Intercom Vs Zendesk: A Comprehensive Comparison Of Support Solutions

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. However, this is somewhat subjective, and depending on your business needs and favorite tools, you may argue we got it all mixed up, and Intercom is truly superior. Some startups and small businesses may prefer one app, while large companies and enterprise operations will have their own requirements. 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. Help desk SaaS is how you manage general customer communication and for handling customer questions.

On the other hand, it provides call center functionalities, unlike Intercom. 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. Zendesk offers a free 30-day trial, after which customers will need to upgrade to one of their paid plans. Overall, when comparing Zendesk to Intercom, Zendesk’s features will probably win out over time. But the most important thing is that you get a help desk that you believe in—and that you integrate it into a website as thoroughly as possible.

Intercom is geared toward sales, whereas Zendesk includes everything a customer service rep desires. Zendesk has many amazing team collaboration and communication features, like whisper mode, which lets multiple agents chime in to help each other without the customer knowing. There is also something called warm transfers, which let one rep add contextual notes to a ticket before transferring it to another rep. You also get a side conversation tool. In the category of customer support, Zendesk appears to be just slightly better than Intercom based on the availability of regular service and response times. However, it is possible Intercom’s support is superior at the premium level. For Intercom’s pricing plan, on the other hand, there is much less information on their website.

Top Features

Collaboration tools enable agents to work together in resolving customer tickets and making sales. Automatic assignment rules establish criteria that automatically route tickets to the right agent or team, based on message or user data. Operator, Intercom’s automation engine, empowers Intercom chatbots to gather key information from each website visitor to qualify leads and route customers to the right destination. Intercom and Zendesk are two of the most popular customer service platforms, each with its own set of distinct advantages and drawbacks. You need a complete customer service platform that’s seamlessly integrated and AI-enhanced. Using this, agents can chat across teams within a ticket via email, Slack, or Zendesk’s ticketing system.

Some of the highly-rated features include ticket creation user experience, email to case, and live chat reporting. 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 customers.

Gorgias seamlessly integrates with powerful e-commerce infrastructures such as Shopify, Bigcommerce, and Magento for easy setup. Similar to Zendesk, Zoho Desk is a universal customer support tool with great integration capabilities and excellent value for money. With a comprehensive range of features, it enables you to provide exceptional support to your customers across various channels. With Freshdesk, organizations can set up automations to handle specific customer inquiries as appropriate. This includes automatic delivery of help desk tickets to the correct department or agent, prioritization of inquiries based on severity, and escalation of urgent issues. Freshdesk also allows users to customize ticket fields and workflows to suit their specific needs and preferences.

But with perks like more advanced chatbots, automation, and lead management capabilities, Intercom could have an edge for many users. 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. Users can benefit from using Intercom’s CX platform and AI software as a standalone tool for business messaging. In today’s world of fast-paced customer service and high customer expectations, it’s essential for business leaders to equip their teams with the best support tools available. Zendesk and Intercom both offer noteworthy tools, but if you’re looking for a full-service solution, there is one clear winner.

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. One of the things that sets Zendesk apart from other customer service software providers is its focus on design. 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. Using this, agents can chat across teams within a ticket via email, Slack, or Zendesk’s ticketing system.

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. Easily track your service team’s performance and unlock coaching opportunities with AI-powered insights. Yes, you can find the Intercom integration in the Zendesk Marketplace—and it’s free to install.

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. 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.

Intercom’s role-based permissions allow administrators full control over each department’s and agent’s capabilities, and access to channels and information. Survey responses automatically save as data in users’ profiles, and Intercom provides survey data in analytics and reporting. Reporting and analytics provide metrics, trends, and key performance indicators (KPIs) that offer insights to agents and administrators. Intercom’s Messenger lets users schedule timely, targeted, and personal messages sent based on triggers and customer actions, and is automatically translatable into over 30 languages.

User experience and interface

Zendesk also offers a community forum where users can ask questions and get help from others. This can be a valuable resource for users looking for solutions to specific problems or wanting to learn more about the platform. Intercom also offers a community forum where users can ask questions and get help from other users. Zendesk’s user interface is also modern and user-friendly but with a slightly different design aesthetic than Intercom. The dashboard is highly customizable, allowing users to access the features they use most frequently easily. The clean and professional design focuses on bold typography and contrasting colors.

The chatbot can help users with common support issues and answer frequently asked questions. This feature can reduce the workload of customer support teams and provide faster response times to users. Intercom and Zendesk are two of the most popular customer support tools available. Both platforms offer a range of features that enable businesses to communicate with their customers seamlessly. In this section, we will briefly overview Intercom and Zendesk, including their history and key features. This live chat service provider offers 200+ integrations to its user base.

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. With over 100,000 customers intercom vs. zendesk 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.

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. This additional cost can be a considerable factor for businesses to consider when evaluating their customer support needs against their budget constraints. Choose Zendesk for a scalable, team-size-based pricing model and Intercom for initial low-cost access with flexibility in adding advanced features.

Zendesk can also save key customer information in their platform, which helps reps get a faster idea of who they are dealing with as well as any historical data that might assist in the support. Zendesk Sunshine is a separate feature set that focuses on unified customer views. Self-service tools let customers resolve their own issues quickly and 24/7, improving satisfaction and reducing excessive agent workload.

This makes it easy for agents to manage requests and communicate with customers more efficiently. They also offer features that enhance collaboration amongst employees if you have a bigger team. Intercom’s live chat reports aren’t just offering what your customers are doing or whether they are satisfied with your services. They offer more detailed insights like lead generation sources, a complete message report to track customer engagement, and detailed information on the support team’s performance.

Moreover, the best part is it also lets you send customized messages to various customers on the basis of their actions. With its live analytics feature on the dashboard, it makes it easy for you to make instant decisions in no time. Such live insights are very useful in evaluating your customer support process. But, you would not be able to enjoy such a live tracking experience on Intercom.

If you go through Zendesk’s reviews and ratings section, you will get to see a long list of positive appraisals. And we all know that receiving such continuous positive Customer feedback isn’t easy at all. Amid tight budgeting times, Desku proves to be the buddy for excellent worth and without any costly expenditure. However, the approach is far much wider than merely focusing on what would be more cost-effective but instead exploring ways through which a solution that would suit you best could be realized. When it comes to choosing a help desk software, security is a top priority. Intercom and Zendesk have implemented various security measures to protect their clients’ data.

So if an agent needs to switch from chat to phone to email (or vice versa) with a customer, it’s all on the same ticketing page. There’s even on-the-spot translation built right in, which is extremely helpful. However, as Monese grew and eyed a European expansion, it became clear that the company needed to centralize data in a single solution that would scale along with them. As you can imagine, banking from anywhere requires a flexible, robust customer service experience. In 2023, conversational messaging will play an essential role in customer service.

Here’s what you need to know about Zendesk vs. Intercom as customer support and relationship management tools. Businesses of all sizes can rely on the Zendesk customer service platform and benefit from workflow management, powerful AI tools, robust insights, and more. If that sounds good to you, sign up for a free demo to see our software in action and get started. Intercom also has an omnichannel customer service solution, but it’s fairly limited, with no native voice capabilities and minimal voice integrations. 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.

You can publish your self-service resources, divide them by categories, and integrate them with your messenger to accelerate the whole chat experience. Now that we’ve covered a bit of background on both Zendesk and Intercom, let’s dive into the features each platform offers. Intercom is a user intelligence and behavioral targeting platform to better understand, improve, and benefit from your customer communication. You can also assess them feature by feature check out which program is a better fit for your business.

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. 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. Zendesk for Service sells three plans, ranging from $49 to $99 monthly per user, with a 30-day free trial available for each plan.

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

Other chatbots don’t sit natively within the agent desk, but with Netomi, virtual and human agents work alongside each other, creating an efficient and ultra-powerful customer service team. Intercom’s 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. 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.

Founded in 2007, Zendesk started as a ticketing tool for customer success teams. It was later that they started adding all kinds of other features, like live chat for customer conversations. They bought out the Zopim live chat solution and integrated it with their toolset.

This SaaS leader entered into the competition in 2011, intending to help its clients reach their target audiences and engage them in a conversation right away. When comparing the reporting and analytics features of Zendesk and Intercom, both platforms offer robust tools, but with distinct focuses and functionalities. While both platforms have a significant presence in the industry, they cater to varying business requirements. Zendesk, with its extensive toolkit, is often preferred by businesses seeking an all-encompassing customer support solution. Choosing the right customer service platform is pivotal for enhancing business-client interactions.

It is quite the all-rounder as it even has a help center and ticketing system that completes its omnichannel support cycle. Zendesk provides limited customer support for its basic plan users, along with costly premium assistance options. 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. The overall sentiment from users indicates a satisfactory level of support, although opinions vary.

Gmail-Based Interface

To guide your decision-making, we explain the key features and qualities of each, and the role that a omnichannel conversational AI platform (Netomi!) can play, for the ultimate CX strategy. Pop-up chat, in-app messaging, and notifications are some of the highly-rated features of this live chat software. Intercom stands out for its modern and user-friendly messenger functionality, which includes advanced features with a focus on automation and real-time insights. Its AI Chatbot, Fin, is particularly noted for handling complex queries efficiently. Understanding the unique attributes of Zendesk and Intercom is crucial in this comparison. Zendesk is renowned for its comprehensive range of functionalities, including advanced email ticketing, live chat, phone support, and a vast knowledge base.

Like with many other apps, Zapier seems to be the best and most simple way to connect Intercom to Zendesk. The Zendesk marketplace is also where you can get a lot of great add-ons. There are also several different Shopify integrations to choose from, as well as CRM integrations like HubSpot and Salesforce. No matter what Zendesk Suite plan you are on, you get workflow triggers, which are simple business rules-based actions to streamline many tasks. You get call recording, muting and holding, conference calling, and call blocking. Zendesk also offers callback requests, call monitoring and call quality notifications, among other telephone tools.

You can use this support desk to help customers or you can forward potential new users to your sales department. You can create a help platform to assist users in guiding themselves, or you can use AI-enabled responses to create a more “human” like effect. When you authorize your Ticksy account to work with Influx, we’ll use this access to read the content of tickets.

In this context, Zendesk and Intercom emerge as key contenders, each offering distinct features tailored to dynamic customer service environments. 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.

This customized dashboard will help you see metrics that you’d like to focus on regularly. This article offers guidance on how to professionally request references from employers. Zendesk, less user-friendly and with higher costs for quality vendor support, might not suit budget-conscious or smaller businesses. They have a 2-day SLA, no phone support, and the times I have had to work with them they have been incredibly difficult to work with. Very rarely do they understand the issue (mostly with Explore) that I am trying to communicate to them. While Zendesk features are plenty, someone using it for the first time can find it overwhelming.

In addition, they provide a comprehensive knowledge base that includes articles, videos, and tutorials to help users get the most out of the platform. 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. At the same time, Zendesk looks slightly outdated and can’t offer some features. Intercom and Zendesk offer robust customer support options, including email, phone, and live chat support, comprehensive knowledge bases, and community forums.

You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. Intercom has a very robust advanced chatbot set of tools for your business needs. There is a conversation routing bot, an operator bot, a lead qualification bot, and an article-suggesting bot, among others. It is also not too difficult to program your own bot rules using Intercon’s system. The best help desks are also ticketing systems, which lets support reps create a support ticket out of issues that can then be tracked.

• They’ve been rated as one of the easy live chat solutions with more integrated options.
• The platform is evolving from a platform for engaging with consumers to a tool that assists you in automating every element of your daily routine.
• You can either track your performance on a pre-built dashboard or customize and build one for yourself.
• For example, Intercom’s Salesforce integration doesn’t create a view of cases in Salesforce.
• The platform is known for its ease of use, customizable workflows, and extensive integrations with other business tools.

Compared to Intercom, Zendesk’s pricing starts at $49/month, which is still understandable but not meant for startups looking for affordable pricing plans. These plans are not inclusive of the add-ons or access to all integrations. Once you add them all to the picture, their existing plans can turn out to be quite expensive. Personalized messaging, in-app messaging, product tours, and chatbot capabilities set Intercom apart from Zendesk. To automate operations and reduce your employees’ workload, it is critical that customer support systems allow integration with other products.

It is favored by customer support, helpdesk, IT service management, and contact center teams. 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. While in Intercom, advanced chatbots, a modern and well-developed chat widget, email marketing services, product demonstrations, and in-app messaging all contribute to a better customer experience. 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. This method helps offer more personalized support as well as get faster response and resolution times.

• Depending on your needs, you can set up Intercom on your website or mobile app and add your automations.
• Intercom self-service chatbot widgets, highly customizable and capable of conversing in 32 different languages, embed into your website or application.
• While Intercom does not offer free trials, they do offer demo versions of each plan.
• You can even improve efficiency and transparency by setting up task sequences, defining sales triggers, and strategizing with advanced forecasting and reporting tools.
• Intercom is the clear victor in terms of user experience, leaving all of its competitors in the dust.
• 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 comparing the user interfaces (UI) of Zendesk and Intercom, both platforms exhibit distinct characteristics and strengths catering to different user preferences and needs. 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. That being said, in your search for the best customer support tool, you must have come across Zendesk and Intercom.

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​​​​. Intercom’s UI excels in modern design and intuitive functionality, particularly noted for its real-time messaging and advanced features. It is tailored for automation and quick access to insights, offering a user-friendly experience.

This makes it easy to see the full context of a customer’s interactions with a business, which can lead to more personalized and practical support. Intercom’s user interface is known for being modern, intuitive, and user-friendly. The dashboard is customizable, allowing users to efficiently access the features they use most frequently. Intercom’s clean and minimalistic design focuses on white space and easy-to-read fonts. The user interface is also highly responsive, making it easy to use on mobile devices. When you see pricing plans starting for $79/month, you should get a clear understanding of how expensive other plans can become for your business.

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. However, compared to Zendesk, Intercom might not offer the same breadth in terms of integrating a wide range of external channels.