Zendesk vs Intercom 2023 Which is Better Customer Service Software?

As for Intercom’s general pricing structure, there are three plans, but you’ll have to contact them to get exact prices. Discover customer and product issues with instant replays, in-app cobrowsing, and console logs. Customers rated Intercom 4.4 on G2 Crowd, while Zendesk scored 4.3.

See how our customer service solutions bring ease to the customer experience. Intercom enables customers to self-serve through its messaging platform. Agents can easily find resources for customers from their agent workspace. NovoChat, on the other hand, is great for businesses that primarily engage with their clients through messaging apps. The program is simple to use and includes all of the necessary capabilities for providing good customer service.

Mobile app: Zendesk Vs. Intercom

In short, Zendesk is perfect for large companies looking to streamline their customer support process; Intercom is great for smaller companies looking for advanced customer service features. After this live chat software comparison, you’ll get a better picture of what’s better for your business. When a customer asks a question in the Messenger widget, the Operator automatically suggests a handful of relevant articles based on keywords to help customers resolve their own issues. Powered by Explore, Zendesk’s reporting capabilities are pretty impressive. Right out of the gate, you’ve got dozens of pre-set report options on everything from satisfaction ratings and time in status to abandoned calls and Answer Bot resolutions.

This is not a huge difference; however, it does indicate that customers are generally more satisfied with Intercom’s offerings than Zendesk’s. Zendesk is a much larger company than Intercom; it has over 170,000 customers, while Intercom has over 25,000. While this may seem like a positive for Zendesk, it’s important to consider that a larger company may not be as agile or responsive to customer needs as a smaller company. Though Intercom chat window says that their team typically replies in a few hours, I received the answer in a couple of minutes. Their agent was always trying to convert me into a lead along the way, but heck, that’s a side effect of our job. What can be really inconvenient about Zendesk, though is how their tools integrate with each other when you need to use them simultaneously.

What are the differences between Intercom and Zendesk?

It is also not too difficult to program your own bot rules using Intercon’s system. It’s much easier if you decide to go with the Zendesk Suite, which includes Support, Chat, Talk, and Guide tools. There are two options there — Professional for $109 or Enterprise for $179 if you pay monthly.

Just like Zendesk, Intercom also offers its Operator bot, which will automatically suggest relevant articles to customers right in a chat widget. What makes Intercom stand out from Zendesk are its chatbots and product tours. The newly presented chatbot Fin is powered by ChatGPT technologies and apparently can solve up to 50% of all queries. Well, I must admit, the tool is gradually transforming from a platform for communicating with customers to a tool that helps you automate every aspect of your routine. If this compelling reason isn’t enough, you might want to check the difference between Drift and Intercom, too.

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The highlight of Zendesk’s ticketing software is its omnichannel-ality (omnichannality?). Whether agents are facing customers via chat, email, social media, or good old-fashioned phone, they can keep it all confined to a single, easy-to-navigate dashboard. That not only saves them the headache of having to constantly switch between dashboards while streamlining resolution processes—it also leads to better customer and agent experience overall. The Intercom versus Zendesk conundrum is probably the greatest problem in the customer support tools world. They both offer some state-of-the-art core functionality and numerous unusual features.

Both of these platforms provide different packages, features, and benefits that may help your team delight your customers and aid in your team’s success. Intercom is a customer messaging platform that enables businesses to engage with customers through personalized and real-time communication. While the company is smaller than Zendesk, Intercom has earned a reputation for building high-quality customer service software. The company’s products include a messaging platform, knowledge base tools, and an analytics dashboard. Many businesses choose to work with Intercom because of its focus on personalization and flexibility, allowing companies to completely customize their customer service experience.

Brian Kale, the head of customer success at Bank Novo, describes how Zendesk helped Bank Novo boost productivity and streamline service. Sendcloud adopted these solutions to replace siloed systems like Intercom and a local voice support provider in favor of unified, omnichannel support. 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. Altogether, this can significantly impact affordability in the long term. 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.

Whether or not agents are logged in, the bot will always be there to help. A great customer experience starts with a fully integrated ticketing system. It’s the go-to place for questions, requests, and concerns from customers. And it provides you with complete information about each customer so that you can offer personalized support.

Intercom vs Zendesk features & functionality

When an agent clicks on a conversation, the full conversation history populates the middle screen. Intercom wins the reporting and analytics category due to its unique visualization and display formats for contact center and article data. 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. 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. Behavior-based messaging allows you to customize every last detail of triggers and rules including–which channel sends the message, when it sends, where it sends, and who gets targeted.

Now that we’ve covered a bit of background on both Zendesk and Intercom, let’s dive into the features each platform offers. Honestly, when it comes to Zendesk, it is not the most modern tool out there. If I had to describe Intercom’s help desk, I would say it’s rather a complementary tool to their chat tools. It’s great, it’s convenient, zendesk vs. intercom it’s not nearly as advanced as the one by Zendesk. While doing my research for this article, I’ve not only tested both Intercom and Zendesk myself, but also read a pile of different articles, comparisons, guides, showdowns and all this kind of stuff. What really struck me though is that people seemed to like Zendesk more.

What makes Intercom stand out from the crowd are their chatbots and lots of chat automation features that can be very helpful for your team. You can integrate different apps (like Google Meet or Stripe among others) with your messenger and make it a high end point for your customers. Zendesk is another popular customer service, support, and sales platform that enables clients to connect and engage with their customers in seconds. Just like Intercom, Zendesk can also integrate with multiple messaging platforms and ensure that your business never misses out on a support opportunity. Intercom is a customer support messenger, bot, and live chat service provider that empowers its clients to provide instant support in real-time. 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.

There’s even on-the-spot translation built right in, which is extremely helpful. What can be really inconvenient about Zendesk is how their tools integrate with each other when you need to use them simultaneously. The Zendesk chat tool has most of the necessary features like shortcuts (saved responses), automated triggers, and live chat analytics. Intercom is more sales- and customer relationship-oriented, while Zendesk has everything a customer support representative can dream about.

Zendesk can be more flexible and predictable in this area as you can buy different tools separately (or even use their limited versions for free). The cheapest (aka Essential) ‘All of Intercom’ package will cost you $136 per month, but if you only need their essential chat tools only, you https://www.metadialog.com/ can get them for $49 per month. As I’ve already mentioned, they started as a help desk/ticketing tool, and honestly, they perfected every bit of it over the years. Before you make your choice, check out Messagely’s features and compare them to discover which platform is best for you.

• Intercom’s solution offers several use cases, meaning the product’s investments and success resources have a broad focus.
• If a customer isn’t satisfied with Answer Bot’s response, Answer Bot quickly routes them to an agent best suited to help.
• It’s great, it’s convenient, it’s not nearly as advanced as the one by Zendesk.
• Basically, you can create new articles, divide them by categories and sections — make it a high end destination for customers when they have questions or issues.
• Here, we’ve outlined the support options that Intercom and Zendesk provide to companies using their platforms.

Customers can search the help center by query keywords and sort through articles in 40 languages. 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. See how our customer service solutions bring an ease to the customer experience. There’s plenty of information about customer support and ticketing software options.

Its chat widget looks and works great, and it put a lot of effort into making Intercom a modern, user-friendly tool to communicate with customers. Make it easy for your customers to find the answers they need, when they need them. With Intercom’s central answering system, you can optimize for all channels – website, mobile app, in-product messages, or chat.

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. To sum things up, Zendesk is a great customer support oriented tool which will be a great choice for big teams with various departments.