Zendesk vs Intercom: A comprehensive comparison guide

But with perks like more advanced chatbots, automation, and lead management capabilities, Intercom could have an edge for many users. 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. 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 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. Both Zendesk and Intercom are customer support management solutions that offer features like ticket management, live chat and messaging, automation workflows, knowledge centers, and analytics. Zendesk has traditionally been more focused on customer support management, while Intercom has been more focused on live support solutions like its chat solution.

Intercom also has a mobile app available for both Android and iOS, which makes it easy to stay connected with customers even when away from the computer. The app includes features like automated messages and conversation routing — so businesses can manage customer conversations more efficiently. Intercom also offers a 14-day free trial, after which customers can upgrade to a paid plan or use the basic free plan. Unlike Zendesk, the prices for Intercom are based on the number of seats and contacts, with each plan tailored to each customer, meaning that the pricing can be quite flexible. This is especially helpful for smaller businesses that may not need a lot of features. Intercom is a customer relationship management (CRM) software company that provides a suite of tools for managing customer interactions.

We commit to the fresh requirements, run constant advancements, and consistently audit all facilities. While Intercom does not offer free trials, they do offer demo versions of each plan. Administrator reports allow managers to observe real-time CSAT scores, conversation volume, first response time, and time to close. Below, we’ve compared the usability of Zendesk’s and Intercom’s agent dashboards and administrator controls. Survey composer allows you to create the question and answer format, also customizing color, rating scales, and greetings.

Workflows From Zapier Users

Agents can use the desktop chatbox to respond to customers in any outbound channel. Zendesk for Sales, or Zendesk Sell, is Zendesk’s sales pipeline and CRM tool with its own dashboard for lead generation and conversion. With so many solutions to choose from, finding the right option for your business can feel like an uphill battle.

Likewise, give us the credentials to your Zendesk profile to set the target your database should be moved to. As soon as our migration tool gets to the data export destination point, it is prepared to migrate your customer data and all the rest. Our thoroughly picked out crew is always prepared to respond to your queries. Our specialists consider the details given out during the transfer process strictly confidential. The foundation of our migration services is determined by guarding your ticketing data and ensuring an ideal experience. Be it ticketing software or loads of trustworthy experience of help desk – we have got the know-how in the current data migration procedure.

Ultimately, it’s important to consider what features each platform offers before making a decision, as well as their pricing options and customer support policies. Since both are such well-established market leader companies, you can rest assured that whichever one you choose will offer a quality customer service solution. The company’s products include a ticketing system, live chat software, knowledge base software, and a customer satisfaction survey tool. Zendesk also offers a number of integrations with third-party applications. The customer support platform starts at just $5 per agent per month, which is a very basic customer support tool. If you want dashboard reporting and integrations, you’ll need to pay $19 per agent per month.

Customer stories: Learn why so many businesses are choosing Zendesk

You can then add automations and triggers, such as automatically closing a ticket or sending a message to a user. 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.

At all tiers, there is an additional fee to work with a member of the Zendesk success team on unique engagements. Once your Demo Migration is complete, review the migration results table to see which records were migrated, failed, or skipped. To ensure everything migrated correctly, download the reports and copy the record IDs to check. The skipped and failed records reports will show the reason for unsuccessful transfers. Additionally, only users with admin rights can export your Intercom information.

Intercom’s user interface is also quite straightforward and easy to understand; it includes a range of features such as live chat, messaging campaigns, and automation workflows. Additionally, the https://chat.openai.com/ platform allows for customizations such as customized user flows and onboarding experiences. Completing the migration in a definite time frames requires a more robust data migration software.

• Since Intercom is so intuitive, the time you’ll need to spend training new users on how to interact with the platform is greatly reduced.
• Zendesk also has an Answer Bot, which instantly takes your knowledge base game to the next level.
• Before you start, you’ll need to retrieve your Zendesk credentials and create a Zendesk API key.
• Here are our top reporting and analytics features and an overview of where Intercom’s reporting limitations lie.

In terms of pricing, Intercom is considered one of the most expensive tools on the market. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. 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. Zendesk is a ticketing system before anything else, and its ticketing functionality is overwhelming in the best possible way. They’ve been marketing themselves as a messaging platform right from the beginning. Whether you’re starting fresh with Intercom or migrating from Zendesk, set up is quick and easy. Before you make your choice, check out Messagely’s features and compare them to discover which platform is best for you.

Zendesk’s mission is to build software designed to improve customer relationships. From the inbox, live agents and chatbots can refer to and link knowledge base articles, to elaborate on replies and help customers locate answers. 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?).

With only the Enterprise tier offering round-the-clock email, phone, and chat help, Zendesk support is sharply separated by tiers. The service was excellent, during all the steps of the transition we felt taken care of and monitored perfectly. Help Desk Migration accomplishes to top security principles, providing maximum safety for your business data.

You are all set as soon as pre-finalized trial stage checks out – And now you can set off with the complete Zendesk import process. We do, however, urge you to consider an off-peak period to start the transfer. When you are ready with the creation of import structure – provide the specific form of permissions to your help desk platform to get the necessary data. This stage is unavoidable since, otherwise, we won’t be able to retrieve the data from your Intercom. Without an knowledgeable, rational, and skilled IT team – the challenge of importing data can really be hard.

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). 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.

Create code-free screencast tours of products, websites, webpages, and applications within your website. When you migrate your articles from Zendesk, intercom to zendesk we’ll retain your organizational structure for you. We’ll even flag any content you need to review and give you advice on how to fix it.

However, if you’re looking for a streamlined, all-in-one messaging platform, there is no better option than Messagely. Chat agents also get a comprehensive look at their entire customer’s journey, so they will have a better idea of what your customers need, without needing to ask many questions. Since Intercom doesn’t offer a CRM, its pricing is divided into basic messaging and messaging with automations. You can also contact Zendesk support 24/7, whereas Intercom support only has live agents during business hours. Both Zendesk and Intercom have their own “app stores” where users can find all of the integrations for each platform.

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. G2 ranks Intercom higher than Zendesk for ease of setup, and support quality—so you can expect a smooth transition, effortless onboarding, and continuous success.

Zendesk vs. Intercom: Head to Head Comparison

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. Messagely also provides you with a shared inbox so anyone from your team can follow up with your users, regardless of who the user was in contact with first. You can also follow up with customers after they have left the chat and qualify them based on your answers.

You can use it for customer support, but that’s not its core strength. The Zendesk Support app gives you access to live Intercom customer data in Zendesk, and lets you create new tickets in Zendesk directly from Intercom conversations. This gives your team the context they need to provide fast and excellent support. Why don’t you try something equally powerful yet more affordable, like HelpCrunch?

Its sales CRM software starts at $19 per month per user, but you’ll have to pay $49 to get Zapier integrations and $99 for Hubspot integrations. Finally, you can pay $199 per month per user for unlimited sales pipelines and advanced reporting along with other features. 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. We insist on our customers to test the performance of our migration tool beforehand. Thus, you may perform a series of tests before ending your transition. This step will let you detect the incorrect settings or note anything that is in the wrong place that our team of professionals can evaluate and correct in no time.

I was able to get responses to virtually every question each time I was asking within a few hours, even considering the time zones. I appreciated the constant follow-up that I received from the Account Managers at Help Desk Migration. Employing Help Desk Migration tool, don’t worry about safety of valuable data.

You can even improve efficiency and transparency by setting up task sequences, defining sales triggers, and strategizing with advanced forecasting and reporting tools. Starting at $19 per user per month, it’s also on the cheaper end of the spectrum compared to high-end CRMs like ActiveCampaign and HubSpot. Using this, agents can chat across teams within a ticket via email, Slack, or Zendesk’s ticketing system.

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. Overall, Zendesk empowers businesses to deliver exceptional customer support experiences across channels, making it a popular choice for enhancing support operations. Check out our list of unified communications providers for more information.

If you’re not ready to make the full switch to Intercom just yet, you can integrate Intercom with your Zendesk account. This will provide live data on who your users are and what they do in your app. Intercom’s solution offers several use cases, meaning the product’s investments and success resources have a broad focus.

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. Intercom feels more wholesome and is more client-success-oriented, but it can be too costly for smaller companies. What can be really inconvenient about Zendesk is how their tools integrate with each other when you need to use them simultaneously. Besides, the prices differ depending on the company’s size and specific needs. We conducted a little study of our own and found that all Intercom users share different amounts of money they pay for the plans, which can reach over $1000/mo. The price levels can even be much higher if we’re talking of a larger company.

Zendesk wins the self-service tools category because it provides extensive help center customization options. 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. Self-service tools let customers resolve their own issues quickly and 24/7, improving satisfaction and reducing excessive agent workload. The ticket display’s Side Conversations tab allows agents to initiate internal conversations via email, Slack, or ticketing system notes–without leaving the ticket.

However, you need to learn how to avoid the net of endless requirements. Our unique technique will gather every small detail of the data throughout the migration to Zendesk. Chat PG Migration Wizard is a cloud-based SaaS that doesn’t require installation. Also, you can share the access to Demo or Full Data Migration with your team member or customer.

The Agent Workspace highlights tickets based on the issue and urgency, assigning each one a priority–agents can also tag tickets based on recency, hold-vs-open status, and urgency. With Zapier, you can integrate everything from basic data entry to end-to-end processes. Here are some of the business-critical workflows that people automate with Zapier. Yes, you can localize the Messenger to work with multiple languages, resolve conversations automatically in multiple languages and support multiple languages in your Help Center. After switching to Intercom, you can start training Custom Answers for Fin right away by importing your historic data from Zendesk.

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. When visitors click on it, they’ll be directed to one of your customer service teammates. 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.

The fast and personalized service can be the reason for your customers to … 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. 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. Zendesk wins the omnichannel capabilities category because it offers voice as a service, which we think is absolutely critical.

What better way to start a Zendesk vs. Intercom than to compare their features? Whether you’re a small startup or a large enterprise, understanding the differences and strengths of Zendesk vs Intercom will empower you to take an informed decision. At Help Desk Migration, we follow all the necessary security standards to safeguard your data during the transfer. We have implemented both organizational and technical measures to ensure your data security. Honestly, I was really pleasantly surprised by how responsive the company is.

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. 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.

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. You could technically consider Intercom a CRM, but it’s really more of a customer-focused communication product. It isn’t as adept at purer sales tasks like lead management, list engagement, advanced reporting, forecasting, and workflow management as you’d expect a more complete CRM to be.