a standalone CRM and requires no additional service to operate robustly.

This can make it challenging to estimate the cost yourself during your research and you need to speak with Intercom for more information. 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. Intercom’s reporting is average compared to Zendesk, as it offers some standard reporting and analytics tools.

Expert Plan

There are several notable alternatives to Zendesk in the customer support and engagement space, including Intercom, Freshdesk, Help Scout, and Zoho Desk. 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.

The cost will mostly lean on the business data volume you need to transfer, the complexity of your requirements, and the options you’ll select or customizations you’ll inquire. Run a Free Demo to test the Migration Wizard performance and figure out how much your migration will cost. Help Desk Migration is your ultimate solution for a seamless Zendesk import and Zendesk data migration process.

Zendesk offers fast time to value, especially at the enterprise level. Its ability to scale with the businesses makes it an attractive option for growing companies. Its customizable options enable businesses to quickly gain value from its features by enhancing agility. Zendesk TCO is lower than Intercom due to its ability intercom or zendesk to scale, which does not require additional cost to update the software for a growing business. It also has a transparent pricing model so businesses know the price they will incur. Lastly, the tool is easy to set up and implement, meaning no additional knowledge or expertise makes the businesses incur additional costs.

You can create an omnichannel CRM suite with a mix of productivity, collaboration, eCommerce, CRM, analytics, email marketing, social media, and other tools. Both app stores include many popular integrations, such as Salesforce, HubSpot, Mailchimp, and Zapier. 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.

This tier provides everything a small or medium-sized business will need, including better ticket management and advanced workflow automation tools. A lot can be gleaned from a customer support tool’s ticketing features. These features help support reps manage and organize support requests and ongoing communications so they are vital tools that will be used every day. As two of the most popular and effective customer support solutions on the market, Intercom and Zendesk often compete head-to-head to win the business of companies like yours. While Zendesk is a widely used and versatile customer support and engagement platform, it’s important to consider whether there might be a better software solution tailored to your specific needs. For smaller teams that have to handle multiple tasks, do not forget to check JustReply.ai, which is a user-friendly customer support tool.

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.

Different Criteria Used to Differentiate Zendesk & Intercom

Understanding these differences is essential in determining which platform aligns better with a business’s specific needs and goals. Again, Zendesk has surpassed the number of reviewers when compared to Intercom. Some of the highly-rated features include ticket creation user experience, email to case, and live chat reporting. When you see pricing plans starting for $79/month, you should get a clear understanding of how expensive other plans can become for your business. What’s worse, Intercom doesn’t offer a free trial to its prospect to help them test the product before onboarding with their services.

Moreover, these are new prices as they’re in the middle of changing their pricing policy right now (and they’re definitely not getting cheaper). All plans come with a 7-day free trial, and no credit card is required to sign up for the trial. And there’s still no way to know how much you’ll pay for them since the prices are only revealed after you go through a few sale demos with the Intercom team.

Intercom focuses more on streamlining customer communication to help brands serve proactive support. Zendesk, on the other hand, focuses on multiple aspects like automating ticketing, analytics, self-service, etc. Talking about the Intercom, it has flexible pricing plans that its experts can help adjust as per your requirements to match contacts and number of seats. The good news is that you enjoy a generous free 14-day trial by opting to get an idea if the particular service is suitable for your business or not.

The best part about Zendesk is that, along with its amazing features, it also provides its users with a magical wand for customizing them. Whether it’s the ticketing system, knowledge base corner, or branding elements, you get the full right to use them as per your brand’s need. In the domain of customer onboarding, Intercom takes a definitive lead with its distinctive feature – the ability to create interactive product tours. These tours serve as virtual guides, leading customers through a website and product offerings in an engaging and personalized manner. This approach not only enhances user understanding but also significantly boosts user engagement.

It also helps promote automation in routine tasks by automating repetitive processes and helps agents save time and errors. In addition to all these features, Suite Growth Plan offers light agents, multilingual support, multiple ticket forms, and a self-service customer portal. Efficient customer service and support capabilities are fundamental for maintaining high customer satisfaction levels. Evaluating the customer service and support features of Zendesk and Intercom aids businesses in understanding which platform facilitates more effective and prompt customer issue resolution. The ProProfs Live Chat Editorial Team is a passionate group of customer service experts dedicated to empowering your live chat experiences with top-notch content.

Zendesk, less user-friendly and with higher costs for quality vendor support, might not suit budget-conscious or smaller businesses. Test any of HelpCrunch pricing plans for free for 14 days and see our tools in action right away. Besides, the prices differ depending on the company’s size and specific needs. We conducted a little study of our own and found that all Intercom users share different amounts of money they pay for the plans, which can reach over $1000/mo. The price levels can even be much higher if we’re talking of a larger company. If I had to describe Intercom’s helpdesk, I would say it’s rather a complementary tool to their chat tools.

Its conversational support approach, powerful automation capabilities, and in-depth analytics empower businesses to deliver tailored and effective customer experiences. In the digital age, customer support platforms have become the cornerstone of ensuring customer satisfaction and retention. Businesses across various industries rely on these platforms to manage and streamline customer interactions, enhance communication, and provide timely assistance. If you are looking for more integration options and budget is not an issue, Intercom can be the perfect live chat solution for your business. It is also ideal for businesses who are searching for conversational chatbot functionality.

Zendesk also has an Answer Bot, which instantly takes your knowledge base game to the next level. It can automatically suggest relevant articles for agents during business hours to share with clients, reducing your support agents’ workload. Is it as simple as knowing whether you want software strictly for customer support (like Zendesk) or for some blend of customer relationship management and sales support (like Intercom)?

• Zendesk’s ticketing system is renowned for its highly organized approach, which empowers businesses to manage customer support requests with unparalleled efficiency.
• Community managers can also escalate posts to support agents when one-on-one help is needed.
• This feature is available on all the channels your customers use to get in touch with your brand.
• Because it’s something they believe the developers should fine-tune.
• Together, these security measures eliminate the dangers of data leak.

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. While both tools offer top-of-field feature sets that can simplify your customer support processes dramatically, identifying which is right for you can take time and effort. When it comes to ease-of-use, Zendesk undeniably takes the lead over Intercom. 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.

The dashboard of Zendesk is sleek, simple, and highly responsive, offering a seamless experience for managing customer interactions. As businesses expand and evolve, the scalability and flexibility of their customer support platform becomes important. Examining the scalability and flexibility of Zendesk and Intercom helps businesses determine which platform can accommodate their growth trajectory and changing needs. Zendesk and Intercom offer various pricing plans, but Intercom is generally more expensive. Zendesk’s pricing plans start at $19 per month, while Intercom’s pricing plans start at $74 per month. Your best pricing plan will depend on your specific needs and budget.

If you are a small business with basic CRM needs, then the Zendesk Support Team or Intercom Starter may be a good option for you. If you are a growing business with more complex CRM needs, then the Zendesk Enterprise or Intercom Pro plan may be a better option for you. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. Zendesk has received a rating of 4.4 out of 5 from 2,693 reviewers. They’ve been rated as one of the easy live chat solutions with more integrated options. This live chat software provider also enables your business to send proactive chat messages to customers and engage effectively in real-time.

We will also consider customer feedback and reviews to provide insights into the usability of each platform. However, if you are looking for a robust messaging solution with customer support features, go for Intercom. Its intuitive messenger can help your business boost engagement and improve sales and marketing efforts. This feature ensures that each customer request is handled by the best-suited agent, improving the overall efficiency of the support team. As any free tool, the functionalities there are quite limited, but nevertheless.

An example of the platforms’ different focus is that Intercom includes an email marketing feature, whereas Zendesk doesn’t. While both Intercom and Zendesk excel in customer support and engagement, the decision between the two depends on your specific requirements. It’s well-suited for organizations aiming to enhance customer engagement through real-time communication. Determining whether Zendesk is better than Intercom hinges on your unique customer support and engagement requirements. Zendesk excels as a robust and versatile customer support platform, offering comprehensive tools for managing customer inquiries and support operations across various channels. If your business values a feature-rich and customizable solution for customer interactions, Zendesk may be the better choice.

So, if you have customers who prefer to call service with an Intercom, it wouldn’t be possible. You would rather have to integrate it with third-party apps like Appy Pie Connect. But, you would not be able to experience such a good in-app messaging service on Zendesk. Amid tight budgeting times, Desku proves to be the buddy for excellent worth and without any costly expenditure. However, the approach is far much wider than merely focusing on what would be more cost-effective but instead exploring ways through which a solution that would suit you best could be realized.

One study found that 67% of customers prefer calling an agent to help solve their queries. Some help desk software provides call center tools as one of customer communication channels. So, let’s explore the difference between Zendesk and Intercom call center tools. The bot feeds customers and employees the relevant articles upon making a query. The main difference is its connectivity with the Intercom Team Inbox.

On the other hand, if you require robust ticketing and support management features, Zendesk might be the more suitable choice. Consider your budget, team size, and integration requirements before making a decision. 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. While it offers a range of advanced features, the overall costs and potential inconsistencies in support could be a concern for some businesses​​​​. It really shines in its modern messenger interface, making real-time chat a breeze.

Evaluate your company’s criteria to determine which set of standards best matches your goals. 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. Finally, we also have some B2B customers (funeral homes) and expect this part of our business to grow significantly in 2021.

With Zendesk Sell, you can also customize how deals move through your pipeline by setting pipeline stages that reflect your sales cycle. 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 use this support desk to help customers or you can forward potential new users to your sales department. You can create a help platform to assist users in guiding themselves, or you can use AI-enabled responses to create a more “human” like effect. Given that both of these platforms seem aimed at one sort of market or another, it shouldn’t surprise you that we might find a few gaps in the sorts of services they provide. 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. Help desk software creates a sort of “virtual front desk” for your business.

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. ThriveDesk is a help desk software tailor-made for businesses seeking extensive features and a powerful yet simple live chat assistant. Even https://chat.openai.com/ better, it’s the most cost-effective, lightweight, and speedy live chat solution available for Shopify business owners. Experience the comprehensive power of Intercom for effective customer communication, automation, support tools, integrations, and analytics. So, get ready for an insightful journey through the landscapes of Zendesk and Intercom, where support excellence converges with AI innovation.

However, a fundamental difference between them is their scope and focus. While Zendesk’s emphasis is entirely on customer support, Intercom’s features extend into marketing and sales. Zendesk started as a customer support request SaaS, a legacy that continues today with its robust ticketing and customer messaging solutions. In contrast, Intercom aims to provide an all-in-one business communication platform to support, engage, and convert customers with sales and marketing functions.

Zendesk also allows Advanced AI and Advanced data privacy and protection plans, which cost $50 per month for each Advanced add-on. Let us dive deeper into the offerings of Zendesk and Intercom to make a comparison at a glance. This comparison is going to help you understand the features of both tools. Several decision-making factors, such as budget constraints, specific business requirements, and long-term goals, influence the choice between Zendesk and Intercom.

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. It delivers a multi-channel support system with customer service automation. 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.

Intercom has a community forum where users can engage with each other and gain insights from their experiences. Intercom live chat is modern, streamlined, and highly customisable compared to Zendesk. If you go through Zendesk’s reviews and ratings section, you will get to see a long list of positive appraisals. And we all know that receiving such continuous positive Customer feedback isn’t easy at all. If not, then you should because it will ease much of your workload as you would not have to waste your precious time in finding the helpdesk operator, plus zero management issues.

Intercom offers an easy way to nurture your qualified leads (prospects) into customers with Intercom Series. 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. Because Intercom started as a live chat service, its messenger functionality is very robust.

Meanwhile, our WFM software enables businesses to analyze employee metrics and performance, helping them identify improvements, implement strategies, and set long-term goals. As a result, customers can implement the help desk software quickly—without the need for developers—and see a faster return on investment. Plus, our transparent pricing doesn’t have hidden fees or endless add-ons, so customers know exactly what they’re paying for and can calculate the total cost of ownership ahead of time.

Don’t worry about experiencing hardships whilst doing your Supported Platform data import and export. The top products based on usability and customer satisfaction, as rated by user reviews. Personalized messaging, in-app messaging, product tours, and chatbot capabilities set Intercom apart from Zendesk. It is none other than the modern customer support software of Helpwise. 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.

AI-driven chatbot Fin is designed to automate consumer interactions. Fin uses seamless communication across customer bases, breaking language barriers and catering to global audiences. The Expert plan, which offers collaboration, real-time dashboard, security, and reporting tools for large teams, costs $139. 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.