Zendesk vs Intercom in 2023: Detailed Analysis of Features, Pricing, and More

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.

You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. There are many features to help bigger customer service teams collaborate more effectively — like private notes or a real-time view of who’s handling a given ticket at the moment, etc. At the same time, the vendor offers powerful reporting capabilities to help you grow and improve your business. Why don’t you try something equally powerful yet more affordable, like HelpCrunch?. Users can benefit from using Intercom’s CX platform and AI software as a standalone tool for business messaging.

Customer service has evolved.Zendesk hasn’t.

Users with light access–such as knowledgeable agents and supervisors–can be added to tickets for browsing and feedback. While light agents cannot interact with the customer on the ticket, they can make notes and interact privately with other team members and agents involved with the ticket. Zendesk for Service, a customer service solution, provides unified customer-facing communication channels, self-service, collaboration, customer routing, and analytics–all organized in one dashboard. This article will compare Intercom vs Zendesk, outlining each tool’s features, ease-of-use, pricing and plans, pros and cons, and user-support options.

If you are currently using Zendesk as your customer support platform, you might be wondering how to switch to Intercom and transfer your existing historical customer data. Migrating from one platform to another can be a complicated and time-consuming process, especially if you have a lot of data and customizations in your Zendesk account. Zendesk users, on the other hand, usually say good things about its powerful support system. With this feature, businesses can easily handle and keep track of customer requests, making sure that no issues get lost.

Additionally, Hiver’s live chat feature integrates seamlessly with Gmail, providing real-time support to customers. 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. On the contrary, Intercom is far less predictable when it comes to pricing and can cost hundreds/thousands of dollars per month. But this solution is great because it’s an all-in-one tool with a modern live chat widget, allowing you to easily improve your customer experiences.

We get the requirements of businesses and why they demand safe and successful data migration. And we can help you make an effective transfer of information and move on with your business as soon as possible. When organizations out there don’t have the time to control the transition process, they may seek out support from help desk software providers. Lastly, Intercom offers an academy that offers concise courses to help users make the most out of their Intercom experience.

Find an Agent

Zendesk pricing is divided between a customer support product called “Zendesk for support”, and a fully-fledged CRM called “Zendesk for sales”. Both Zendesk and Intercom have knowledge bases to help customers get the most out of their platforms. Easily reply to customer conversations and manage workload in a smart & automated way. Personalized messaging, in-app messaging, product tours, and chatbot capabilities set Intercom apart from Zendesk.

Which platform is “better” depends on the precise requirements and objectives that you have. Several large companies in Sweden, including Ikea and SAS, use Zendesk to increase the quality of their customer service. If you’re looking to customize the interface to match your brand, go with Zendesk. Since August 2016 a new version of the agent/admin interface of Zendesk is available, with a more clean and modern design.

Step 3. Using Custom Actions in Intercom

It guarantees continuous omnichannel support that meets customer expectations. Migrating your Zendesk help content to Intercom Articles is a simple and fast process that does not require any custom development. You can use the Intercom Articles feature to automatically import all of your published articles from Zendesk and organize them into collections that match your existing knowledge base structure. Just browse to Articles within your Intercom dashboard, and click “Migrate from Zendesk”. There will be no sync between Zendesk and Intercom, so changes in Zendesk won’t be reflected in Intercom.

Here are our top reporting and analytics features and an overview of where Intercom’s reporting limitations lie. To begin, both platforms have large knowledge bases that cover a lot of different topics and commonly asked questions. These tools are like self-help books; they let people solve common problems on their own. The knowledge bases are usually well-organized and changed on a regular basis, so users can always find the most up-to-date and useful information. 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.

Finally, if you want even more advanced features, you can upgrade to their Premium package. Zendesk is a great option for large companies or companies that are looking for a very strong sales and customer service platform. It offers more support features and includes more advanced analytics and reports. What sets Zendesk apart is its user-friendly interface, customizable workflows, and scalability.

Using synced articles via the Public API

Intercom’s solution offers several use cases, meaning the product’s investments and success resources have a broad focus. But this also means the customer experience ROI tends to be lower than what it would be if you went with a best-in-class solution like Zendesk. What can be really inconvenient about Zendesk is how their tools integrate with each other when you need to use them simultaneously. You can publish your knowledge base articles, divide them by categories and also integrate them with your messenger to accelerate the whole chat experience. It really shines in its modern messenger interface, making real-time chat a breeze. Its multichannel support is more focused on engaging customers through its chat and messaging systems, including mobile carousels and interactive communication tools.

This 24/7 support model is designed to provide continuous, real-time solutions to clients, enhancing the overall reliability and responsiveness of Hivers’ services. Moreover, for users who require more dedicated and personalized support, Zendesk charges an additional premium. These premium support services can range in cost, typically between $1,500 and $2,800.

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. If you want both customer support and CRM, you can choose between paying $79 or $125 per month per user, depending on how many advanced features you require. 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. After this, you’ll have to set up your workflows, personalizing your tickets and storing them by topic. You can then add automations and triggers, such as automatically closing a ticket or sending a message to a user.

As a customer support specialist, you may need to manage multiple tools to provide excellent support to your customers. If you use both Intercom and Zendesk, you can streamline your workflow and improve customer service by integrating them through Custom Actions. In this article, we will show you step-by-step guidelines on how to create tickets in Zendesk from a conversation in Intercom using Custom Actions.

Both systems include pricing plans that are tiered and vary according to the amount of user seats or active contacts. Intercom is primarily concerned with price on a per-user basis, in contrast to Zendesk, which blends user seats with contact tiers when it comes to pricing. When comparing the automation and AI features of Zendesk and Intercom, both platforms come with unique strengths and weaknesses. Intercom, on the other hand, is ideal for those focusing on CRM capabilities and personalized customer interactions. We’re big fans of Zendesk’s dashboard with built-in collaboration tools, but we wish the Agent Workspace came with the Team or Growth plans–not just Professional.

Import your help content

You’d need to chat with Intercom sales team for get the costs for the Premium subscription, though. Intercom doesn’t really provide free stuff, but they have a tool called Platform, which is free. The free Intercom Platform lets you see who your customers are and what they do in your workspace.

• Since August 2016 a new version of the agent/admin interface of Zendesk is available, with a more clean and modern design.
• There will be no sync between Zendesk and Intercom, so changes in Zendesk won’t be reflected in Intercom.
• The transition method you decide on is significant as it can influence the success of the transfer.
• Intercom plan prices are determined based on your specific business needs, so interested users must contact them for specific price details.

Zendesk’s analytics features are also often praised; they help businesses learn a lot about how customers connect with them, how well agents do their jobs, and overall support trends. Both companies provide a set of services that are intended to simplify communication, support, and the overall customer experience. Intercom focuses on real-time customer messaging, while Zendesk provides a comprehensive suite for ticketing, knowledge base, and self-service support. Broken down into custom, resolution, and task bots, these can go a long way in taking repetitive tasks off agents’ plates. Overall, I actually liked Zendesk’s user experience better than Intercom’s in terms of its messaging dashboard.

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 customers. Below you will find the most commonly asked questions and answers about Zendesk alternatives. Once you login into your account, a live chat popup is available if you have questions that need quick answers. Intercom stands out for its modern and user-friendly messenger functionality, which includes advanced features with a focus on automation and real-time insights.

At the same time, Zendesk looks slightly outdated and can’t offer some features. With this integration, Intercom customers can access Clearbit’s suite of APIs to enrich their customer profiles with additional information such as job title, company size, and industry. This allows them to better segment their audiences and target their messaging more effectively. Apart from a live chat, it has a feature called ‘Business Messenger’ that comes with its own AI chatbot. Moreover, Intercom bots can converse naturally with customers by using conversation starters, respond with self-help, and knowledge base articles. However, if you compare Zendesk vs Intercom chat in ease of use, the letter wins.

Businesses should always consider a tool’s TCO before committing to a purchase. Many software vendors aren’t upfront about the cost of using their products, maintenance costs, or integration fees. Compare Zendesk versus Intercom to determine who will be the best partner for your business at every phase of the customer journey. While Intercom does not offer free trials, they do offer demo versions of each plan. The Sell dashboard’s Tasks page sorts all of an agent’s tasks by due date. Create code-free screencast tours of products, websites, webpages, and applications within your website.

Intercom’s solution aims to streamline high-volume ticket influx and provide personalized, conversational support. It also includes extensive integrations with over 350 CRM, email, ticketing, and reporting tools. The platform is recognized for its ability to resolve a significant portion of common questions automatically, ensuring faster response times. Zendesk is a customer service software offering a comprehensive solution for managing customer interactions.

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. 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. 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.

Customization is more nuanced than Zendesk’s, but it’s still really straightforward to implement. You can opt for code via JavaScript or Rails or even integrate directly with the likes of Google Tag Manager, WordPress, zendesk to intercom or Shopify. In a nutshell, none of the customer support software companies provide decent assistance for users. Intercom live chat is modern, smooth, and has many advanced features that other chat tools don’t.

A trigger is an event that starts a workflow, and an action is an event a Zap performs. With Zapier’s 6,000 integrations, you can unify your tools within a connected system to improve your team’s efficiency and deepen their impact. If you haven’t already, you’ll need to start a trial of Articles and turn your Help Center on or your articles won’t go live. If you’d want to test Intercom vs Zendesk before deciding on a tool for good, they both provide free trials for 14 days.

Their reports are attractive, dynamic, and integrated right out of the box. You can even finagle some forecasting by sourcing every agent’s assigned leads. You could say something similar for Zendesk’s standard service offering, so it’s at least good to know they have Zendesk Sell, a capable CRM option to supplement it. You can use Zendesk Sell to track tasks, streamline workflows, improve engagement, nurture leads, and much more. Zapier helps you create workflows that connect your apps to automate repetitive tasks.

However, compared to Zendesk, Intercom might not offer the same breadth in terms of integrating a wide range of external channels. Intercom wins the reporting and analytics category due to its unique visualization and display formats for contact center and article data. Reporting and analytics provide metrics, trends, and key performance indicators (KPIs) that offer insights to agents and administrators. Zendesk wins the omnichannel capabilities category because it offers voice as a service, which we think is absolutely critical. 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.

The Zendesk chat tool has most of the necessary features like shortcuts (saved responses), automated triggers, and live chat analytics. Intercom is more for improving sales cycle and customer relationships, while Zendesk has everything a customer support representative can dream about, but it does lack wide email functionality. On the other hand, it provides call center functionalities, unlike Intercom. Agents can easily find resources for customers from their agent workspace. Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption is used by Intercom, a customer communication tool, to keep data sent between users and the platform safe. SSL encryption is a standard form of security that creates a safe and encrypted connection between a user’s computer and the Intercom servers.

Intercom has a dark mode that I think many people will appreciate, and I wouldn’t say it’s lacking in any way. But I like that Zendesk just feels slightly cleaner, has easy online/away toggling, more visual customer journey notes, and a handy widget for exploring the knowledge base on the fly. Intercom, on the other hand, was built for business messaging, so communication is one of their strong suits. Combine that with their prowess in automation and sales solutions, and you’ve got a really strong product that can handle myriad customer relationship needs.

Intercom is second to none when it comes to providing great customer service, particularly in terms of proactive contact and the customisation of in-app experiences. The extensive automation and robust ticketing operations that Zendesk offers are among the numerous capabilities that the company possesses. When you use Intercom to acquire customers, you’ll get a few helpful tools.