Intercom VS Zendesk Customer Communication Technologies Market Share Comparison

Whether it’s syncing data with your CRM, enhancing communication via messaging platforms, or automating tasks with productivity apps, Zendesk makes it possible. Let’s explore these unique offerings and see how they can benefit your business. 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. It delivers a multi-channel support system with customer service automation.

Sales teams can also view outbound communications, and any support agent can access resources from the Intercom workspace. 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.

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When you leave a message in Freshdesk’s live chat, you can always see an indication of how fast you can expect their answer. When I was leaving mine, it said ‘Currently replying in under 15 minutes.’ 3 hours later – and I’m still waiting for someone to get back to me. Intercom supports multiple integrations but setting up some third-party platforms might be challenging. Zendesk also allows integrations, although its compatibility range isn’t specified.

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. While Intercom offers a “Starter Plan” for very small businesses, the price for larger companies is scaled upward, too. If you only need the services Intercom offers, then you’ll only spend around $75 a month for two seats. Another feature Intercom offers that Zendesk doesn’t is email marketing tools.

• 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.
• So it will transmit the live data on the users and what they are doing in your app.
• While Zendesk offers a wide array of support features, many more than Intercom, there are a couple of major features it lacks that Intercom has.
• You need a complete customer service platform that’s seamlessly integrated and AI-enhanced.
• There is power to be realized in partnerships and the strategic combination of forces, and companies using chatbots for customer service can further enhance the CX, taking it to new heights.

Its AI Chatbot, Fin, is particularly noted for handling complex queries efficiently. When it comes to which company is the better fit for your business, there’s no clear answer. Use ticketing systems to manage the influx and provide your customers with timely responses. One place Intercom really shines as a standalone CRM is its data utility.

While light agents cannot interact with the customer on the ticket, they can make notes and interact privately with other team members and agents involved with the ticket. Collaboration tools enable agents to work together in resolving customer tickets and making sales. Automatic assignment rules establish criteria that automatically route tickets to the right agent or team, based on message or user data. The interface of Intercom’s native apps for iOS and Android is equally impressive. Agents can use the app to support customers who need help, even while they are away from their desk or working remotely. Moreover, internal collaboration feels a bit more engaging and effortless with notes and mentions.

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These plans make Hiver a versatile tool, catering to a range of business sizes and needs, from startups to large enterprises looking for a comprehensive customer support solution within Gmail. Moreover, for users who require more dedicated and personalized support, Zendesk charges an additional premium. These premium support services can range in cost, typically between $1,500 and $2,800. This additional cost can be a considerable factor for businesses to consider when evaluating their customer support needs against their budget constraints.

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. 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. 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.

• With its integrated suite of applications, Intercom provides a comprehensive solution that caters to businesses seeking a unified ecosystem to manage customer interactions.
• In addition, Zendesk and Intercom feature advanced sales reporting and analytics that make it easy for sales teams to understand their prospects and customers more deeply.
• If compared to Intercom’s chatbot, Zendesk offers a relatively latest platform that makes support automation possible.
• Intercom distinguishes itself by excelling in real-time customer engagement.
• Zendesk for Service sells three plans, ranging from $49 to $99 monthly per user, with a 30-day free trial available for each plan.

The choice between the two platforms would depend on the specific needs and preferences of each business. Without proper channels to reach you, usually, customers will take their business elsewhere. And, thanks to the internet, a few taps will lead them right to your competitor! Most businesses use live chats as their main customer communication channel.

Its strengths are prominently seen in multi-channel support, with effective email, social media, and live chat integrations, coupled with a robust internal knowledge base for agent support. 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. There is power to be realized in partnerships and the strategic combination of forces, and companies using chatbots for customer service can further enhance the CX, taking it to new heights. Netomi’s virtual agents sit alongside human agents to supplement and enhance the capacity of support teams, ensuring the seamless resolution of customer queries. Intercom also offers a few features that are unique to its platform – one of these being the ability to segment users based on their behavior.

Though, if you compare Zendesk chat vs Intercom, the plugin is a bit hard to use as reviewed by customers. Installing it might take some technical skill and even when installed, could intercom vs zendesk malfunction a bit. It uses artificial intelligence (AI) to assist customers through self-help options or access to the relevant articles before connecting them to your team.

Intercom vs Zendesk: Overview

And considering how appropriate Zendesk is for larger companies, there’s a good chance you may need to take them up on that. 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. If that’s not detailed enough, then surely their visitor browsing details will leave you surprised. This enables your operators to understand visitor intent faster and provide them with a personalized experience. Here’s a list of criteria we’ve used to differentiate the two for you.

It provides a comprehensive platform for managing customer inquiries, support tickets, and interactions across multiple channels. On the other hand, Intercom shines in its focus on conversational engagement and real-time communication with customers. Zendesk’s extensive feature set and customizable workflows are particularly appealing to organizations looking to streamline and scale their customer support operations efficiently. It offers a chat-first approach, making it ideal for companies looking to prioritize interactive and personalized customer interactions. But with perks like more advanced chatbots, automation, and lead management capabilities, Intercom could have an edge for many users.

We’ve analyzed a dozen of reviews to help you get an average estimate of Zendesk vs Intercom functionality. Groove has put together an informative review of both brands to highlight the similarities and differences to allow you to make the right choice. Secret has already helped tens of thousands of startups save millions on the best SaaS like Zendesk, Intercom & many more. Not only for the operator, but even the companies find it tedious, too. Moreover, they will have to put some hours into managing the operator, and the list goes on. Rated 5 stars out of 5 on G2, ThriveDesk is highly regarded by users.

Zendesk vs. Intercom: FAQ

The admin and manager dashboard provides a zoomed-out view of all activity taking place in each inbox, for whole departments and individual agents. The Sell dashboard, different from the Service dashboard, features pre-built widgets that agents can organize however they want, to view the metrics they care most about. Agents can participate in forums and turn forum posts into tickets; they also can turn community-post replies into articles for future customers. Zendesk also makes it easy to customize your help center, with out-of-the-box tools to design color, theme, and layout–both on mobile and desktop. Intercom’s help center allows you to draft and organize collections of articles, accessible to customers via a search bar in the Messenger widget. Zendesk wins the collaboration tools category because of its easy-to-use side conversations feature.

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. You could say something similar for Zendesk’s standard service offering, so it’s at least good to know they have Zendesk Sell, a capable CRM option to supplement it. You can use Zendesk Sell to track tasks, streamline workflows, improve engagement, nurture leads, and much more. Agents can respond in any channel by typing in the text box and have access to deep customer experience history and background in the right-hand column. The dashboard’s left-hand column organizes and sorts all tickets by urgency.

Key offerings include automated support with help center articles, a messenger-first ticketing system, and a powerful inbox to centralize customer queries. 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. When it comes to advanced workflows and ticketing systems, Zendesk boasts a more full-featured solution. Due to our intelligent routing capabilities and numerous automated workflows, our users can free up hours to focus on other tasks.

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. At the same time, Zendesk looks slightly outdated and can’t offer some features. We’ll use the Zendesk API to make changes to the existing ticket (all changes made are internal and won’t directly be seen by the customer). Zendesk wins the self-service tools category because it provides extensive help center customization options. When a customer asks a question in the Messenger widget, the Operator automatically suggests a handful of relevant articles based on keywords to help customers resolve their own issues. Users with light access–such as knowledgeable agents and supervisors–can be added to tickets for browsing and feedback.

In this case, each customer service software has a unique way of generating reports such as scheduling, the scope of the analysis, and more. Zendesk does not provide its customers with email marketing tools for the basic subscriptions at the time of writing. However, the add-on Customer Lists available for Professional and Enterprise subscriptions does have mass email options.

Research by Zoho reports that customer relationship management (CRM) systems can help companies triple lead conversion rates. Those same tools also increase customer retention by 27% while saving 23% on sales and marketing costs. Intercom enables customers to self-serve through its messaging platform. Agents can easily find resources for customers from their agent workspace. Intercom also has an omnichannel customer service solution, but it’s fairly limited, with no native voice capabilities and minimal voice integrations. On the other hand, Intercom lacks many ticketing functionality that can be essential for big companies with a huge client support load.

Zendesk compared to Intercom

When evaluating the cost of any software tool, you have to look beyond the price tag. ROI comes down to getting the most out of the features available, so payment structures that are scaleable and flexible are a must. Its tight focus on customer support keeps things simple, especially when people are learning the software. See how leading multi-channel consumer brands solve E2E customer data challenges with a real-time customer data platform. Pricing for both services varies based on the specific needs and scale of your business.

They bought out the Zopim live chat solution and integrated it with their toolset. Whatever people are using to communicate with each other, whether it be online or over the phone, they expect to also be able to talk to the businesses they use with those same tools and platforms. Among the many challenges facing businesses today is the pressing need to meet their customers where they are.

This makes it an excellent choice if you want to engage with support and potential and existing customers in real time. Both tools also allow you to connect your email account and manage it from within the application to track open and click-through rates. In addition, Zendesk and Intercom feature advanced sales reporting and analytics that make it easy for sales teams to understand their prospects and customers more deeply. Zendesk takes the slight lead here because it offers some advanced help desk features, which Intercom does not.

You can even finagle some forecasting by sourcing every agent’s assigned leads. Keeping this general theme in mind, I’ll dive deeper into how each software’s features compare, so you can decide which use case might best fit your needs. G2 ranks Intercom higher than Zendesk for ease of setup, and support quality—so you can expect a smooth transition, effortless onboarding, and continuous success. Whether you’re starting fresh with Intercom or migrating from Zendesk, set up is quick and easy.

You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. Send surveys at key points throughout the customer buying cycle, utilizing multiple types of question formats. Surveys turn customer insights into action, with triggers and campaign response adjustments depending on customer responses. Zendesk Sales Engagement Tools (Reach) uses a credit system to help you find new leads or add information to existing leads. The Sell dashboard’s Tasks page sorts all of an agent’s tasks by due date.

Operator, Intercom’s automation engine, empowers Intercom chatbots to gather key information from each website visitor to qualify leads and route customers to the right destination. 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. While Intercom lacks some common customer-service channels like voice calling and video conferencing, it supports other unique features that transfer across channels. Zendesk for Service transforms customer queries and conversations from all channels–call, web chat, tweet, text, or email–into tickets in the Agent Workspace. However, my understanding is those bigger businesses like Zendesk exactly because of its complexity and lack of coordination.

But, you would not be able to experience such a good in-app messaging service on Zendesk. Automating onboarding messages, product guides, newsletters, and the list goes on. Intercom understands very well that email marketing is no more than a magic wand for building strong customer relations. Customers will stay with you long if they are not getting any support from your company, especially when you are new to them. Zendesk is yet another powerful way to help businesses interact with their customers. In terms of G2 ratings, Zendesk and Intercom are both well-rated platforms.

Intercom and Zendesk both offer comprehensive customer support solutions. 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. In general, Zendesk offers a wide range of live chat features such as customizable chat widgets, automatic greetings, offline messaging, and chat triggers.