Intercom Vs Zendesk : Which One Is Best? Contract Buyout Terms

When choosing between Intercom and Zendesk for AI and automation, you’ll find that each platform offers unique strengths tailored to different support needs. Conversely, Intercom prioritizes customer engagement, leveraging user behavior analytics to predict actions and enhance product usage understanding. This focus helps you gain actionable insights that can sharpen your engagement strategies. Guru GPT integrates your company’s internal knowledge with ChatGPT, making it easy to access and use information from Guru and connected apps. The final prices are revealed after engaging in sales demos and are not revealed upfront. This lack of transparency can create budgeting problems for businesses.

Intercom’s reporting is average compared to Zendesk, as it offers some standard reporting and analytics tools. Its analytics do not provide deeper insights into consumer interactions as well. Zendesk allows businesses to group their resources in the help center, providing customers with self-service personalized support.

• Yes, Zendesk has an Intercom integration that you can find in the Zendesk Marketplace—it’s free to install.
• What’s more, we support live video support for moments when your customers need in-depth guidance.
• The dashboard follows a streamlined approach with a single inbox for customer inquiries.
• The company was founded in 2007 and today serves over 170,000 customers worldwide.
• Conversely, Intercom has a shared inbox tool that routes conversations from every channel, including live chat, email, SMS, and more, into one place.

Understanding how AI and automation fit into each platform will help you choose the best solution for your team’s needs and enhance your customer interactions. When you’re comparing Intercom and Zendesk, the key features can make all the difference in your customer support strategy. Zendesk is suitable for startups, mainly due to its transparent pricing. Startups usually have low budgets for such investments, making it easier for these small businesses to choose the right plan. The features in Zendesk can scale with growing companies, so Startups can easily customize their plan to changing needs.

In a nutshell, none of the customer support software companies provide decent user assistance. You can create articles, share them internally, group them for users, and assign them as responses for bots—all pretty standard fare. Intercom can even integrate with Zendesk and other sources to import past help center content. I just found Zendesk’s help center to be slightly better integrated into their workflows and more customizable.

If you’re smaller more sales oriented startup with enough money, go Intercom. With Zendesk, you’ll empower your team to deliver exceptional customer service while adapting to future challenges. On the other hand, Intercom offers a modern interface that mimics popular messaging apps, which can improve user engagement but may also come with a learning curve. Zendesk’s pricing plans cater to a wide range of business needs, making it a flexible choice for companies of all sizes. With advancements in AI technology, you need a solution that improves interactions and automates tasks effectively. AI offers cost savings and improved efficiency, making it critical to select a platform that utilizes these benefits.

Intercom Pricing: No-BS Breakdown for Every Company Size

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. That being said, while both platforms offer extensive features, they can be costly, especially for smaller enterprises.

We are going to overview only their helpdesk/communication features to make the two systems comparable. As expected, the right choice between Zendesk and Intercom will depend on your budget, your company, and your needs. You don’t have to pay per contact on your database, and you there are many free features you can use. With this kind of organization, you will not only find your favorite apps but also discover new ones to meet your needs.

There is a really useful one for Shopify to provide customer support for e-commerce operations. HubSpot and Salesforce are also available when support needs to work with marketing and sales teams. It is great to have CRM functionality inside your customer service platform because it helps maintain great customer experiences by storing all past customer engagements and conversation histories.

User experience

You can test any of HelpCrunch’s pricing plans for free for 14 days and see our tools in action immediately. So yeah, all the features talk actually brings us to the most sacred question — the question of pricing. You’d probably https://chat.openai.com/ want to know how much it costs to get each platform for your business, so let’s talk money now. Like Zendesk, Intercom offers its Operator bot, which automatically suggests relevant articles to clients right in a chat widget.

This is especially helpful for smaller businesses that may not need a lot of features. A sales CRM should also provide you with the benefits of pipeline management software. Zendesk offers so much more than you can get from free CRMs or less robust options, including sales triggers to automate workflows. For example, you can set a sales trigger to automatically change the owner of a deal based on the specific conditions you select. That way, your sales team won’t have to worry about manually updating these changes as they work through a deal.

On the other hand, Intercom enables agents to convert a conversation into a ticket with one click. This helps support teams to resolve customer issues without losing context. If you own a business, you’re in a fierce battle to deliver personalized customer experiences that stand out. Keep up with emerging trends in customer service and learn from top industry experts.

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. In comparison, Intercom’s confusing pricing structure that features multiple add-ons may be unsuitable for small businesses. The Zendesk chat Chat GPT tool has most of the necessary features, like shortcuts (saved responses), automated triggers, and live chat analytics. It’s nothing fancy; it covers just basic customer communication needs. 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.

Connecting Zendesk Support and Zendesk Sell allows its customer service and sales-oriented wholesale team to work together effortlessly. Pipedrive has workflow automation features, like setting triggers and desired actions, scheduling customer interactions, and automating lead assignment. However, one user noted that important features like automation are often down for an extensive amount of time. Zendesk helps you manage and update your leads, analyze your pipeline, and create customizable reports on the go with our mobile CRM app.

Intercom’s reporting is less focused on getting a fine-grained understanding of your team’s performance, and more on a nuanced understanding of customer behavior and engagement. While clutter-free and straightforward, it does lack some of the more advanced features and capabilities that Zendesk has. When comparing chatbots, it’s important to consider their level of intelligence, “trainability,” and customization.

The pricing strategies are covered below so you can analyze the pricing structure and select your customer service software. The help center in Intercom is also user-friendly, enabling agents to access content creation easily. It does help you organize and create content using efficient tools, but Zendesk is more suitable if you want a fully branded customer-centric experience.

Intercom does have a ticketing dashboard that has omnichannel functionality, much like Zendesk. 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.

Zendesk vs Intercom: What are the real differences?

When it comes to utility, Zendesk’s utility may not be as robust as a pure CRM solution. However, customers do have the option to go to Zendesk Sell for a more robust experience. Zendesk excels with its AI-enhanced user experience and robust omnichannel support, making it ideal for businesses focused on customer service. On the other hand, Intercom shines with its advanced AI-driven automation and insightful analytics, perfect for those who value seamless communication and in-app messaging. Consider which features align best with your business needs to make the right choice. Zendesk offers your agents a unified workspace to collaborate on support tickets.

Intercom users often mention how impressed they are with its ease of use and their ability to quickly create useful tasks and set up automations. Even reviewers who hadn’t used the platform highlight how beautifully designed it is and how simple it is to interact with for both users and clients alike. In this article, we’ll compare Zendesk vs Intercom to find out which is the right customer support tool for you. Respond to all conversations across different messaging platforms in one place and avoid juggling between dozens of tabs. Collaborate with your teammates by easily assigning the right rep to best handle a customer query.

With Intercom, you get email features like targeted and personalized outbound emailing, dynamic content fields, and an email-to-inbox forwarding feature. Email marketing, for example, is a big deal, but less so when it comes to customer service. Still, for either of these platforms to have some email marketing or other email functionality is common sense.

Many organizations have turned to Zendesk over Intercom for their customer support needs, and case studies from Reprise, Novo, and Bitly illustrate the reasons behind this choice. Ultimately, choosing the right platform hinges on your team’s specific needs for usability and scalability—so it’s time to weigh your options carefully. In terms of user experience, Zendesk’s intuitive design stands out, making it easy for agents to navigate and manage their tasks efficiently. With a transparent pricing model ranging from $55 to $169 per month per agent, you can easily budget without worrying about hidden fees. The total cost of ownership is relatively low, thanks to simple setup and maintenance processes that lead to a faster return on investment.

The platform has various customization options, allowing businesses personalized experiences according to their branding. Help Center in Zendesk also will enable businesses to organize their tutorials, articles, and FAQs, making it convenient for customer to find solutions to their queries. Zendesk and Intercom offer basic features, including live chat, a help desk, and a pre-built knowledge base.

In today’s hyper-competitive, hyper-connected globalized economy, customer experience has become a fundamental differentiator. As customers’ needs are constantly evolving, businesses must adapt and keep up to guarantee the best customer experience and satisfaction. Also, their in-app messenger is worth a separate mention as it’s one of their distinctive tools (especially since Zendesk doesn’t really have one). With Intercom you can send targeted email, push, and in-app messages which can be based on the most relevant time or behavior triggers. 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. Choosing Zendesk means better support, improved integration, and a seamless customer experience.

The customer support platform starts at just $5 per agent per month, which is a very basic customer support tool. If you want dashboard reporting and integrations, you’ll need to pay $19 per agent per month. Multilingual content and other advanced features come with a $49 price per agent per month. Founded in 2007, Zendesk started off as a ticketing tool for customer support teams. It was later when they started adding all kinds of other tools like when they bought out Zopim live chat and just integrated it with their toolset.

Intercom also does not offer a free trial period for users to examine the software prior to joining up for their services. Many users complain that Intercom’s help is unavailable the majority of the time, forcing them to repeatedly ask the same question to a bot. When they do respond, they’re usually unhelpful or want to immediately transfer you to the sales department. While both offer a wide number of integration options, Zendesk wins the top spot in this category.

Zendesk has over 150,000 customer accounts from 160 countries and territories. They have offices all around the world including countries such as Mexico City, Tokyo, New York, Paris, Singapore, São Paulo, London, and Dublin. We hope this list has provided you with a better grasp of each platform and its features. Remember that there is no one-size-fits-all solution, and the optimal platform for you will be determined by your individual demands. On the other hand, it’s nearly impossible to foresee how much Intercom will cost at the end of the day. They charge for agent seats and connections, don’t disclose their prices, and package add-ons at a premium.

There are two options there — Professional for $109 or Enterprise for $179 if you pay monthly. The difference between the two is that the Professional subscription lacks some things like chat widget unbranding, custom agent roles, multiple help centers, etc. You can publish your knowledge base articles and divide them by categories and also integrate them with your messenger to accelerate the whole chat experience. Intercom is 4 years younger than Zendesk and has fancied itself as a messaging platform right from the beginning.

Compared to Zendesk, Intercom offers few integrations, which may hinder its scalability. There are many features to help bigger customer service teams collaborate more effectively, such as private notes or a real-time view of who’s handling a given ticket at the moment. At the same time, the vendor offers powerful reporting zendesk or intercom capabilities to help you grow and improve your business. But they also add features like automatic meeting booking (in the Convert package), and their custom inbox rules and workflows just feel a little more, well, custom. I’ll dive into their chatbots more later, but their bot automation features are also stronger.

If you thought Zendesk’s pricing was confusing, let me introduce you to Intercom’s pricing. It’s virtually impossible to predict what you’re going to pay for Intercom at end of the day. It’s highly customizable, so you can adjust it according to your website or product’s style. So when I realized lots of companies actually prefer Zendesk over Intercom, I was surprised. It also offers a Proactive Support Plus as an Add-on with push notifications, a series campaign builder, news items, and more.

It offers comprehensive customer data management and lead-tracking features. Some businesses may require supplemental products to meet specific needs. Intercom’s CRM utility is a solid foundation for managing customer relationships and sales in one platform. Zendesk excels in its ticketing system, offering users an intuitive platform for collaboration among support agents. Its robust workflows streamline the ticket resolution system and efficiently handle all customer complaints. It also enables agents to perform customized workflow management, assign tickets to the right agent for request handling, and track the ticket’s progress.

It started as a ticketing tool just for customer service teams and has evolved over the years into a complete customer support platform. Since, its name has become somewhat synonymous with customer service and support. When comparing Zendesk and Intercom, it’s essential to understand their core features and their differences to choose the right solution for your customer support needs. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. These include ticketing, chatbots, and automation capabilities, to name just a few.Here’s a side-by-side comparison to help you identify the strengths and weaknesses of each platform.

Find the Intercom App

Meanwhile, our WFM software enables businesses to analyze employee metrics and performance, helping them identify improvements, implement strategies, and set long-term goals. Both Zendesk and Intercom offer customer service software with AI capabilities—however, they are not created equal. With Zendesk, you get next-level AI-powered support software that’s intuitively designed, scalable, and cost-effective. Compare Zendesk vs. Intercom and future-proof your business with reliable, easy-to-use software.

The effectiveness of a help desk and ticketing system largely hinges on its key features, which play a crucial role in managing customer inquiries efficiently. Both platforms offer unique user experiences, but understanding their integration capabilities and scalability is necessary for mid-sized and large enterprises like yours. These weaknesses are not as significant as the features and functionalities Zendesk offers its users. Intercom also charges additional charges for specific features, such as charging $0.99 for every resolution.

Intercom offers reporting and analytics tools with limited capabilities for custom reporting, user behavior metrics, and advanced visualization. It also lacks advanced features like collaboration reporting, custom metrics, metric correlation, and drill-in attribution. Intercom does not have a dedicated workforce management solution, either. 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.

Smooth migration. Simple integration.

There’s plenty of information about customer support and ticketing software options. Read these resources to learn more about why users choose Zendesk vs Intercom. For basic chat and messaging, Intercom charges a flat fee of $39 per month for its basic plan with one user and $99 per month for its team plan with up to 5 users. If you want automated options, Intercom starts at either $499 or $999 per month for up to ten users, depending on the level of automation you’re looking for. Whether your customers prefer to communicate via phone, chat, email, social media, or any other channel, Zendesk unifies all of your customer interactions into one platform. The software helps you to keep track of all support requests, quickly respond to questions, and track the effectiveness of your customer service reps.

Yes, you can continue using Intercom as the consumer-facing CRM experience, but integrate with Zendesk for customer service in the back end for more customer support functionality. The Zendesk marketplace hosts over 1,500 third-party apps and integrations. The software is known for its agile APIs and proven custom integration references. This helps the service teams connect to applications like Shopify, Jira, Salesforce, Microsoft Teams, Slack, etc., all through Zendesk’s service platform.

On one hand, Zendesk offers a great many features, way more than Intercom, but it lacks in-app messenger and email marketing tools. On the other hand, Intercom has all its (fewer) tools and features integrated with each other way better, which makes your experience with the tool as smooth as silk. Plus, with advanced features like automation and customizable chat experiences, you can align the platform with your brand identity effortlessly. The ease of use guarantees that your team can quickly adapt, allowing for smoother shifts and enhanced service quality. You’ll find the design prioritizes conversational support, making it easy to navigate and engage with your customers.

For large-scale businesses, the budget for such investments is usually higher than for startups, but they need to analyze if the investment is worth it. They need to comprehensively analyze if they are getting the value of the invested money. 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. 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 opt for code via JavaScript or Rails or even integrate directly with the likes of Google Tag Manager, WordPress, or Shopify. 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.

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. Easily reply to customer conversations and manage workload in a smart & automated way.

If you don’t plan on building a huge enterprise just yet, we have to give the edge to Zendesk when it comes to flexible pricing options. Help desk software creates a sort of “virtual front desk” for your business. That means automating customer service and sales processes so the people visiting your website don’t actually have to interact with anyone before they take action. However, you’ll likely end up paying more for Zendesk, and in-app messenger and other advanced customer communication tools will not be included. Intercom isn’t as great with sales, but it allows for better communication. With Intercom, you can keep track of your customers and what they do on your website in real time.

Integrating AI in the help center helps agents find answers to customer inquiries, providing a seamless customer experience. Zendesk’s AI offers automated responses to customer inquiries, increasing the team’s productivity, as they can spend time on the most crucial things. Agents can quickly grasp the context of customer interaction through these support tickets and sentiment analysis that AI facilitates. AI is integral to customer relationship management software and facilitates consumer interactions.