Zendesk vs Intercom: Which Is Right For Your Business in 2023?

Reporting and analytics provide metrics, trends, and key performance indicators (KPIs) that offer insights to agents and administrators. 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. Self-service tools let customers resolve their own issues quickly and 24/7, improving satisfaction and reducing excessive agent workload.

Intercom offers a range of customer support options, including email, phone, and live chat support. In addition, they provide a comprehensive knowledge base that includes articles, videos, and tutorials to help users get the most out of the platform. Intercom and Zendesk offer robust customer support options, including email, phone, and live chat support, comprehensive knowledge bases, and community forums. Intercom’s chatbot functionality is a standout feature, while Zendesk’s ticketing system can help resolve support issues on time.

Zendesk vs. Intercom features

Zendesk wins the collaboration tools category because of its easy-to-use side conversations feature. 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.

Compare Zendesk versus Intercom to determine who will be the best partner for your business at every phase of the customer journey. 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.

Intercom Agent Dashboard

With this kind of organization, you will not only find your favorite apps but also discover new ones to meet your needs. 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. 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. Zendesk is designed to fit your business needs whether you’re a fast-growing startup or a well-established company.

• Zendesk, on the other hand, started as a ticketing tool, and therefore has one of the market’s best help desk and ticket management features.
• Zendesk’s mobile app is also good for ticketing, helping you create new support tickets with macros and updates.
• The platform is known for its ease of use, customizable workflows, and extensive integrations with other business tools.
• These integrations allow businesses to streamline workflow and provide a seamless customer experience across multiple channels.
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Help desk SaaS is how you manage general customer communication and for handling customer questions. Intercom’s dashboards may not be as aesthetically pleasing as Zendesk’s, but they still allow users to navigate their tools with few distractions. Zendesk has more pricing options, and its most affordable plan is likely cheaper than Intercom’s, although without exact Intercom numbers, it is not easy to truly know the cost. As for Intercom’s general pricing structure, there are three plans, but you’ll have to contact them to get exact prices. This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks.

Pricing: Zendesk Vs. Intercom

Companies looking for a more complete customer service product–without niche bells and whistles, but with all the basic channels you want–should look to Zendesk. Small businesses who prioritize collaboration will also enjoy Zendesk for Service. Here, we’ve outlined the support options that Intercom and Zendesk provide to companies using their platforms.

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. Powered by Explore, Zendesk’s reporting capabilities are pretty impressive. Right out of the gate, you’ve got dozens of pre-set report options on everything from satisfaction ratings and time in status to abandoned calls and Answer Bot resolutions. You can even save custom dashboards for a more tailored reporting experience.

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. Hivers offers round-the-clock proactive support across all its plans, ensuring that no matter the time or issue, expert assistance is always available. This 24/7 support model is designed to provide continuous, real-time solutions to clients, enhancing the overall reliability and responsiveness of Hivers’ services.

Its sales CRM software starts at $19 per month per user, but you’ll have to pay $49 to get Zapier integrations and $99 for Hubspot integrations. Finally, you can pay $199 per month per user for unlimited sales pipelines and advanced reporting along with other features. The strength of Zendesk’s UI lies in its structured and comprehensive environment, adept at managing numerous customer interactions and integrating various channels seamlessly. However, compared to the more contemporary designs like Intercom’s, Zendesk’s UI may appear outdated, particularly in aspects such as chat widget and customization options.

Zendesk and Intercom are robust tools with a wide range of customer service and CRM features. If you’re exploring popular chat support tools Zendesk and Intercom, you may be trying to understand which solution is right for you. In this detailed comparison, we’ll explore the features and characteristics of Intercom and Zendesk, highlighting each of their unique capabilities, so you can identify the right solution for your needs. With Messagely, you can increase your customer satisfaction and solve customers’ issues while they’re still visiting your site.

Users can also access a resource library to stay updated on the latest trends, product announcements, and best practices. Intercom regularly hosts webinars that are recorded and stored for future reference. Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page. 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. Below, we’ve compared the usability of Zendesk’s and Intercom’s agent dashboards and administrator controls.

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. This becomes the perfect opportunity to personalize the experience, offer assistance to prospects as per their needs, and convert them into intercom vs. zendesk customers. If compared to Intercom’s chatbot, Zendesk offers a relatively latest platform that makes support automation possible. So far, the chatbot can transfer chats to agents or resolve less complex queries in seconds. That means all you have to do is add the code to your website and enable it right away.

However, compared to HubSpot, Zendesk Marketplace offers fewer integrations. After an in-depth analysis such as this, it can be pretty challenging for your business to settle with either option. That’s why it would be better to review where both the options would be ideal to use. Zendesk and Intercom each have their own marketplace/app store where users can find all the integrations for each platform. Zendesk also offers a sales pipeline feature through its Zendesk Sell product.

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. Zendesk, unlike Intercom, is a more affordable and predictable customer service platform.

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. With over 100,000 customers across all industries and regions, Zendesk knows what it takes to interact with customers while retaining and growing relationships. Check out the research-backed comparison below to better understand how each solution can add value to your organization.

• To that end, you can import themes or apply your own custom themes to brand your help center the way you want it.
• Zendesk’s Suite Team plan (the cheapest plan) costs $49 per user per month.
• When you combine the help desk with Intercom Messenger, you get added channels for customer engagement.
• Basically, if you have a complicated support process, go with Zendesk, an excellent Intercom alternative, for its help desk functionality.
• Collaborate with your teammates by easily assigning the right rep to best handle a customer query.
• Zendesk takes the slight lead here because it offers some advanced help desk features, which Intercom does not.

Intercom wins the reporting and analytics category due to its unique visualization and display formats for contact center and article data. 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.