Intercom vs Zendesk: Comparing features, integrations, and pricing

It allows companies to streamline customer support processes, automate workflows, and provide better customer experience. As a conversational relationship platform, Zendesk gives you the option of live chatting with customers via your website, mobile, and messaging. 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 malfunction a bit.

Price goes up as you add more agents and seek more integrations with the platform. The primary platform comes with live chat and is a great external support system. Groove carries all the major features a B2C or D2C brand would need to serve its customers and they are very good at it. However, if you are looking for a proper B2B platform with features like SLAs, priority levels, auto-assignment, approval workflows, etc then Groove might not be the best choice. The pricing starts at $20/mo/user and has basic features like Live Chat, knowledgebase, email ticketing, etc.

Zendesk Chat

However, if you are looking for Zendesk features such as live chat, chatbots, etc then Jetdocs is not the platform for you. Jetdocs excels at B2B ticketing experience with features tailored for such an environment but lacks some aspects the B2C & D2C companies require. There are several great options available that provide excellent customer service.

Compared to Intercom, Zendesk’s pricing starts at $49/month, which is still understandable but not meant for startups looking for affordable pricing plans. These plans are not inclusive of the add-ons or access to all integrations. Once you add them all to the picture, their existing plans can turn out to be quite expensive. It enables them to engage with visitors who are genuinely interested in their services. You get to engage with them further and get to know more about their expectations.

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To make a comparison of Zendesk vs Intercom knowledge base features is quite tricky. So, Intercom Articles will be opposed to Zendesk Suite – in that way the contrast is (more or less) fair. To sum things up, Zendesk is a great customer support oriented tool which will be a great choice for big teams with various departments. Intercom feels more wholesome and is more customer success oriented, but can be too costly for smaller companies. It’s much easier if you decide to go with the Zendesk Suite, which includes Support, Chat, Talk, and Guide tools. There are two options there — Professional for $109 or Enterprise for $179 if you pay monthly.

• If you’re familiar with customer support terminology, Intercom’s usage of the term “ticket” might seem confusing.
• You can even moderate user content to leverage your customer community.
• 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.
• In other words, your costs may vary depending on the total volume of tickets.
• Both Zendesk Messaging and Intercom Messenger offer live chat features and AI-enabled chatbots for 24/7 support to customers.
• It gives support and sales-focused teams valuable insights into how customers use the system, providing them with helpful customer satisfaction metrics and identifying areas for improvement.

To customize your Zendesk experience, you can integrate the tool with third-party business applications such as Trello, Salesforce, Shopify, Aircall, etc. Zendesk has many amazing team collaboration and communication features, like whisper mode, which lets multiple agents chime in to help each other without the customer knowing. There is also something called warm transfers, which let one rep add contextual notes to a ticket before transferring it to another rep. You also get a side conversation tool. Chatbots are automated customer support tools that can assist with low-level ticket triage and ticket routing in real-time.

Inability to provide an omnichannel experience

By leveraging the out-of-the-box Netomi virtual agent integration, companies enhance both the agent and customer experience, while also reducing costs. Other chatbots don’t sit natively within the agent desk, but with Netomi, virtual and human agents work alongside each other, creating an efficient and ultra-powerful customer service team. Intercom’s app store has popular integrations for things like WhatsApp, Stripe, Instagram, and Slack.

All that being said, support teams still need to be able to track issues. Though we keep all of our customer-facing communications jargon-free, behind the scenes, Help Scout has all of the power and features of a ticketing system. Productboard is a product management tool that helps you create and communicate your product strategy. With the Productboard app for Intercom, you can capture valuable product feedback in Intercom and then send it to a centralized repository where it is easier to organize, glean insights from and implement i.

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On this page, we compare two customer service options directly, Zendesk and Intercom, to help in your evaluation of potential customer service solutions. Both of these platforms provide different packages, features, and benefits that may help your team delight your customers and aid in your team’s success. Leveraging AI-powered chatbots, Zoho Desk employs Zia, an intelligent assistant, to share relevant knowledge base solutions with customers and agents.

But I don’t want to sell their chat tool short as it still has most of necessary features like shortcuts (saved responses), automated triggers and live chat analytics. The overall design of Zendesk’s chat widget looks outdated and offers very limited customization options. Intercom is another SaaS company that was founded in 2011 with the aim to help businesses build better customer relationships through personalized, messenger-based experiences.

Intercom or Zendesk: Help desk and ticketing

And if you want to invest in making more sales and conversions with your help desk software, it may be worth it to put some money into Intercom for its uniquely conversational approach to front desk help. Yes—as your business’s needs grow, you will require a more sophisticated case management system. But that doesn’t mean you have to completely switch from your current provider if you’re not quite ready. Our integration with Intercom enables bi-directional contact and case synchronization, so you can continue using Intercom as your front-end digital experience and use Zendesk for case management.

However, the 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 online human resource departments. For instance, customers and staff alike can channel messages through it.

Intercom reviews

Companies can also use Groove to create a knowledge base and customer portal, as well. On these platforms, organizations can present information via text and/or multimedia to help their clients quickly find the information they’re looking for. Additionally, agents can tag and categorize documents as appropriate, allowing their customers to easily find the answers they’re looking for.

Customerly is in-app messaging platform for SaaS companies and provides solution to engage with SaaS users, support them and gather feedback (CCM solutions). Consider the integration options available with other tools and software you use in your business. A good customer support tool should easily integrate metadialog.com with your existing tools and workflows, allowing you to streamline your processes. Helpwise focuses on shared inbox management can be attractive for your small business. However, you should also consider that Helpwise may not have all the advanced sales and marketing features offered by Intercom.

The Verdict: Intercom vs Zendesk – Which Is the Best CRM Solution?

They integrate well with various channels such as email, phone, Facebook, slack, etc making it an efficient platform. The pricing for Front however is not too far from Zendesk itself, starting at $50/mo/user. If your team is looking for a centralized customer support solution then Front is a great alternative to Zendesk.

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 small companies and startups, Intercom offers a Starter plan — with a balanced suite of features from each of the solutions below — at $74 per month per user, billed annually. Zendesk’s Help Center and Intercom’s Articles both offer features to easily embed help centers into your website or product using their web widgets, SDKs, and APIs.

• Customer service systems like Zendesk and Intercom should provide a simple workflow builder as well as many pre-built automations which can be used right out of the box.
• Live chat add-on provides you with personal customer communication (via the web, mobile, and messaging) without interrupting their experience.
• Most businesses use live chats as their main customer communication channel.
• In this way, it becomes possible to work efficiently in a shorter time.
• The free tier is basic, but will give you an overview of what the live chat software offers.
• Ask for feedback from your customers as soon as the conversation ends to get a better understanding of how your interactions are influencing the entire customer experience, and make adjustments ASAP.

This makes things much easier for all parties involved and keeps all your customer communication is one place so everyone has access to it. With Intercom, you can set up a chatbot to handle simple questions from your customers. The bot can then direct customers to the right place in your app, website or knowledge center for additional help.

This is aided by the fact that the look and feel of Zendesk’s user interface are neat and minimal, with few cluttering features. 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. Don’t miss out on the latest tips, tools, and tactics at the forefront of customer support. 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.

• Though Hiver is best suited for small companies, that is not to say the software does not work for large enterprises.
• For example, with this integration, businesses can ask customers for feedback after they have interacted with customer service representatives or completed a purchase on their website.
• Zendesk Message and chat enable users to connect to their customers on a scalable app.
• While the basics of getting started with Intercom or Help Scout are pretty straightforward, questions are bound to come up.
• By using an Intercom integration — or several — companies can ensure that their customer support stack is comprehensive.
• So if your customers are able and want to self-serve, you should be providing them with every possible opportunity to do so!

I believe many new SaaS companies undervalue the power of a sales force. In the past few years, digital marketing positioned itself as the holy grail of any business. Having a capable sales team is a must — especially if you’re selling high-ticket products or services.