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

It offers a feature called “Mobile Push”  which are essentially push notifications that allow businesses to reach customers on their mobile apps. This feature enables timely alerts and updates to customers, even when they are on the go. Intercom also offers extensive integrations with over 350 tools that include Salesforce, HubSpot, Google Analytics, Amplitude, Zoho, JIRA, and more. The platform is recognized for its ability to resolve a significant portion of customer questions automatically, ensuring faster response times. As mentioned before, the bot builder is a visual drag-and-drop system that requires no coding knowledge; this is also how other basic workflows are designed.

Automatically answer common questions and perform recurring tasks with AI. You can try Customerly without any risk to you as we offer a 14-day free trial. 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.

Since Zendesk has many features, it takes a while to learn how to use the options you’ll be needing. 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. Although the Intercom chat window claims that their team responds within a few hours, user reviews have stated that they had to wait for a few days. Intercom is the clear victor in terms of user experience, leaving all of its competitors in the dust. In terms of pricing, Intercom is considered one of the hardest on your pocket.

With custom correlation and attribution, you can dive deep into the root cause behind your metrics. We also provide real-time and historical reporting dashboards so you can take action at the moment and learn from past trends. Meanwhile, our WFM software enables businesses to analyze employee metrics and performance, helping them identify improvements, implement strategies, and set long-term goals. 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. Zendesk, just like its competitor, offers a knowledge base solution that is easy to customize.

Intercom’s products are used by over 25,000 customers, from small tech startups to large enterprises. Why don’t you try something equally powerful yet more affordable, like HelpCrunch? Our transparent pricing structure gives you the features you need today while offering the flexibility to accommodate your future growth.

Admins will also like the fact that they can see the progress of all their teams and who all are actively answering a customer’s query in real-time. Messagely’s pricing starts at just $29 per Chat GPT month, which includes live chat, targeted messages, shared inbox, mobile apps, and over 750 powerful integrations. Messagely’s live chat platform is smooth, effective, and easy to set up.

What is customer service?

Powered by AI, Intercom’s Fin chatbot is purportedly capable of solving 50% of all queries autonomously — in multiple languages. At the same time, Fin AI Copilot background support to agents, acting as a https://chat.openai.com/ personal, real-time AI assistant for dealing with inquiries. Zendesk’s Answer Bot is capable of helping customers with common queries by providing canned responses and links to relevant help articles.

Once you add them all to the picture, their existing plans can turn out to be quite expensive. Zendesk also offers detailed reports that can be shared with others and enable team members to collaborate on them simultaneously. You can either track your performance on a pre-built dashboard or customize and build one for yourself. This customized dashboard will help you see metrics that you’d like to focus on regularly. ProProfs Live Chat Editorial Team is a diverse group of professionals passionate about customer support and engagement.

Both Zendesk and Intercom offer a range of channels for businesses to interact with their customers. Similarly, if you require Fin AI Agent – to resolve customer queries without human intervention, you’ll need to pay an additional $0.99 per resolution. Keep in mind that this is an add-on expense, on top of your chosen plan. While Fin AI Copilot – is included in all paid Intercom plans, you only get to use it for only ten conversations per agent each month.

Zendesk is designed with the agent in mind, delivering a modern, intuitive experience. The customizable Zendesk Agent Workspace enables reps to work within a single browser tab with one-click navigation across any channel. Intercom, on the other hand, can be a complicated system, creating a steep learning curve for new users. Learn how top CX leaders are scaling personalized customer service at their companies.

The offers that appear on the website are from software companies from which CRM.org receives compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site (including, for example, the order in which they appear). This site does not include all software companies or all available software companies offers. 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.

Intercom

Pipedrive offers five total plans, with their entry-level Essential plan offering significantly fewer features than the others. For example, bulk email send, email templates, email scheduling, and automation features are only available to those who purchase the Advanced plan and above. With Zendesk, even our most basic plans include a robust selection of features, including custom data fields, sales triggers, email tracking, text messaging, and call tracking and recording. The last thing you want is your sales data or the contact information of potential customers to end up in the wrong hands. Because of this, you’ll want to make sure you’re selecting a cloud-based CRM, like Zendesk, with strong security features. Zendesk meets global security and privacy compliance standards and includes features like single sign-on (SSO) to help provide protection against cyberattacks and keep your data safe.

• You can also use Intercom as a customer service platform, but given its broad focus, you may not get the same level of specialized expertise.
• The former is one of the oldest and most reliable solutions on the market, while the latter sets the bar high regarding innovative and out-of-the-box features.
• While they like the ease of use this product offers its users, they’ve indeed rated them low in terms of services.
• When he isn’t writing content, poetry, or creative nonfiction, he enjoys traveling, baking, playing music, reliving his barista days in his own kitchen, camping, and being bad at carpentry.
• Customer service systems like Zendesk and Intercom should provide a simple workflow builder as well as many pre-built automations which can be used right out of the box.

You’ll still be able to get your eyes on basic support metrics, like response times and bot performance, that will help you improve your service quality. However, Intercom’s real strength lies in generating insights into areas like customer journey mapping, product performance, and retention. Far from impersonalizing customer service, chatbots offer an immediate and efficient way to address common queries that end in satisfaction. Nowadays, it’s a crucial component in helping businesses focus on high-priority interactions and scale their customer service. Today, amid the rise of omnichannel customer service, it offers a centralized location to manage interactions via email, live chat, social media, or voice calls.

Intercom actively enhances its analytics capabilities by leveraging AI to forecast customer behavior. This feature helps businesses anticipate and address potential issues before they escalate. Intercom’s analytics focuses more on user behavior and engagement metrics, with insights into customer interactions, and important retention metrics. That makes the design very familiar and user-friendly, for both customers and agents.

When he isn’t writing content, poetry, or creative nonfiction, he enjoys traveling, baking, playing music, reliving his barista days in his own kitchen, camping, and being bad at carpentry. Understanding these fundamental differences should go a long way in helping you pick between the two, but does that mean you can’t use one platform to do what the other does better? These are both still very versatile products, so don’t think you have to get too siloed into a single use case. As an avid learner interested in all things tech, Jelisaveta always strives to share her knowledge with others and help people and businesses reach their goals.

Creating a positive employee experience (EX) can help an organization streamline internal operations, improve team productivity, and reduce employee turnover. Yet, this can only be achieved if you’re empowered with the right tool in your technology stack. CoinJar is one of the longest-running cryptocurrency exchanges in the world. To help keep up with its growing customer base, CoinJar turned to Zendesk for a user-friendly and easily scalable solution after testing other CRMs, including Pipedrive and HubSpot. Leveraging the sequencing and bulk email features of the Zendesk sales CRM, CoinJar increased its visibility and productivity at scale.

Ticket routing helps to send the ticket to the best support team agent. Compared to Zendesk and Intercom, Helpwise offers competitive and transparent pricing plans. Its straightforward pricing structure ensures businesses get access to the required features without complex tiers or hidden costs, making it an attractive option for cost-conscious organizations.

Ready to choose between Zendesk and Pipedrive for your business?

Having more connectors accessible gives organizations the flexibility to select software that meets their specific needs. 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. Zendesk is primarily a ticketing system, and its ticketing capability is overwhelming in the best conceivable manner. All client contacts, whether via phone, chat, email, social media, or any other channel, land in one dashboard, where your agents can quickly and efficiently resolve them. 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.

Customerly allows you to rate prospects, either manually or automatically, so you can prioritize the most valuable leads. Our platform also supports dynamic list building, enabling you to run targeted surveys, send newsletters, and automate marketing actions, all from one place. However, for more advanced CRM needs like lead management and sales forecasting, Intercom may not make the cut, unfortunately. It goes without saying that you can generate custom reports to hone in on particular areas of interest. Whether you’re into traditional bar charts, pie charts, treemaps, word clouds, or any other type of visualization, Zendesk is a data “nerd’s” dream.

Ten trends every CX leader needs to know in the era of intelligent CX, a seismic shift that will be powered by AI, automation, and data analytics. The right sales CRM can help your team close more deals and boost your business. At the end of the day, the best sales CRM delivers on the features that matter most to you and your business. To determine which one takes the cake, let’s dive into a feature comparison of Pipedrive vs. Zendesk. Easily track your service team’s performance and unlock coaching opportunities with AI-powered insights.

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. Zendesk wins the major category of help desk and ticketing system software. It lets customers reach out via messaging, a live chat tool, voice, and social media. Zendesk supports teams that can then field these issues from a nice unified dashboard.

From handling multiple questions to avoiding dreaded customer-stuck loops, Aura AI is the Swiss Army Knife of customer service chatbots. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. If you want to get to the nitty-gritty of your customer service team’s performance, Zendesk is the way to go. Furthermore, Intercom offers advanced automation features such as custom inbox rules, targeted messaging, and dynamic triggers based on customer segments. If you’re here, it’s safe to assume that you’re looking for a new customer service solution to support your teams and delight your audience. As two of the giants of the industry, it’s only natural that you’d reach a point where you’re comparing Zendesk vs Intercom. Intercom offers just over 450 integrations, which can make it less cost-effective and more complex to customize the software and adapt to new use cases as you scale.

It also includes a list of common questions you can browse through at the bottom of the knowledge base home page so you can find answers to common issues. These products range from customer communication tools to a fully-fledged CRM. Zendesk boasts incredibly robust sales capabilities and security features. 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. Intercom, on the other hand, excels in providing a seamless customer service experience by merging automation with human support.

Learn about features, customize your experience, and find out how to set up integrations and use our apps. Provide a clear path for customer questions to improve the shopping experience you offer. If you require a robust helpdesk with powerful ticketing and reporting features, Zendesk is the better choice, particularly for complex support queries. Customerly’s CRM is designed to help businesses build stronger relationships by keeping customer data organized and actionable.

We conducted a little study of our own and found that all Intercom users share different amounts of money they pay for the plans, which can reach over $1000/mo. The price levels can even be much higher if we talk of a larger company. If you want to test Intercom vs Zendesk before deciding on a tool for good, they both provide free 14-day trials. But sooner or later, you’ll have to decide on the subscription plan, and here’s what you’ll have to pay.

The Zendesk chat 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. Often, it’s a centralized platform for managing inquiries and issues from different channels. Let’s look at how help desk features are represented in our examinees’ solutions. Basically, if you have a complicated support process, go with Zendesk for its help desk functionality. If you’re a sales-oriented corporation, use Intercom for its automation options.

The app includes features like automated messages and conversation routing — so businesses can manage customer conversations more efficiently. However, the latter is more of a support and ticketing solution, while intercom versus zendesk Intercom is CRM functionality-oriented. This means it’s a customer relationship management platform rather than anything else. If you thought Zendesk prices were confusing, let me introduce you to Intercom prices.

With Messagely, you can increase your customer satisfaction and solve customers’ issues while they’re still visiting your site. Zendesk chat allows you to talk with your visitors in real time through a small chat bar at the bottom of your site. When visitors click on it, they’ll be directed to one of your customer service teammates. Ultimately, the choice between Zendesk and Intercom depends on your business needs. If you need a solution that can rapidly scale and offer strong self-service features, Zendesk may be the best fit.

With Explore, you can share and collaborate with anyone customer service reports. You can share these reports one-time or on a recurring basis with anyone in your organization. Zendesk Explore allows you to create custom reports and visualizations in order to gain deeper insights into your support operations and setup. Both Zendesk and Intercom offer automation features to streamline workflows and improve efficiency, but the way they do it is different.

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. NovoChat, on the other hand, is great for businesses that primarily engage with their clients through messaging apps.

At first glance, they seem like simple three packages for small, medium, and big businesses. But it’s virtually impossible to predict what you’ll pay for Intercom at the end of the day. They charge not only for customer service representative seats but also for feature usage and offer tons of features as custom add-ons at additional cost.

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. And while many other chatbots take forever to set up, you can set up your first chatbot in under five minutes. Since Intercom doesn’t offer a CRM, its pricing is divided into basic messaging and messaging with automations.

Like Zendesk, Intercom offers its Operator bot, which automatically suggests relevant articles to clients right in a chat widget. You can create dozens of articles in a simple, intuitive WYSIWYG text editor, divide them by categories and sections, and customize them with your custom themes. 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.

It is favored by customer support, helpdesk, IT service management, and contact center teams. Zendesk is billed more as a customer support and ticketing solution, while Intercom includes more native CRM functionality. Intercom isn’t quite as strong as Zendesk in comparison to some of Zendesk’s customer support strengths, but it has more features for sales and lead nurturing.

Connecting Zendesk Support and Zendesk Sell allows its customer service and sales-oriented wholesale team to work together effortlessly. 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.

• Additionally, the Zendesk sales CRM seamlessly integrates with the Zendesk Support Suite, allowing your customer service and sales teams to share information in a centralized place.
• However, we will say that Intercom just edges past Zendesk when it comes to self-service resources.
• In today’s hyper-competitive, hyper-connected globalized economy, customer experience has become a fundamental differentiator.

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. Whatever you think of Intercom’s design and general user experience, you can’t deny that it outperforms all of its competitors. Everything, from the tools to the website, reflects their meticulous attention to detail.

Does Pipedrive offer a 360 view with support systems?

For Intercom’s pricing plan, on the other hand, there is much less information on their website. There is a Starter plan for small businesses at $74 per month billed annually, and there are add-ons like a WhatsApp add-on at $9 per user per month or surveys at $49 per month. Zendesk has a help center that is open to all to find out answers to common questions. Apart from this feature, the customer support options at Zendesk are quite limited.

The setup can be so complex that there are tutorials by third parties to teach new users how to do it right. 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. That being said the customer support for both Zendesk and Intercom is lacking.

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. If you prioritize detailed support performance metrics and the ability to create custom reports, Zendesk’s reporting capabilities are likely to be more appealing.

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. So yeah, two essential things that Zendesk lacks in comparison to Intercom are in-app messages and email marketing tools. Intercom on the other hand lacks many ticketing functionality that can be essential for big companies with a huge customer support load.

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. What’s worse, Intercom doesn’t offer a free trial to its prospect to help them test the product before onboarding with their services. Instead, they offer a product demo when prospects reach out to learn more about their pricing structure. Zendesk has also introduced its chatbot to help its clients send automated answers to some frequently asked questions to stay ahead in the competitive marketplace. What’s more, it helps its clients build an integrated community forum and help center to improve the support experience in real-time.