Zendesk vs Intercom: Choosing the best tool for your business

Price (Discount offered on annual plans. For proactive agent collision as well as 24/7 email and chat support, you need to start with their Enterprise plan). Best Zendesk competitor for companies looking to build authentic relationships with their customers. 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. The duration of the migration from Zendesk to Intercom may vary based on factors such as the volume of data and attachments being transferred and the API limits set for your Zendesk and Intercom accounts.

It guarantees continuous omnichannel support that meets customer expectations. Using this, agents can chat across teams within a ticket via email, Slack, or Zendesk’s ticketing system. This packs all resolution information into a single ticket, so there’s no extra searching or backtracking needed to bring a ticket through to resolution, even if it involves multiple agents. While Intercom also provides a user-friendly interface, some users may find it a tad overwhelming, especially when juggling multiple support requests.

It empowers businesses with a robust suite of automation tools, enabling them to streamline their support processes seamlessly. Zendesk allows for the creation of predefined rules and workflows that efficiently route tickets to the appropriate agents, ensuring swift and precise issue resolution. Moreover, Zendesk excels in sending automated responses and escalating critical issues with precision. Both Chat PG Zendesk and Intercom are standout performers when it comes to providing comprehensive multi channel support, catering to diverse customer needs. Zendesk offers a versatile array of communication channels, including email, chat, social media, phone, and web forms. This breadth of options ensures that businesses can effectively engage with their customers through their preferred communication method.

There will be no sync between Zendesk and Intercom, so changes in Zendesk won’t be reflected in Intercom. This Zendesk alternative is best for small businesses looking for a simple yet powerful help desk software with email-based support. Going along with this, many users report that Zendesk seems to have already “done it all” in terms of features and functionality. According to one Capterra review from earlier this year, “Zendesk seems to have done all of its innovation years ago as the product has achieved a plateau of functionality of features.” For small companies and startups, Zendesk offers a six-month free trial of up to 50 agents redeemable for any combination of Zendesk Support and Sell products.

Intercom’s Customer Onboarding Feature is More Efficient than Zendesk’s Knowledge Base

This means the company is still working out some kinks and operating with limited capabilities. In 2023, conversational messaging will play an essential role in customer service. Customers increasingly expect to receive fast, convenient, and personalized support. No matter how a customer contacts your business, your agents will have access to the tools and information they need to continue and close conversations on any channel. To sum up this Intercom vs Zendesk battle, the latter is a great support-oriented tool that will be a good choice for big teams with various departments.

It provides a comprehensive platform for managing customer inquiries, support tickets, and interactions across multiple channels. On the other hand, Intercom shines in its focus on conversational engagement and real-time communication with customers. It offers a chat-first approach, making it ideal for companies looking to prioritize interactive and personalized customer interactions. Experience firsthand how our software can transform your customer support strategy and drive overall business success. The comparison of whether Intercom is better than Zendesk depends on your specific customer support and engagement needs and objectives. If you seek to enhance customer engagement through chat-based support, in-app messaging, and proactive outreach, Intercom may be the superior option.

Best Zendesk alternative for businesses looking for an all-in-one solution for ticket intake and service provision. After a client’s issue has been resolved (or has not been resolved), Intercom provides the company with a report regarding the issue at hand. This allows organizations to revisit their knowledge base and make the appropriate changes to specific help documents. In this post, we’ll take a look at some of the best alternatives to Zendesk in 2024, catering to a range of needs and budgets. We consider tools that are more affordable, offer specific features that may be absent in Zendesk, or are simply more user-friendly.

About Intercom

Both platforms have their unique strengths in multichannel support, with Zendesk offering a more comprehensive range of integrated channels and Intercom focusing on a dynamic, chat-centric experience. When comparing Zendesk and Intercom, various factors come into play, each focusing on different aspects, strengths, and weaknesses of these customer support platforms. Intercom, on the other hand, is ideal for those focusing on CRM capabilities and personalized customer interactions. 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. Provide self-service alternatives so customers can resolve their own issues.

Sendcloud adopted these solutions to replace siloed systems like Intercom and a local voice support provider in favor of unified, omnichannel support. Track customer service metrics to gain valuable insights and improve customer service processes and agent performance. Sales teams can also view outbound communications, and any support agent can access resources from the Intercom workspace. If you create a new chat with the team, land on a page with no widget, and go back to the browser for some reason, your chat will go puff.

During the demo, our Migration Wizard smoothly transfers a sample of 20 random conversations and articles to Intercom. You also have the option to go for a Custom Demo, where you can specify the exact conversation and article IDs you want to migrate. Being my first time dealing with a migration, they were very patient with me as I guided myself through the process of migrating data. They were very prompt and thorough throughout the entire process, very willing to help ensure that the migration is done correctly, and answered all questions I had in a very timely manner.

• Additionally, don’t forget to disable notifications and set up custom fields for conversations.
• Zoho Desk makes ticket management a breeze for your customer support team by enabling the  tracking and handling of customer requests across channels, brands, products, departments, and more.
• Intercom, on the other hand, is ideal for those focusing on CRM capabilities and personalized customer interactions.
• When comparing the pricing of Zendesk and Intercom, there are significant differences to take into account.

View your users’ Zendesk tickets in Intercom and create new ones directly from conversations. Whether Intercom is cheaper than Zendesk depends on your specific usage, feature requirements, and the number of users in your organization. These are just some of the factors that can affect the migration https://chat.openai.com/ process from Zendesk to Intercom. There may be other aspects that are specific to your business or industry that need to be considered as well. Depending on the complexity of the script and the amount of your data, the transfer process can take anywhere from a few hours to several weeks.

It’s time to upgrade your customer service platform

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. Intercom also allows users to create customer-facing knowledge bases, as well.

• It offers a comprehensive suite of features that empowers businesses to foster immediate connections with their customers.
• Customers can find these answers by either browsing the knowledge base manually or by using Helpjuice’s intelligent search capabilities.
• However, aside from these limitations, you have the freedom to transfer as much help desk and knowledge base data as you need to Intercom.
• Freshdesk also understands the importance of real-time updating of information and documentation.

Zendesk and Intercom are prominent players in the field of customer support and engagement platforms, each offering unique capabilities and advantages to address varying user requirements. This robust platform offers a high-definition view of customer experiences by providing real-time insights into satisfaction, sentiment analysis, case resolution time, agent performance, and more. With Groove, agents can provide customer service and support via email, Twitter, Facebook, live chat, phone, and even through text message. Groove also allows multiple agents to collaborate on a single support instance in real-time, via both customer-facing channels and private internal means. With HappyFox, users can provide support to their clients via email, live chat, social media, and by phone.

However, if you are looking for a robust messaging solution with customer support features, go for Intercom. Its intuitive messenger can help your business boost engagement and improve sales and marketing efforts. Intercom generally receives positive feedback for its customer support, with users appreciating the comprehensive features and team-oriented tools.

We recommend running a small batch of records (say 5%), and using that to project time to completion. The time this ultimately takes is heavily dependent on the rate limits of the platforms, and cannot be overridden by developers. To transfer your data from Zendesk to Intercom, a script will need to be created by an API developer to use the Zendesk and Intercom APIs to fetch and transfer the data. The script will need to align with the data mapping document and account for system rate limits. The script will also need to be monitored and adjusted as needed during the transfer process. Best competitor to Zendesk for teams looking to enhance their communication and collaboration capabilities.

Top Features

Brian Kale, the head of customer success at Bank Novo, describes how Zendesk helped Bank Novo boost productivity and streamline service. The support team faced spiking ticket volumes, numerous new customer accounts, and the need to shift to remote work. Sendcloud is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) company that allows users to generate packing slips and labels to help online retailers streamline their shipping process. 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. If a customer starts an interaction by talking to a chatbot and can’t find a solution, our chatbot can open a ticket and intelligently route it to the most qualified agent.

Users can benefit from using Intercom’s CX platform and AI software as a standalone tool for business messaging. But to provide a more robust customer experience, businesses may need to consider integrating Intercom’s AI tool with a third-party customer service platform, as it falls short of a full-stack offering. We make it easy for anyone within your company to access contextual customer information—including their conversation and purchase history—to provide better experiences.

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. If your organization aims to enhance customer engagement through live chat, in-app messaging, and proactive outreach, Intercom might serve as a viable alternative to Zendesk.

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. 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. 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.

Vendor Support Quality

Zendesk outshines Intercom for customer support workflows with its core feature, the ticketing system. Zendesk’s ticketing system is renowned for its highly organized approach, which empowers businesses to manage customer support requests with unparalleled efficiency. These tickets can then be systematically tracked, prioritized, and responded to.

Customer stories are another big part of the equation when comparing Intercom vs. Zendesk. Here, we’ll dig into three different companies that chose Zendesk in the Intercom vs. Zendesk debate. And there’s still no way to know how much you’ll pay for them since the prices are only revealed after you go through a few sale demos with the Intercom team.

But sooner or later, you’ll have to decide on the subscription plan, and here’s what you’ll have to pay. If you see either of these warnings, wait 60 seconds for your Zendesk rate limit to be reset and try again. If this becomes a persistent issue for your team, we recommend contacting Zendesk. Currently based in Albuquerque, NM, Bryce Emley holds an MFA in Creative Writing from NC State and nearly a decade of writing and editing experience. 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. 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.

On the other hand, Intercom lacks many ticketing functionality that can be essential for big companies with a huge client support load. 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. It’s highly customizable, too, so you can adjust it according to your website or product’s style. Their chat widget looks and works great, and they invest a lot of effort to make it a modern, convenient customer communication tool. Is it as simple as knowing whether you want software strictly for customer support (like Zendesk) or for some blend of customer relationship management and sales support (like Intercom)?

The decision to choose a customer support platform should be based on a careful evaluation of your organization’s unique needs, customer interaction channels, scalability requirements, and budget constraints. However, if your organization heavily relies on Intercom’s real-time communication features, in-app messaging, and chat-based support, transitioning entirely to Zendesk may not cover all your needs. Intercom’s focus on instant interactions and personalized engagement is particularly valuable for businesses prioritizing chat-first customer support and real-time communication. One of the more unique Zendesk alternatives on this list as Gorgias’ customer support software aims to support ecommerce businesses. As an easy and carefully-thought solution, Gorgias offers its users a few unique features. That said, Gorgias is not a well-rounded tool like Zendesk, and if not within their narrowed target audience, it might not be the right fit for your business needs.

Very rarely do they understand the issue (mostly with Explore) that I am trying to communicate to them. The support documentation is incredibly lackluster, and it’s often impossible to know which guide to use as they have non-sensical terminology that makes even finding the appropriate guide very difficult. Pricing for both services varies based on the specific needs and scale of your business. When comparing the user interfaces (UI) of Zendesk and Intercom, both platforms exhibit distinct characteristics and strengths catering to different user preferences and needs. We have numerous customers that do this and benefit greatly from our out-of-the-box integration with Intercom.

Its strengths are prominently seen in multi-channel support, with effective email, social media, and live chat integrations, coupled with a robust internal knowledge base for agent support. Intercom distinguishes itself by excelling in real-time customer engagement. It offers a comprehensive suite of features that empowers businesses to foster immediate connections with their customers. With Intercom, businesses can engage in real-time chats, schedule meetings, and strategically deploy chat boxes to specific customer segments.

For instance, Intercom can guide a new software user through each feature step by step, providing context and assistance along the way. In contrast, Zendesk primarily relies on a knowledge base, housing articles, FAQs, and self-help resources. While this resource center can reduce the dependency on agent assistance, it lacks the interactive element found in Intercom’s onboarding process. Determining whether Intercom can effectively replace Zendesk depends on your specific customer support and engagement requirements. Whether Zendesk can fully replace Intercom depends on your specific customer support and engagement requirements. 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.

Prioritize the agent experience to maximize productivity and customer satisfaction while reducing employee turnover. It will allow you to leverage some Intercom capabilities while keeping your account at the time-tested platform. In this paragraph, let’s explain some common issues that users usually ask about when choosing between Zendesk and Intercom platforms. Though the Intercom chat window says that their customer success team typically replies in a few hours, don’t expect to receive any real answer in chat for at least a couple of days. Besides, the prices differ depending on the company’s size and specific needs.

Choose Zendesk for a scalable, team-size-based pricing model and Intercom for initial low-cost access with flexibility in adding advanced features. 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. Key offerings include automated support with help center articles, a messenger-first ticketing system, and a powerful inbox to centralize customer queries. The cheapest plan for small businesses – Essential – costs $39 monthly per seat.

The platform also offers SLA and escalation setups to ensure timely responses. Advanced reporting and analytics capabilities allow you to measure and optimize customer service performance, while the CSAT surveys help collect valuable customer feedback. HappyFox also enables organizations to create a knowledge base, which integrates with the tool’s self-service functionality. Help Scout, a help desk ticketing system and customer service software zendesk intercom solution, is one of the more popular Zendesk alternatives since it provides a variety of services to its users. Zendesk’s suite provides an all-in-one solution for organizations needing a customer relationship management tool, help desk software, online knowledge management, team collaboration, and more. Both tools also allow you to connect your email account and manage it from within the application to track open and click-through rates.

These portals can include knowledge bases and other such content to help customers find the answers they’re looking for without needing to contact customer support. MParticle is a Customer Data Platform offering plug-and-play integrations to Zendesk and Intercom, along with over 300 other marketing, analytics, and data warehousing tools. With mParticle, you can connect your Zendesk and Intercom data with other marketing, analytics, and business intelligence platforms without any custom engineering effort. You can also set up interactive product tours to highlight new features in-product and explain how they work. In general, Zendesk offers a wide range of live chat features such as customizable chat widgets, automatic greetings, offline messaging, and chat triggers. In addition to these features, Intercom offers messaging automation and real-time visitor insights.

Intercom distinguishes itself with its real-time communication and conversational engagement features, making it an attractive choice for businesses and organizations prioritizing instant customer interactions. Intercom’s pricing structure offers different plans to cater to various customer support and engagement needs, accommodating users with different budgets. Zendesk is more robust in terms of its ticket management capabilities, it offers more customization options and advanced features like a virtual call center app. On the other hand, Intercom is more focused on conversational customer support, and has more help desk features suited for live chat and messaging.

But that’s not it, if you want to resolve customer common questions with the help of the vendor’s new tool – Fin bot, you will have to pay $0.99 per resolution per month. 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. Intercom’s chatbot feels a little more robust than Zendesk’s (though it’s worth noting that some features are only available at the Engage and Convert tiers).

The knowledge base functionality enables the creation and maintenance of a central library of help articles, promoting customer self-service and reducing support volume. With Intercom, users can provide multi channel support to their customers via live chat, email, and even in-app messaging and push notifications. This enables companies to reach out to the right people on the right platform, at exactly the right time. Another cloud-based customer service ticketing system, HubSpot Service Hub aims to simplify processes related to managing customer queries and enhancing client engagement for all-sized businesses. Users can easily connect with their customers through live chat, conversational bots, one-to-one communication, canned responses, etc. Best Zendesk alternative for businesses looking for an all-in-one customer service solution with a powerful CRM, marketing automation, and sales tools.

Founded as a business messenger, it now extends to enabling support, engagement, and conversion. Zendesk, unlike Intercom, is a more affordable and predictable customer service platform. You can always count on it if you need a reliable customer support platform to process tickets, support users, and get advanced reporting. While Zendesk incorporates live chat and messaging functionalities to facilitate proactive customer engagement, it falls short of matching Intercom’s level of personalization.

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. Both options are well designed, easy to use, and share some pretty key functionality like behavioral triggers and omnichannel-ality (omnichannel-centricity?). But with perks like more advanced chatbots, automation, and lead management capabilities, Intercom could have an edge for many users. Zendesk’s help center tools should also come in handy for helping customers help themselves—something Zendesk claims eight out of 10 customers would rather do than contact support. To that end, you can import themes or apply your own custom themes to brand your help center the way you want it.

Sugar Serve also includes SugarBPM, a process automation tool that helps automate key service processes and workflows, such as intelligent case routing, custom rules, and notifications. The Active Subscriptions Dashlet displays a list of purchased goods and services, along with subscription statuses, enabling upselling or cross-selling opportunities. Best Zendesk alternative for organizations looking for an all-in-one help desk solution with real-time data collection. Intercom’s customer messaging platform focuses on enabling organizations to build authentic relationships with their clients throughout every stage of the sales funnel. See how leading multi-channel consumer brands solve E2E customer data challenges with a real-time customer data platform. While both Zendesk and Intercom offer ways to track your sales pipeline, each platform handles the process a bit differently.

It calculates the cost of its Pro and Premium plans based on the number of AI resolutions, people reached, and seats (or users). This can make it challenging to estimate the cost yourself during your research and you need to speak with Intercom for more information. Hiver’s automations, including smart assignment rules, workflows, and Harvey, the AI bot, help automate repetitive tasks.

CAN I IMPORT ZENDESK DATA INTO INTERCOM?

Pricing is an important factor to consider when choosing between Zendesk and Intercom as the support tool you choose can have a significant impact on your business’s budget and overall return on investment. Zendesk and Intercom each have their own marketplace/app store where users can find all the integrations for each platform. To prepare your Zendesk account for migration, take the time to assess and refine your data.

While both Intercom and Zendesk excel in customer support and engagement, the decision between the two depends on your specific requirements. Intercom is particularly strong in its chat-based support, in-app messaging, and proactive outreach, making it an ideal choice for businesses looking to provide immediate and personalized customer interactions. It’s well-suited for organizations aiming to enhance customer engagement through real-time communication.

You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. Thus, you will be able to have your import or export done in a timely fashion without putting pivotal tasks on the shelf. Here is a list of tools that work as an alternative to Sortd in terms of features and pricing. When comparing the omnichannel support functionalities of Zendesk and Intercom, both platforms show distinct strengths and weaknesses. When comparing the automation and AI features of Zendesk and Intercom, both platforms come with unique strengths and weaknesses. Like so many others, Monese determined that Zendesk was the best solution to provide seamless, omnichannel support because of its scalability and reliability. 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.

Its ability to seamlessly integrate with various applications further amplifies its versatility. Choosing the right customer service platform is pivotal for enhancing business-client interactions. In this context, Zendesk and Intercom emerge as key contenders, each offering distinct features tailored to dynamic customer service environments. 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.

Use ticketing systems to manage the influx and provide your customers with timely responses. When it comes to advanced workflows and ticketing systems, Zendesk boasts a more full-featured solution. Due to our intelligent routing capabilities and numerous automated workflows, our users can free up hours to focus on other tasks. The Zendesk chat tool has most of the necessary features like shortcuts (saved responses), automated triggers, and live chat analytics. The Intercom versus Zendesk conundrum is probably the greatest problem in the customer service software world. They both offer some state-of-the-art core functionality and numerous unusual features.

You can set office hours, live chat with logged-in users via their user profiles, and set up a chatbot. 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, or Shopify. I tested both options (using Zendesk’s Suite Professional trial and Intercom’s Support trial) and found clearly defined differences between the two.

Zoho Desk makes ticket management a breeze for your customer support team by enabling the  tracking and handling of customer requests across channels, brands, products, departments, and more. Omnichannel support ensures accessibility via email, phone, live chat, social media, feedback widgets, web forms, and self-service portals. Zendesk is a customer service software offering a comprehensive solution for managing customer interactions. It integrates customer support, sales, and marketing communications, aiming to improve client relationships. Known for its scalability, Zendesk is suitable for various business sizes, from startups to large corporations.