Intercom vs Zendesk: Comparison and Alternatives

If these features are important for your business, you may want to consider Intercom over Zendesk. For example, if a user has been navigating your website for a few minutes, it can trigger an in-app message asking the user if they require assistance. Since the user is spending a considerable amount of time on your site, it is more likely that they will engage with your business and potentially become a customer. You can also follow up with customers after they have left the chat and qualify them based on your answers.

Simplicity is an important consideration when selecting the best customer service software. Having easy-to-use software is far more controllable and saves time whether you’re a tiny and growing business or a massive multinational. Intercom is ideal for personalized messaging, while Zendesk offers robust ticket management and self-service options. 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.

Zendesk has a slight edge when it comes to ticketing, but Intercom’s automation makes up for it

Its no-code email automation features also make it beginner friendly, and these features are available for free. You can also connect your HubSpot account to email providers such as Gmail and Microsoft intercom versus zendesk 365. However, remember HubSpot’s email send limits, which can hamper high-volume campaigns. Intercom also has a custom mobile app for its platform that has a nicely designed user interface.

• For example, Artis makes a free Intercom integration for Freshdesk, which lets you access Intercom customer data inside Freshdesk tickets.
• With chatbots, you can generate leads to hand over to your sales team and solve common customer queries without the need of a customer service representative behind a keyboard.
• Zendesk’s security features and sales capabilities are known as some of the most advanced in the industry.
• In this paragraph, let’s explain some common issues that users usually ask about when choosing between Zendesk and Intercom platforms.
• These premium support services can range in cost, typically between $1,500 and $2,800.

Intercom offers a simplistic dashboard with a detailed view of all customer details in one place. Operators will find its dashboard quite beneficial as it will take them seconds to find necessary features during an ongoing chat with the customers. 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. Hivers offers round-the-clock proactive support across all its plans, ensuring that no matter the time or issue, expert assistance is always available.

Is Zendesk better than HubSpot?

They offer an omnichannel live chat solution that integrates with multiple messaging platforms and marketing channels and even automates incoming support processes with bots. It is quite the all-rounder as it even has a help center and ticketing system that completes its omnichannel support cycle. We make it easy for anyone within your company to access contextual customer information—including their conversation and purchase history—to provide better experiences. In fact, the Zendesk Marketplace has 1,300+ apps and integrations, from billing software to marketing automation tools. 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.

All these features are necessary for operational efficiency and help agents deliver fast, personalized customer experiences. 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 agents don’t have to waste time toggling between different systems and tools to access the customer details they need, they can deliver faster, more personalized customer service. FreshChat is a customer messaging software built specifically for sales, marketing, and customer representative teams. This software allows representatives to interact with leads and customers on different platforms like their website, mobile app, or social media pages.

In fact, Zoom is the world’s fastest-growing company and uses Ada to automate 70% of their sales inquiries via our conversational marketing tool Ada Engage. Intercom does not offer a virtual call center tool, so it is unable to handle calls through a cloud-based phone system or calling app on its own. However, you can connect Intercom with over 20 compatible phone and video integrations.

Intercom

Likewise, Effy makes a Freshdesk integration for Intercom, which is also free. This lets you do many things, like create Freshdesk tickets inside the Intercom platform. You can peruse the entire marketplace by category, ranging from CRM, marketing, e-commerce, and agent productivity tools.

What’s really nice about this is that even within a ticket, you can switch between communication modes without changing views. 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. Intercom does regular reporting on conversation volume, and you also get reporting drill-downs. More advanced plans get you real-time reporting and more customization with your analytic metrics. Both of these software solutions offer great automation and workflow features.

Kustomer is a customer messaging software that manages high support demands by enhancing experiences throughout a customer’s service journey. These features demonstrate that Ada is the most flexible platform available, especially for SMEs or eCommerce businesses, at a fraction of the cost. The company launched its platform last 2016, and as of today, they are one of the most robust AI chatbot software in the industry.

On the other hand, Zendesk’s customer support includes a knowledge base that’s very intuitive and easy to navigate. It divides all articles into a few main topics so you can quickly find the one you’re looking for. 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. Zendesk is among the industry’s best ticketing and customer support software, and most of its additional functionality is icing on the proverbial cake. Intercom, on the other hand, is designed to be more of a complete solution for sales, marketing, and customer relationship nurturing. Intercom also offers a 14-day free trial, after which customers can upgrade to a paid plan or use the basic free plan.

Zendesk vs. Intercom: Features comparison

They’ve been rated as one of the easy live chat solutions with more integrated options. This live chat software provider also enables your business to send proactive chat messages to customers and engage effectively in real-time. This is one of the best ways to qualify high-quality leads for your business and improve your chances of closing a sale faster. If compared to Intercom’s chatbot, Zendesk offers a relatively latest platform that makes support automation possible. So far, the chatbot can transfer chats to agents or resolve less complex queries in seconds. That means all you have to do is add the code to your website and enable it right away.

You can use it for real-time support on the go, letting you chat with customers and stay on top of ticket issues. Intercom employs its signature Fin AI Bot for speedier and more automated customer service needs. You can easily set up targeted bot rules for a conversation routing bot feature. More Intercom workflows take care of handing off conversations to members of your support team. Again, Zendesk has surpassed the number of reviewers when compared to Intercom. Some of the highly-rated features include ticket creation user experience, email to case, and live chat reporting.

If you’re curious about how our team at Ada has helped other enterprises automate 80% of their customer success volume, feel free to get in touch. The Zendesk Suite plans are divided into four options – Team, Growth, Professional, and Enterprise. They also offer slightly discounted rates if you choose to be billed annually. Zendesk’s core feature remains its ticketing system, and its functionality has remained the best in the industry since its inception.

The app includes features like automated messages and conversation routing — so businesses can manage customer conversations more efficiently. Zendesk has an app available for both Android and iOS, which makes it easy to stay connected with customers while on the go. The app includes features like push notifications and real-time customer engagement — so businesses can respond quickly to customer inquiries.

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. After this live chat software comparison, you’ll get a better picture of what’s better for your business. 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. Choosing the right customer service platform is pivotal for enhancing business-client interactions.

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. Every single bit of business SaaS in the world needs to leverage the efficiency power of workflows and automation. 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. There is a simple email integration tool for whatever email provider you regularly use.

While both offer a wide number of integration options, Zendesk wins the top spot in this category. 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. When it comes to the design and simplicity of the software for customer use, Zendesk’s interface is somewhat antiquated and cluttered, especially when it comes to customizing the chat widget. It can be classified as a chatbox for average users, just like the ones found on a variety of websites.