Zendesk vs Intercom: Which is better? 2023

So yeah, all the features talk actually brings us to the most sacred question — the question of pricing. You’d probably want to know how much it costs to get each of the platforms for your business, so let’s talk money now. You can publish your self-service resources, divide them by categories, and integrate them with your messenger to accelerate the whole chat experience. With a very streamlined design, Intercom’s interface is far better than many alternatives, including Zendesk.

By exploring their distinct offerings, we aim to assist businesses in making informed decisions when selecting a customer service platform. For $395/month the Pro tier allows up to 5 users and eliminates the volume restriction. This tier provides everything a small or medium-sized business will need, including better ticket management and advanced workflow automation tools. Intercom’s app store has popular integrations for things like WhatsApp, Stripe, Instagram, and Slack. There is a really useful one for Shopify to provide customer support for e-commerce operations. HubSpot and Salesforce are also available when support needs to work with marketing and sales teams.

Best Reamaze Alternative Tools for Customer Support in 2023

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. 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. You can create dozens of articles in a simple, intuitive WYSIWYG text editor, divide them by categories and sections, and customize with your custom themes.

• So, communicating with customers on different communication channels would be difficult on Intercom.
• And with email, SMS, and more, they can also pick whatever channel works best.
• Talking about the Intercom, it has flexible pricing plans that its experts can help adjust as per your requirements to match contacts and number of seats.
• Chatbots are automated customer support tools that can assist with low-level ticket triage and ticket routing in real-time.

I just found Zendesk’s help center to be slightly better integrated into their workflows and more customizable. Broken down into custom, resolution, and task bots, these can go a long way in taking repetitive tasks off agents’ plates. 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. From there, you can include FAQs, announcements, and article guides and then save them into pre-set lists for your customers to explore. You can even moderate user content to leverage your customer community.

Intercom, on the other hand, was built for business messaging, so communication is one of their strong suits. Combine that with their prowess in automation and sales solutions, and you’ve got a really strong product that can handle myriad customer relationship needs. Zendesk also packs some pretty potent tools into their platform, so you can empower your agents to do what they do with less repetition. Agents can use basic automation (like auto-closing tickets or setting auto-responses), apply list organization to stay on top of their tasks, or set up triggers to keep tickets moving automatically.

Help center

It puts an emphasis on being proactive with customers by sending them targeted messages and setting up automation rules. Even though it might not have as many ticket management features as Zendesk, Intercom is known for being easy to use and having a clean, easy-to-understand interface. Zendesk is well-known for its powerful ticket management system, which gives businesses a complete way to handle customer questions and requests for help.

• If you’re looking for automation, plans can become quite expensive depending on the level of automation you require.
• This saves your customers time when finding solutions and reduces the workload of your support agents.
• Messagely’s chatbots are powerful tools for qualifying and converting leads while your team is otherwise occupied or away.
• Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to communicate with your customers.

When they do respond, they’re usually unhelpful or want to immediately transfer you to the sales department. That being said the customer support for both Zendesk and Intercom is lacking. Whatever you think of Intercom’s design and general user experience, you can’t deny that it outperforms all of its competitors.

Resolve complex issues more efficiently with tickets designed to keep the conversation going. Intercom is fully integrated, omnichannel, and easy to use—so you can deliver quality, conversational support from start to finish. Zendesk raised their prices without improving their product—frustrating customers who struggle to justify further investments. Before you make your choice, check out Messagely’s features and compare them to discover which platform is best for you. Messagely pulls together all of the information about the customer contacting you and gives your representatives information on each interaction they’ve had with them, all within a streamlined platform. This way, your clients will never have to repeat themselves or get frustrated because their new representative doesn’t know their background.

You can opt for code via JavaScript or Rails or even integrate directly with the likes of Google Tag Manager, WordPress, or Shopify. Overall, I actually liked Zendesk’s user experience better than Intercom’s in terms of its messaging dashboard. Intercom has a dark mode that I think many people will appreciate, and I wouldn’t say it’s lacking in any way. But I like that Zendesk just feels slightly cleaner, has easy online/away toggling, more visual customer journey notes, and a handy widget for exploring the knowledge base on the fly.

Its $99 bracket includes advanced options, such as customer satisfaction prediction and multi-brand support, and in the $199 bracket, you also get advanced security and other very advanced features. Depending on your needs, you can set up Intercom on your website or mobile app and add your automations. Setting up Intercom help centers is also very easy and intuitive, with no previous knowledge required. 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)?

Intercom, on the other hand, focuses on chat-based customer service and engagement. With its built-in live chat feature, businesses can help their customers right away. Intercom also has a knowledge base and help articles for people who want to help themselves.

Omnichannel messaging

Intercom allows visitors to search for and view articles from the messenger widget. Customers won’t need to leave your app or website to find the help they need.Zendesk, on the other hand, will redirect the customer to a new web page. Intercom does not offer a native call center tool, so it cannot handle calls through a cloud-based phone system or calling app on its own. However, you can connect Intercom with over 40 compatible phone and video integrations.

It provides clients with a quality in-app help experience for a variety of mobile apps and mobile games. App users can receive immediate in-app help with automated solutions for simple to complex issues. A few of HelpShift’s known clients are Square, Supercell, Tencent, Brex, Niantic, TBS/TNT, and other platforms in the mobile gaming industry. LiveAgent is a help desk software that allows clients to interact with their customers through personalized conversations, all at a reasonable price. The platform provides its users a live chat application, versatile ticketing management, and easy-to-navigate self-service portals. Zendesk directly competes with Intercom when it comes to integrations.

Zendesk Pros and Cons

This can help your agents determine where they should allocate their time to assist their customers most effectively. Zendesk is your best bet if you’re looking for a virtual call center solution, and you won’t be disappointed with the fully functional support platform that it offers. But if you’re already using Intercom, then you can use a compatible integration in order to meet your needs. Their intuitive text editor makes it easy to create new articles, organize them into categories, and customize your knowledge base to match your brand.

This is because they offer many paid add-ons that allow you to customize their platform to meet the needs of your business. However, Intercom offers more customization when it comes to appearance and layout, while Zendesk limits chat widget functionality for those not using their default theme. This allows customers to resolve their own issues quickly, reducing inbound conversation volume and scaling your team’s support capacity.

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. First, you can only talk to the support team if you are a registered user. Winner — Intercom edges out Zendesk here due mainly to its customizable workflow capabilities. Founded in 2011, Intercom has quickly become one of the most versatile and comprehensive customer support tools on the market and they are showing no signs of slowing down.

I’ve used Zendesk and Intercom for managing customer interactions, and I’ve found that each of these platforms has a set of advantages that are unique to themselves. When it comes to efficiently managing support tickets, Zendesk really shines as a solution. The ticketing system that it provides is all-encompassing, providing powerful capabilities that assist in the organisation and management of client inquiries coming from a variety of channels. When it came to streamlining support procedures, I found its defined workflows and precise analytics to be extremely helpful. A helpdesk solution’s user experience and interface are crucial in ensuring efficient and intuitive customer support. Let’s evaluate the user experience and interface of both Zendesk and Intercom, considering factors such as ease of navigation, customization options, and overall intuitiveness.

Imagine having the power to connect your helpdesk solution with a wide range of tools and applications that your team already uses. Whether it’s syncing data with your CRM, enhancing communication via messaging platforms, or automating tasks with productivity apps, Zendesk makes it possible. For businesses looking for a comprehensive customer service and support tool, Zendesk reigns supreme. Its feature offering is second to none and for growing companies, Zendesk scales as well or better than any other customer support platform on the market. Zendesk wins the major category of help desk and ticketing system software.

Read more about Zendesk VS Intercom here.

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