Artificial intelligence

Zendesk vs Intercom: Which is better?

intercom versus zendesk

Sequence all channels–chat, web post, email, chatbot outreach, tour message, banner, push notification, or carousel–mixing and matching modes of outreach to fit campaign goals. If a customer isn’t satisfied with Answer Bot’s response, Answer Bot quickly routes them to an agent best suited to help. With Intercom workload management tools, administrators can ensure that incoming conversations, traffic, and workload are evenly distributed among team members.

Apps and integrations are critical to creating a 360 view of the customer across the company and ensuring agents have easy access to key customer context. When agents don’t have to waste time toggling between different systems and tools to access the customer details they need, they can deliver faster, more personalized customer service. Chatbots are automated customer support tools that can assist with low-level ticket triage and ticket routing in real-time. How easy it is to program a chatbot and how effective a chatbot is at assisting human reps is an important factor for this category. Intercom bills itself first and foremost as a platform to make the business of customer service more personalized, among other things. They offer an advanced feature for customer data management that goes beyond basic CRM stuff.

Both tools can be quite heavy on your budget since they mainly target big enterprises and don’t offer their full toolset at an affordable price. You can even improve efficiency and transparency by setting up task sequences, defining sales triggers, and strategizing with advanced forecasting and reporting tools. Starting at $19 per user per month, it's also on the cheaper end of the spectrum compared to high-end CRMs like ActiveCampaign and HubSpot.

Here, we’ve outlined the support options that Intercom and Zendesk provide to companies using their platforms. 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 wins the automation and AI category because its chatbots have some impressive capabilities, like lead qualification https://chat.openai.com/ and advanced routing. 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. Zendesk for Service transforms customer queries and conversations from all channels–call, web chat, tweet, text, or email–into tickets in the Agent Workspace.

As customers come closer to purchasing, they often find themselves weighing the same pros and cons. In our experience, when future clients start thinking about the advantages and disadvantages of Intercom vs. Zendesk, these are the questions they want answers to. Monese is another fintech company that provides a banking app, account, and debit card to make settling in a new country easier. By providing banking without boundaries, the company aims to provide users with quick access to their finances, wherever they happen to be. The support team faced spiking ticket volumes, numerous new customer accounts, and the need to shift to remote work. Track customer service metrics to gain valuable insights and improve customer service processes and agent performance.

And that’s why it offers a long list of customization options like workflow automation, ticket management system, and layouts. It will help you understand your customer’s issue and solve it instantly. Although you cannot be with your customers all the time in real-time, through Desku’s live chatting, you can actually have their back. Both Zendesk and Intercom have knowledge bases to help customers get the most out of their platforms. Depending on your needs, you can set up Intercom on your website or mobile app and add your automations.

Zendesk wins the collaboration tools category because of its easy-to-use side conversations feature. Set automatic triggers so that certain events send push notifications to targeted customers, or use them as part of communication campaigns and series, and run A/B testing to compare two notifications. Zendesk wins the ticketing system category due to its easy-to-use interface and side conversations tool. Intercom's native mobile apps are good for iOS, Android, React Native, and Cordova, while Zendesk only has mobile apps for iPhones, iPads, and Android devices.

What are the differences between Intercom and Zendesk?

The company's products are built with an emphasis on simplicity and usability. This has helped to make Zendesk one of the most popular customer service software platforms on the market. What sets Zendesk apart is its user-friendly interface, customizable workflows, and scalability. It caters to a wide range of industries, particularly excelling in e-commerce, SaaS, technology, and telecommunications. It is favored by customer support, helpdesk, IT service management, and contact center teams.

You need a complete customer service platform that's seamlessly integrated and AI-enhanced. Intercom has flexible prices that can change based on what your business needs, and they offer a 14-day free trial. Although Zendesk does not have an in-app messaging service, it does have one unique feature, and that is its built-in virtual call assistant, Zendesk Talk. It is a totally cloud-based service; you can operate this VOIP technology by sitting in any corner of the world.

They charge for customer service representative seats and people reached, don’t reveal their prices, and offer tons of custom add-ons at additional cost. 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. All customer questions, be it via phone, chat, email, social media, or any other channel, are landing in one dashboard, where your agents can solve them quickly and efficiently.

It features the Intercom Messenger, which works with existing support tools for self-serve or live support. Ultimately, it's important to consider what features each platform offers before making a decision, as well as their pricing options and customer support policies. Since both are such well-established market leader companies, you can rest assured that whichever one you choose will offer a quality customer service solution. 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. Intercom is better for smaller companies that are looking for a simple and capable customer service platform.

Yes, you can integrate the Intercom solution into your Zendesk account. It will allow you to leverage some Intercom capabilities while keeping your account at the time-tested platform. Well, I must admit, the tool is gradually transforming from a platform for communicating with users to a tool that helps you automate every aspect of your routine.

On the other hand, Intercom is generally praised for its support features, despite facing challenges with its AI chatbot and the complexity of its help articles. 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.

Intercom has a wider range of uses out of the box than Zendesk, though by adding Zendesk Sell, you could more than make up for it. Both options are well designed, easy to use, and share some pretty key functionality like behavioral triggers and omnichannel-ality (omnichannel-centricity?). But with perks like more advanced chatbots, automation, and lead management capabilities, Intercom could have an edge for many users.

Clunky platform

Zendesk is more about organizing customer requests with a ticketing system and talking to customers through many channels like email, phone, or chat. With the base plan, you get some sweet facilities like a ticketing system, data analytics, customer chat history, and more. In comparison to that, you enjoy customized agent roles, sandbox, and skills-based routing, besides offering basic functionalities with the expensive enterprise plan. Because of its easy navigation and interface, Intercom has always received positive words from its users. 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.

intercom versus zendesk

Whether you're starting fresh with Intercom or migrating from Zendesk, set up is quick and easy. 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. Fintech startup Novo had to pivot to new ways of working in 2020, just like everyone else. But the company’s story isn’t just one of pandemic-induced change—in the first half of the year, Novo’s client base grew from 2,000 to tens of thousands. Check out the research-backed comparison below to better understand how each solution can add value to your organization.

Zendesk vs. Intercom: Sales Pipeline and Lead Nurturing Tools

Moreover, research says that companies can reduce customer resolution times upto a great percentage through the helpdesk software. Today, thanks to the virtual technology revolution, you can find numerous help desk software, but our vote goes for Zendesk and Intercom. Messagely also provides you with a shared inbox so anyone from your team can follow up with your users, regardless of who the user was in contact with first. With a very streamlined design, Intercom’s interface is far better than many alternatives, including Zendesk.

Zendesk's user face is quite intuitive and easy to use, allowing customers to quickly find what they are looking for. Additionally, the platform allows users to customize their experience by setting up automation workflows, creating ticket rules, and utilizing analytics. 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.

Zendesk AI: Leveling up with generative AI for a more intuitive and intelligent CX platform - VentureBeat

Zendesk AI: Leveling up with generative AI for a more intuitive and intelligent CX platform.

Posted: Wed, 10 May 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]

The learning and knowledgebase category is another one where it is a close call between Zendesk and Intercom. However, we will say that Intercom just edges past Zendesk when it comes to self-service resources. If you’re part of a team or manage a team, then it’s quite common that you’d want to broadcast certain messages... All plans come with a 7-day free trial, and no credit card is required to sign up for the trial.

Zendesk’s mobile app is also good for ticketing, helping you create new support tickets with macros and updates. It’s also good for sending and receiving notifications, as well as for quick filtering through the queue of open tickets. 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.

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. 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.

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. While Zendesk features are plenty, someone using it for the first time can find it overwhelming.

Intercom and Zendesk are two of the most popular customer service platforms, each with its own set of distinct advantages and drawbacks. There are pre-built workflows to help with things like ticket sharing, as well as conversation routing based on metrics like agent skill set or availability. There are even automations to help with things like SLAs, or service level agreements, to do things like send out notifications when headlights are due. Because of the app called Intercom Messenger, one can see that their focus is less on the voice and more on the text.

It’s highly customizable, too, so you can adjust it according to your website or product’s style. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. The Intercom versus Zendesk conundrum is probably the greatest problem in the customer service software world. They both offer some state-of-the-art core functionality and numerous unusual features.

Its multichannel support is more focused on engaging customers through its chat and messaging systems, including mobile carousels and interactive communication tools. However, compared to Zendesk, Intercom might not offer the same breadth in terms of integrating a wide range of external channels. While it excels in interactive and engaging communication, especially on mobile, some businesses might find its focus on chat-based interfaces limiting if they need extensive email or voice call support. The company's products include a ticketing system, live chat software, knowledge base software, and a customer satisfaction survey tool. Zendesk also offers a number of integrations with third-party applications.

It guarantees continuous omnichannel support that meets customer expectations. Intercom has more customization features for features like bots, themes, triggers, and funnels. For standard reporting like response times, leads generated by source, bot performance, intercom versus zendesk 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.

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. Like so many others, Monese determined that Zendesk was the best solution to provide seamless, omnichannel support because of its scalability and reliability.

Intercom enables customers to self-serve through its messaging platform. Agents can easily find resources for customers from their agent workspace. Intercom is great for talking to customers in real-time, like through live chats or in-app messages.

Unlike Zendesk, the prices for Intercom are based on the number of seats and contacts, with each plan tailored to each customer, meaning that the pricing can be quite flexible. This is especially helpful for smaller businesses that may not need a lot of features. Intercom is a customer relationship management (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. Intercom's products are used by over 25,000 customers, from small tech startups to large enterprises. One of the things that sets Zendesk apart from other customer service software providers is its focus on design.

Messagely pulls together all of the information about the customer contacting you and gives your representatives information on each interaction they’ve had with them, all within a streamlined platform. This way, your clients will never have to repeat themselves or get frustrated because their new representative doesn’t know their background. However, if you’re looking for a streamlined, all-in-one messaging platform, there is no better option than Messagely. Zendesk, on the other hand, has revamped its security since its security breach in 2016. It is now trusted by multiple Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 companies.

They have offices all around the world including countries such as Mexico City, Tokyo, New York, Paris, Singapore, São Paulo, London, and Dublin. 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.

Using this, agents can chat across teams within a ticket via email, Slack, or Zendesk's ticketing system. This packs all resolution information into a single ticket, so there's no extra searching or backtracking needed to bring a ticket through to resolution, even if it involves multiple agents. What's really nice about this is that even within a ticket, you can switch between communication modes without changing views.

intercom versus zendesk

Agents can prioritize overdue tasks, today’s tasks, or future tasks. 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.

But, you would not be able to experience such a good in-app messaging service on Zendesk. 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. You don’t have to pay per contact on your database, and you there are many free features you can use. With all accounted for, it seems that Zendesk still has a number of user interface issues. Since Zendesk has many features, it takes a while to learn how to use the options you’ll be needing. Zendesk has over 150,000 customer accounts from 160 countries and territories.

When comparing the user interfaces (UI) of Zendesk and Intercom, both platforms exhibit distinct characteristics and strengths catering to different user preferences and needs. Intercom, on the other hand, is ideal for those focusing on CRM capabilities and personalized customer interactions. Now that we've covered a bit of background on both Zendesk and Intercom, let's dive into the features each platform offers.

However, the Intercom app store is far more intuitive and is much easier to navigate. It not only shows you all of the apps you can use, but it also divides these into topics and categories. Finally, you’ll have to choose your reporting preferences including details about what you’ll be tracking and how often you want to be reported of changes. By the end of the article, you’ll not only know all of the main differences between Zendesk and Intercom, but you’ll know which is the right tool for you. While Intercom does not offer free trials, they do offer demo versions of each plan. Intercom’s Inbox organizes all of an agent’s core functions into one interface.

Visit either of their app marketplaces and look up the Intercom Zendesk integration. Like with many other apps, Zapier seems to be the best and most simple way to connect Intercom to Zendesk. As for the category of voice and phone features, Zendesk is a clear winner. Zendesk Support has voicemail, text messages, and embedded voice, and it displays the phone number on the widget.

The overall sentiment from users indicates a satisfactory level of support, although opinions vary. 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​​​​. 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.

Two leading contenders in the customer service platform space, Zendesk and Intercom, have transformed businesses’ customer engagement by offering powerful software solutions that enhance support systems. To select the ideal fit for your business, it is crucial to compare these industry giants and assess which aligns best with your specific requirements. The Zendesk chat tool has most of Chat PG the necessary features like shortcuts (saved responses), automated triggers, and live chat analytics. Zendesk is among the industry's best ticketing and customer support software, and most of its additional functionality is icing on the proverbial cake. Intercom, on the other hand, is designed to be more of a complete solution for sales, marketing, and customer relationship nurturing.

Customers can search the help center by query keywords and sort through articles in 40 languages. Intercom, of course, allows its customer support team to collaborate and communicate too, but overall, Zendesk wins this group. 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. Moreover, for users who require more dedicated and personalized support, Zendesk charges an additional premium.

Then, you can begin filling in details such as your account’s name and icon and your agents’ profiles and security features. Zendesk for Service sells three plans, ranging from $49 to $99 monthly per user, with a 30-day free trial available for each plan. Intercom’s role-based permissions allow administrators full control over each department’s and agent’s capabilities, and access to channels and information. The admin and manager dashboard provides a zoomed-out view of all activity taking place in each inbox, for whole departments and individual agents. 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.

By team

While both Zendesk and Intercom are great and robust platforms, none of them are able to provide you with the same value Messagely gives you at such an  affordable price. And while many other chatbots take forever to set up, you can set up your first chatbot in under five minutes. Chat agents also get a comprehensive look at their entire customer’s journey, so they will have a better idea of what your customers need, without needing to ask many questions. Since Intercom doesn’t offer a CRM, its pricing is divided into basic messaging and messaging with automations.

Overall, Zendesk empowers businesses to deliver exceptional customer support experiences across channels, making it a popular choice for enhancing support operations. 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. So when it comes to chatting features, the choice is not really Intercom vs Zendesk. The latter offers a chat widget that is simple, outdated, and limited in customization options, while the former puts all of its resources into its messenger.

  • 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.
  • Check out the research-backed comparison below to better understand how each solution can add value to your organization.
  • Overall, I actually liked Zendesk's user experience better than Intercom's in terms of its messaging dashboard.
  • The app includes features like automated messages and conversation routing — so businesses can manage customer conversations more efficiently.
  • I'll dive into their chatbots more later, but their bot automation features are also stronger.

We can say that Zendesk’s user interface is very clean and clear to understand. Besides its easy navigation, it also offers a mesmerizing ticketing system, multichannel communication, and analytics reporting. So, Zendesk’s users are always going to have a smooth experience with it.

Zendesk wins the omnichannel capabilities category because it offers voice as a service, which we think is absolutely critical. Agents can use the desktop chatbox to respond to customers in any outbound channel. Zendesk for Sales, or Zendesk Sell, is Zendesk’s sales pipeline and CRM tool with its own dashboard for lead generation and conversion. Many use cases call for different approaches, and Zendesk and Intercom are but two software solutions for each case.

intercom versus zendesk

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. Basically, if you have a complicated support process, go with Zendesk, an excellent Intercom alternative, for its help desk functionality. If you’re a sales-oriented corporation, use Intercom for its automation options.

Lastly, Intercom offers an academy that offers concise courses to help users make the most out of their Intercom experience. 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. To sum up this Intercom vs Zendesk battle, the latter is a great support-oriented tool that will be a good choice for big teams with various departments. Intercom feels more wholesome and is more client-success-oriented, but it can be too costly for smaller companies. In this paragraph, let’s explain some common issues that users usually ask about when choosing between Zendesk and Intercom platforms.

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 is a customer messaging platform that enables businesses to engage with customers through personalized and real-time communication.

intercom versus zendesk

You can also follow up with customers after they have left the chat and qualify them based on your answers. Although Zendesk isn’t hard to use, it’s not a perfectly smooth experience either. Users report feeling as though the interface is outdated and cluttered and complain about how long it takes to set up new features and customize existing ones.

Zendesk vs Intercom: A comprehensive comparison guide

diciembre 25, 2023

Zendesk vs Intercom: Which is better?

intercom versus zendesk

Sequence all channels–chat, web post, email, chatbot outreach, tour message, banner, push notification, or carousel–mixing and matching modes of outreach to fit campaign goals. If a customer isn’t satisfied with Answer Bot’s response, Answer Bot quickly routes them to an agent best suited to help. With Intercom workload management tools, administrators can ensure that incoming conversations, traffic, and workload are evenly distributed among team members.

Apps and integrations are critical to creating a 360 view of the customer across the company and ensuring agents have easy access to key customer context. When agents don’t have to waste time toggling between different systems and tools to access the customer details they need, they can deliver faster, more personalized customer service. Chatbots are automated customer support tools that can assist with low-level ticket triage and ticket routing in real-time. How easy it is to program a chatbot and how effective a chatbot is at assisting human reps is an important factor for this category. Intercom bills itself first and foremost as a platform to make the business of customer service more personalized, among other things. They offer an advanced feature for customer data management that goes beyond basic CRM stuff.

Both tools can be quite heavy on your budget since they mainly target big enterprises and don’t offer their full toolset at an affordable price. You can even improve efficiency and transparency by setting up task sequences, defining sales triggers, and strategizing with advanced forecasting and reporting tools. Starting at $19 per user per month, it’s also on the cheaper end of the spectrum compared to high-end CRMs like ActiveCampaign and HubSpot.

Here, we’ve outlined the support options that Intercom and Zendesk provide to companies using their platforms. 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 wins the automation and AI category because its chatbots have some impressive capabilities, like lead qualification https://chat.openai.com/ and advanced routing. 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. Zendesk for Service transforms customer queries and conversations from all channels–call, web chat, tweet, text, or email–into tickets in the Agent Workspace.

As customers come closer to purchasing, they often find themselves weighing the same pros and cons. In our experience, when future clients start thinking about the advantages and disadvantages of Intercom vs. Zendesk, these are the questions they want answers to. Monese is another fintech company that provides a banking app, account, and debit card to make settling in a new country easier. By providing banking without boundaries, the company aims to provide users with quick access to their finances, wherever they happen to be. The support team faced spiking ticket volumes, numerous new customer accounts, and the need to shift to remote work. Track customer service metrics to gain valuable insights and improve customer service processes and agent performance.

And that’s why it offers a long list of customization options like workflow automation, ticket management system, and layouts. It will help you understand your customer’s issue and solve it instantly. Although you cannot be with your customers all the time in real-time, through Desku’s live chatting, you can actually have their back. Both Zendesk and Intercom have knowledge bases to help customers get the most out of their platforms. Depending on your needs, you can set up Intercom on your website or mobile app and add your automations.

Zendesk wins the collaboration tools category because of its easy-to-use side conversations feature. Set automatic triggers so that certain events send push notifications to targeted customers, or use them as part of communication campaigns and series, and run A/B testing to compare two notifications. Zendesk wins the ticketing system category due to its easy-to-use interface and side conversations tool. Intercom’s native mobile apps are good for iOS, Android, React Native, and Cordova, while Zendesk only has mobile apps for iPhones, iPads, and Android devices.

What are the differences between Intercom and Zendesk?

The company’s products are built with an emphasis on simplicity and usability. This has helped to make Zendesk one of the most popular customer service software platforms on the market. What sets Zendesk apart is its user-friendly interface, customizable workflows, and scalability. It caters to a wide range of industries, particularly excelling in e-commerce, SaaS, technology, and telecommunications. It is favored by customer support, helpdesk, IT service management, and contact center teams.

You need a complete customer service platform that’s seamlessly integrated and AI-enhanced. Intercom has flexible prices that can change based on what your business needs, and they offer a 14-day free trial. Although Zendesk does not have an in-app messaging service, it does have one unique feature, and that is its built-in virtual call assistant, Zendesk Talk. It is a totally cloud-based service; you can operate this VOIP technology by sitting in any corner of the world.

They charge for customer service representative seats and people reached, don’t reveal their prices, and offer tons of custom add-ons at additional cost. 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. All customer questions, be it via phone, chat, email, social media, or any other channel, are landing in one dashboard, where your agents can solve them quickly and efficiently.

It features the Intercom Messenger, which works with existing support tools for self-serve or live support. Ultimately, it’s important to consider what features each platform offers before making a decision, as well as their pricing options and customer support policies. Since both are such well-established market leader companies, you can rest assured that whichever one you choose will offer a quality customer service solution. 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. Intercom is better for smaller companies that are looking for a simple and capable customer service platform.

Yes, you can integrate the Intercom solution into your Zendesk account. It will allow you to leverage some Intercom capabilities while keeping your account at the time-tested platform. Well, I must admit, the tool is gradually transforming from a platform for communicating with users to a tool that helps you automate every aspect of your routine.

On the other hand, Intercom is generally praised for its support features, despite facing challenges with its AI chatbot and the complexity of its help articles. 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.

Intercom has a wider range of uses out of the box than Zendesk, though by adding Zendesk Sell, you could more than make up for it. Both options are well designed, easy to use, and share some pretty key functionality like behavioral triggers and omnichannel-ality (omnichannel-centricity?). But with perks like more advanced chatbots, automation, and lead management capabilities, Intercom could have an edge for many users.

Clunky platform

Zendesk is more about organizing customer requests with a ticketing system and talking to customers through many channels like email, phone, or chat. With the base plan, you get some sweet facilities like a ticketing system, data analytics, customer chat history, and more. In comparison to that, you enjoy customized agent roles, sandbox, and skills-based routing, besides offering basic functionalities with the expensive enterprise plan. Because of its easy navigation and interface, Intercom has always received positive words from its users. 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.

intercom versus zendesk

Whether you’re starting fresh with Intercom or migrating from Zendesk, set up is quick and easy. 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. Fintech startup Novo had to pivot to new ways of working in 2020, just like everyone else. But the company’s story isn’t just one of pandemic-induced change—in the first half of the year, Novo’s client base grew from 2,000 to tens of thousands. Check out the research-backed comparison below to better understand how each solution can add value to your organization.

Zendesk vs. Intercom: Sales Pipeline and Lead Nurturing Tools

Moreover, research says that companies can reduce customer resolution times upto a great percentage through the helpdesk software. Today, thanks to the virtual technology revolution, you can find numerous help desk software, but our vote goes for Zendesk and Intercom. Messagely also provides you with a shared inbox so anyone from your team can follow up with your users, regardless of who the user was in contact with first. With a very streamlined design, Intercom’s interface is far better than many alternatives, including Zendesk.

Zendesk’s user face is quite intuitive and easy to use, allowing customers to quickly find what they are looking for. Additionally, the platform allows users to customize their experience by setting up automation workflows, creating ticket rules, and utilizing analytics. 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.

Zendesk AI: Leveling up with generative AI for a more intuitive and intelligent CX platform – VentureBeat

Zendesk AI: Leveling up with generative AI for a more intuitive and intelligent CX platform.

Posted: Wed, 10 May 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]

The learning and knowledgebase category is another one where it is a close call between Zendesk and Intercom. However, we will say that Intercom just edges past Zendesk when it comes to self-service resources. If you’re part of a team or manage a team, then it’s quite common that you’d want to broadcast certain messages… All plans come with a 7-day free trial, and no credit card is required to sign up for the trial.

Zendesk’s mobile app is also good for ticketing, helping you create new support tickets with macros and updates. It’s also good for sending and receiving notifications, as well as for quick filtering through the queue of open tickets. 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.

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. 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.

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. While Zendesk features are plenty, someone using it for the first time can find it overwhelming.

Intercom and Zendesk are two of the most popular customer service platforms, each with its own set of distinct advantages and drawbacks. There are pre-built workflows to help with things like ticket sharing, as well as conversation routing based on metrics like agent skill set or availability. There are even automations to help with things like SLAs, or service level agreements, to do things like send out notifications when headlights are due. Because of the app called Intercom Messenger, one can see that their focus is less on the voice and more on the text.

It’s highly customizable, too, so you can adjust it according to your website or product’s style. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. The Intercom versus Zendesk conundrum is probably the greatest problem in the customer service software world. They both offer some state-of-the-art core functionality and numerous unusual features.

Its multichannel support is more focused on engaging customers through its chat and messaging systems, including mobile carousels and interactive communication tools. However, compared to Zendesk, Intercom might not offer the same breadth in terms of integrating a wide range of external channels. While it excels in interactive and engaging communication, especially on mobile, some businesses might find its focus on chat-based interfaces limiting if they need extensive email or voice call support. The company’s products include a ticketing system, live chat software, knowledge base software, and a customer satisfaction survey tool. Zendesk also offers a number of integrations with third-party applications.

It guarantees continuous omnichannel support that meets customer expectations. Intercom has more customization features for features like bots, themes, triggers, and funnels. For standard reporting like response times, leads generated by source, bot performance, intercom versus zendesk 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.

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. Like so many others, Monese determined that Zendesk was the best solution to provide seamless, omnichannel support because of its scalability and reliability.

Intercom enables customers to self-serve through its messaging platform. Agents can easily find resources for customers from their agent workspace. Intercom is great for talking to customers in real-time, like through live chats or in-app messages.

Unlike Zendesk, the prices for Intercom are based on the number of seats and contacts, with each plan tailored to each customer, meaning that the pricing can be quite flexible. This is especially helpful for smaller businesses that may not need a lot of features. Intercom is a customer relationship management (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. Intercom’s products are used by over 25,000 customers, from small tech startups to large enterprises. One of the things that sets Zendesk apart from other customer service software providers is its focus on design.

Messagely pulls together all of the information about the customer contacting you and gives your representatives information on each interaction they’ve had with them, all within a streamlined platform. This way, your clients will never have to repeat themselves or get frustrated because their new representative doesn’t know their background. However, if you’re looking for a streamlined, all-in-one messaging platform, there is no better option than Messagely. Zendesk, on the other hand, has revamped its security since its security breach in 2016. It is now trusted by multiple Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 companies.

They have offices all around the world including countries such as Mexico City, Tokyo, New York, Paris, Singapore, São Paulo, London, and Dublin. 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.

Using this, agents can chat across teams within a ticket via email, Slack, or Zendesk’s ticketing system. This packs all resolution information into a single ticket, so there’s no extra searching or backtracking needed to bring a ticket through to resolution, even if it involves multiple agents. What’s really nice about this is that even within a ticket, you can switch between communication modes without changing views.

intercom versus zendesk

Agents can prioritize overdue tasks, today’s tasks, or future tasks. 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.

But, you would not be able to experience such a good in-app messaging service on Zendesk. 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. You don’t have to pay per contact on your database, and you there are many free features you can use. With all accounted for, it seems that Zendesk still has a number of user interface issues. Since Zendesk has many features, it takes a while to learn how to use the options you’ll be needing. Zendesk has over 150,000 customer accounts from 160 countries and territories.

When comparing the user interfaces (UI) of Zendesk and Intercom, both platforms exhibit distinct characteristics and strengths catering to different user preferences and needs. Intercom, on the other hand, is ideal for those focusing on CRM capabilities and personalized customer interactions. Now that we’ve covered a bit of background on both Zendesk and Intercom, let’s dive into the features each platform offers.

However, the Intercom app store is far more intuitive and is much easier to navigate. It not only shows you all of the apps you can use, but it also divides these into topics and categories. Finally, you’ll have to choose your reporting preferences including details about what you’ll be tracking and how often you want to be reported of changes. By the end of the article, you’ll not only know all of the main differences between Zendesk and Intercom, but you’ll know which is the right tool for you. While Intercom does not offer free trials, they do offer demo versions of each plan. Intercom’s Inbox organizes all of an agent’s core functions into one interface.

Visit either of their app marketplaces and look up the Intercom Zendesk integration. Like with many other apps, Zapier seems to be the best and most simple way to connect Intercom to Zendesk. As for the category of voice and phone features, Zendesk is a clear winner. Zendesk Support has voicemail, text messages, and embedded voice, and it displays the phone number on the widget.

The overall sentiment from users indicates a satisfactory level of support, although opinions vary. 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​​​​. 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.

Two leading contenders in the customer service platform space, Zendesk and Intercom, have transformed businesses’ customer engagement by offering powerful software solutions that enhance support systems. To select the ideal fit for your business, it is crucial to compare these industry giants and assess which aligns best with your specific requirements. The Zendesk chat tool has most of Chat PG the necessary features like shortcuts (saved responses), automated triggers, and live chat analytics. Zendesk is among the industry’s best ticketing and customer support software, and most of its additional functionality is icing on the proverbial cake. Intercom, on the other hand, is designed to be more of a complete solution for sales, marketing, and customer relationship nurturing.

Customers can search the help center by query keywords and sort through articles in 40 languages. Intercom, of course, allows its customer support team to collaborate and communicate too, but overall, Zendesk wins this group. 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. Moreover, for users who require more dedicated and personalized support, Zendesk charges an additional premium.

Then, you can begin filling in details such as your account’s name and icon and your agents’ profiles and security features. Zendesk for Service sells three plans, ranging from $49 to $99 monthly per user, with a 30-day free trial available for each plan. Intercom’s role-based permissions allow administrators full control over each department’s and agent’s capabilities, and access to channels and information. The admin and manager dashboard provides a zoomed-out view of all activity taking place in each inbox, for whole departments and individual agents. 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.

By team

While both Zendesk and Intercom are great and robust platforms, none of them are able to provide you with the same value Messagely gives you at such an  affordable price. And while many other chatbots take forever to set up, you can set up your first chatbot in under five minutes. Chat agents also get a comprehensive look at their entire customer’s journey, so they will have a better idea of what your customers need, without needing to ask many questions. Since Intercom doesn’t offer a CRM, its pricing is divided into basic messaging and messaging with automations.

Overall, Zendesk empowers businesses to deliver exceptional customer support experiences across channels, making it a popular choice for enhancing support operations. 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. So when it comes to chatting features, the choice is not really Intercom vs Zendesk. The latter offers a chat widget that is simple, outdated, and limited in customization options, while the former puts all of its resources into its messenger.

  • 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.
  • Check out the research-backed comparison below to better understand how each solution can add value to your organization.
  • Overall, I actually liked Zendesk’s user experience better than Intercom’s in terms of its messaging dashboard.
  • The app includes features like automated messages and conversation routing — so businesses can manage customer conversations more efficiently.
  • I’ll dive into their chatbots more later, but their bot automation features are also stronger.

We can say that Zendesk’s user interface is very clean and clear to understand. Besides its easy navigation, it also offers a mesmerizing ticketing system, multichannel communication, and analytics reporting. So, Zendesk’s users are always going to have a smooth experience with it.

Zendesk wins the omnichannel capabilities category because it offers voice as a service, which we think is absolutely critical. Agents can use the desktop chatbox to respond to customers in any outbound channel. Zendesk for Sales, or Zendesk Sell, is Zendesk’s sales pipeline and CRM tool with its own dashboard for lead generation and conversion. Many use cases call for different approaches, and Zendesk and Intercom are but two software solutions for each case.

intercom versus zendesk

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. Basically, if you have a complicated support process, go with Zendesk, an excellent Intercom alternative, for its help desk functionality. If you’re a sales-oriented corporation, use Intercom for its automation options.

Lastly, Intercom offers an academy that offers concise courses to help users make the most out of their Intercom experience. 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. To sum up this Intercom vs Zendesk battle, the latter is a great support-oriented tool that will be a good choice for big teams with various departments. Intercom feels more wholesome and is more client-success-oriented, but it can be too costly for smaller companies. In this paragraph, let’s explain some common issues that users usually ask about when choosing between Zendesk and Intercom platforms.

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 is a customer messaging platform that enables businesses to engage with customers through personalized and real-time communication.

intercom versus zendesk

You can also follow up with customers after they have left the chat and qualify them based on your answers. Although Zendesk isn’t hard to use, it’s not a perfectly smooth experience either. Users report feeling as though the interface is outdated and cluttered and complain about how long it takes to set up new features and customize existing ones.

📢MAÑANA - Se llevará a cabo el 8° Encuentro Anual Internacional: +Construcción, organizado por @CCU_Oficial y @CNDUruguay, co-organizado por @UruguayXXI y co-financiado por @INEFOPoficial.

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En el marco del #DíadelaConstrucción las gremiales de la industria CCU, LCU, APPCU y CICE le obsequiaron una yegua al presidente Luis Lacalle Pou.

El presidente de la Cámará de la Construcción, Alejandro Ruibal, comenta sobre los tres pilares en los que debe aportar el sector privado para la gestión exitosa de proyectos de infraestructura.

Anfitriones y el presidente por el #DíadelaConstrucción 🏗🇺🇾

Presidente de CICE, Gustavo Robayna; presidente de la APPCU, Ignacio Gonzalez; presidente de la República, Luis Lacalle Pou; presidente de la CCU, Alejandro Ruibal; y presidente de LCU, Manuel Ríos.