Zendesk vs Intercom: In-Depth Features & Price Comparison

It makes sure that you don’t miss a single inquiry by queuing tickets for agent handling. You can configure it to assign tickets using various methods, such as skills, load balancing, and round-robin to ensure efficient handling. If you’re already using Intercom and want to continue using it as the front-end CRM experience, integrating with Zendesk can improve it. If a title has been Chat GPT set for a conversation it will use this to populate the resulting Zendesk ticket title. Zendesk is a ticketing system before anything else, and its ticketing functionality is overwhelming in the best possible way. Sure, you can have a front desk—but you don’t necessarily have to plunk down the cost it would take to buy that desk, train an employee, and add them to your payroll.

Intercom feels modern and is more client-success-oriented, but it can be too costly for smaller companies. 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 platform 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. Pipedrive also has security measures baked into its solution, offering SSO for its users. Pipedrive also includes lead management features like automatic lead nurturing, labeling, and bulk imports.

• 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 excels in traditional ticket management and offers a robust set of feature.
• Since, its name has become somewhat synonymous with customer service and support.

When it comes to utility, Zendesk’s utility may not be as robust as a pure CRM solution. However, customers do have the option to go to Zendesk Sell for a more robust experience. Considering all the features of Zendesk, including robust ticketing, messaging, a help center, and chatbots, we can say that Zendesk excels in being the top customer support platform. 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.

Similar to Zendesk, Intercom’s pricing reserves its most powerful automations for higher-paying customers, the good news is that Fin AI comes with all plans. They fall within roughly the same price range, that most SMEs and larger enterprises should find within their budget. Both also use a two-pronged pricing system, based https://chat.openai.com/ on the number of agents/seats and the level of features needed. As the name suggests, it’s a more sales-oriented solution with robust contact and deal management tools as well. With this data, businesses identify friction points where the customer journey breaks down as well as areas where it’s performing smoothly.

This guarantees continuous omnichannel support that meets customer expectations. So, you see, it’s okay to feel dizzy when comparing Intercom vs Zendesk. Given that we’re neither Intercom nor Zendesk, we ourselves were curious to see how these two titans of customer service differ. Utilizing modern CRM software can help your sales team boost their productivity and sales performance. We hope that this Intercom VS Zendesk comparison helps you choose one that matches your support, marketing, and sales needs. But in case you are in search of something beyond these two, then ProProfs Chat can be an option.

However, Pipedrive does not include native desktop text messaging features. One user noted that, in some cases, it can take Pipedrive at least eight hours to populate saved leads, making it difficult to quickly communicate with hot leads. Today, where instant gratification is not just desired but expected, the role of FAQ software in businesses is akin to having a personal assistant for each customer. If your business requires a centralized platform to manage a high volume of customer inquiries across various channels, Zendesk is a solid choice.

Customers want speed, anticipation, and a hyper-personalized experience conveniently on their channel of choice. Intelligence has become key to delivering the kinds of experiences customers expect at a lower operational cost. As more organizations adopt AI, it will be critical to choose a data model that aligns with how your business operates. Customer experience will be no exception, and AI models that are purpose-built for CX lead to better results at scale. In a nutshell, none of the customer support software companies provide decent user assistance. Whether you’ve just started searching for a customer support tool or have been using one for a while, chances are you know about Zendesk and Intercom.

Essential Plan

This is fine, as not every customer support team wants to be so available on the phone. Intercom has a full suite of email marketing tools, although they are part of a pricier package. With Intercom, you get email features like targeted and personalized outbound emailing, dynamic content fields, and an email-to-inbox forwarding feature. Email marketing, for example, is a big deal, but less so when it comes to customer service. Still, for either of these platforms to have some email marketing or other email functionality is common sense.

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. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. That way, your sales team won’t have to worry about manually updating these changes as they work through a deal. Zendesk helps you manage and update your leads, analyze your pipeline, and create customizable reports on the go with our mobile CRM app.

How to Integrate Webhooks with Zendesk

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. After this, you’ll have to set up your workflows, personalizing your tickets and storing them by topic. You can then add automations and triggers, such as automatically closing a ticket or sending a message to a user.

It also supports email and other channels – like Whatsapp, SMS, social media channels and more, through integrations. But its core strength lies in providing a seamless, conversational experience for customers. Intercom generally has the edge when it comes to user interface and design.

On the other hand, if you need something that is more tailored to your customer base and is less expensive, then Intercom might be a better fit. 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. One of the things that sets Zendesk apart from other customer service software providers is its focus on design. The company’s products are built with an emphasis on simplicity and usability. This has helped to make Zendesk one of the most popular customer service software platforms on the market.

Step 3. Using Custom Actions in Intercom

The software allows agents to switch between tickets seamlessly, leading to better customer satisfaction. Whether an agent wants to transition from live chat to phone or email with a customer, it’s all possible on the same ticketing page. Zendesk wins the major category of help desk and ticketing system software.

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 you’re choosing the right tool that can help you do this, Zendesk and Intercom are two popular names that are likely to come up.

The Zendesk sales CRM hits all of the functions you’d expect from CRM software, like reporting and analytics tools that can deliver key sales metrics with pre-built dashboards right out of the box. On top of that, you can use drag-and-drop widgets to create custom CRM reports with the data most important to your goals. With Pipedrive, users have access to visual reporting dashboards, but adding custom fields is limited to their Professional, Power, and Enterprise plans. Zendesk would be a perfect option for businesses that are searching for a well-integrated support system. It offers a suite that compiles help desk, live chat, and knowledge base to their user base.

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. When you switch from Zendesk, you can also create dynamic macros to speed up your response time to common queries, like feature requests and bug reports.

The Suite Team plan, priced at $69 per agent, adds features like live chat and messaging, while the Suite Growth plan at $115 per agent introduces automation and advanced analytics. The top-tier Suite Professional plan, available at $149 per agent, provides the full range of Zendesk’s capabilities, including custom reporting, advanced AI features, and enterprise-grade support. When comparing Zendesk and Intercom, it’s essential to understand their core features and their differences to choose the right solution for your customer support needs. These include ticketing, chatbots, and automation capabilities, to name just a few.Here’s a side-by-side comparison to help you identify the strengths and weaknesses of each platform. 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.

Zendesk vs Intercom: all the functionalities in a glance

You get call recording, muting and holding, conference calling, and call blocking. Zendesk also offers callback requests, call monitoring and call quality notifications, among other telephone tools. There is a simple email integration tool for whatever email provider you regularly use. This gets you unlimited email addresses and email templates in both text form and HTML. As for Intercom’s general pricing structure, there are three plans, but you’ll have to contact them to get exact prices.

Although quite functional, Zendesk’s interface can sometimes feel a bit dated compared to other helpdesks. While it is designed to help support agents be efficient,  it might not be as visually appealing or intuitive for users who aren’t very tech-savvy. Intercom also offers extensive integrations with over 350 tools that include Salesforce, HubSpot, Google Analytics, Amplitude, Zoho, JIRA, and more.

This enables them to speed up the support process and build experiences that customers like. 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. ThriveDesk empowers small businesses to manage real-time customer communications. Intercom is better for smaller companies that are looking for a simple and capable customer service platform. Instead, using it and setting it up is very easy, and very advanced chatbots and predictive tools are included to boost your customer service.

Zendesk has sales forecasting features that leverage previous sales data to help predict future outcomes, including revenue growth, cash flow, and the likelihood of winning a deal. This data can help eliminate unwanted surprises and give your sales team valuable insights to improve their strategy. Pipedrive uses historical data to help predict cash flow and provide performance metrics for your sales team.

If you’ve already set up macros in Zendesk just copy and paste them over. With ThriveDesk, you can supercharge your website’s growth and streamline customer interactions like never before. In terms of G2 ratings, Zendesk and Intercom are both well-rated platforms. Zendesk has a rating of 4.3 intercom to zendesk out of 5 stars, based on over 5,600 reviews. Intercom has a rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars, based on over 2700 reviews. While both Zendesk and Intercom are great and robust platforms, none of them are able to provide you with the same value Messagely gives you at such an  affordable price.

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. Intercom offers an easy way to nurture your qualified leads (prospects) into customers with Intercom Series. In general, Zendesk offers a wide range of live chat features such as customizable chat widgets, automatic greetings, offline messaging, and chat triggers.

It’s divided into about 20 topics with dozens of articles each, so navigating through it can be complicated. 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. When it comes to Intercom, it reserves SSO and identity management for its higher-priced tier plan as an add-on. Discover how this Shopify store used Tidio to offer better service, recover carts, and boost sales. Many use cases call for different approaches, and Zendesk and Intercom are but two software solutions for each case.

And while many other chatbots take forever to set up, you can set up your first chatbot in under five minutes. However, if you’re looking for a streamlined, all-in-one messaging platform, there is no better option than Messagely. You don’t have to pay per contact on your database, and you there are many free features you can use.

Since Zendesk has many features, it takes a while to learn how to use the options you’ll be needing. Zendesk has over 150,000 customer accounts from 160 countries and territories. They have offices all around the world including countries such as Mexico City, Tokyo, New York, Paris, Singapore, São Paulo, London, and Dublin. Zendesk and Intercom each have their own marketplace/app store where users can find all the integrations for each platform. Learn more about the differences between leading chat support solutions Intercom and Zendesk so that you can choose the right tool for your needs. Boost your lead gen and sales funnels with Flows – no-code automation paths that trigger at crucial moments in the customer journey.

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. 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.

If you don’t plan on building a huge enterprise just yet, we have to give the edge to Zendesk when it comes to flexible pricing options. So, the actual pricing of Intercom would depend on whether or not you’re going to need their AI features – the AI Copilot and AI Agent. The AI Copilot is limited to assisting ten conversations per support agent and for anything more, it costs $35 per month per agent. 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.

It also provides seamless navigation between a unified inbox, teams, and customer interactions, while putting all the most important information right at your fingertips. This makes it easy for teams to prioritize tasks, stay aligned, and deliver superior service. Aura AI also excels in simplifying complex tasks by collecting data conversationally and automating intricate processes.

Intercom isn’t as great with sales, but it allows for better communication. With Intercom, you can keep track of your customers and what they do on your website in real time. Like Zendesk, Intercom allows you to chat with online visitors and assist with their issues. Zendesk chat allows you to talk with your visitors in real time through a small chat bar at the bottom of your site.

Founded in 2007, Zendesk started as a ticketing tool for customer success teams. Later, they started adding all kinds of other features, like live chat for customer conversations. 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.

Its robust workflows streamline the ticket resolution system and efficiently handle all customer complaints. It also enables agents to perform customized workflow management, assign tickets to the right agent for request handling, and track the ticket’s progress. There are many features to help bigger customer service teams collaborate more effectively, such as private notes or a real-time view of who’s handling a given ticket at the moment.

In summary, choosing Zendesk and Intercom hinges on your business’s unique requirements and priorities. If you seek a comprehensive customer support solution with a strong emphasis on traditional ticketing, Zendesk is a solid choice, particularly for smaller to mid-sized businesses. If you are looking for a comprehensive customer support solution with a wide range of features, Zendesk is a good option. Both Zendesk and Intercom have AI capabilities that deserve special mention. Zendesk’s AI (Fin) helps with automated responses, ensuring your customers get quick answers.

The Zendesk marketplace is also where you can get a lot of great add-ons. There are also several different Shopify integrations to choose from, as well as CRM integrations like HubSpot and Salesforce. The learning and knowledgebase category is another one where it is a close call between Zendesk and Intercom. However, we will say that Intercom just edges past Zendesk when it comes to self-service resources.

This scalability allows organizations to adapt their support operations to their expanding customer base. Higher-tier plans in Zendesk come packed with advanced functionalities such as chatbots, customizable knowledge bases, and performance dashboards. These features can add significant value for businesses aiming to implement more sophisticated support capabilities as they scale.

Check out this tutorial to import ticket types and tickets data into your Intercom workspace. Rest assured, ThriveDesk’s lightweight design and speed won’t impact the performance of your Wix-powered eCommerce website. The optimized agent interface ensures rapid responses for maximum efficiency, all while keeping your website running smoothly. It can team up with tools like Salesforce and Slack, so everything runs smoothly.

Zendesk and Intercom offer a free trial of 14 days, but you will eventually have to choose once the trial ends. The pricing strategies are covered below so you can analyze the pricing structure and select your customer service software. Its ability to scale with the businesses makes it an attractive option for growing companies. Its customizable options enable businesses to quickly gain value from its features by enhancing agility.

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. ThriveDesk is a help desk software tailor-made for businesses seeking extensive features and a powerful yet simple live chat assistant. Even better, it’s the most cost-effective, lightweight, and speedy live chat solution available for Shopify business owners. Zendesk receives positive feedback for its intuitive interface, wide range of integrations, and robust reporting tools. However, some users find customization challenging, and the platform is considered expensive, requiring careful cost evaluation.

While some of these functionalities related to AI are included in the Zendesk suite, others are part of advanced AI add-ons. If agents want to offer their customers a great experience, they can spend an additional $50 to have the AI add-on. These weaknesses are not as significant as the features and functionalities Zendesk offers its users. The Essential customer support plan for individuals, startups, and businsses costs $39. This plan includes a shared inbox, unlimited articles, proactive support, and basic automation.

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. Triggers should prove especially useful for agents, allowing them to do things like automate notifications for actions like ticket assignments, ticket closing/reopening, or new ticket creation. Their template triggers are fairly limited with only seven options, but they do enable users to create new custom triggers, which can be a game-changer for agents with more complex workflows.

Let’s look at how help desk features are represented in our examinees’ solutions. Zendesk provides its partners with quality support and educational resources, including online training and certification programs, helping turn any salesperson into a Zendesk expert. Conversely, some Pipedrive users have issues working with Pipedrive, with users describing their support and onboarding experiences as slow and limited. Compared to Intercom, Zendesk’s pricing starts at $49/month, which is still understandable but not meant for startups looking for affordable pricing plans. These plans are not inclusive of the add-ons or access to all integrations. Once you add them all to the picture, their existing plans can turn out to be quite expensive.