Compare Zendesk vs Intercom vs Freshdesk vs Help Scout

Plus, its intuitive user interface and comprehensive analytics help you track customer interactions and gain valuable insights into their behavior. With Gist, you can provide the kind of exceptional customer service that will keep them coming back for more. Intercom’s three pricing plans—service, sales, and marketing—show that the platform works for several types of users, each modifying a similar set of features to meet the needs of different teams—i.e. As experts in customer service, we have worked and tested many live chat and helpdesk platforms. That’s why we wanted to make a comparison of these tools with the goal of helping you decide which one would be a good choice for your business.

Zendesk is well-known in the industry as a large tool with a number of business solutions, especially when it comes to service and sales. Zendesk offers a basic plan that is affordable and will suit my needs. However, I do recommend Intercom for eCommerce stores that may need to integrate the features with their store. Zendesk Chat shows up as a chat bar docked at the bottom of your site. One of these differences is the ability for agents to connect to customers through their own apps versus using a collaboration feature. When we compare Intercom and Zendesk, we realize that both the tools are quite expensive and may not be the right option for startups or small businesses, or for that matter, any business on a budget.

The 14 Best Zendesk Competitors and Alternatives

Intercom assists with the onboarding and retention of customers through targeted email and in-app messages triggered by time or behavior. Therefore, if you happen to have Zoho CRM and want to integrate your chat feature with it, you should go with Zendesk. It should be noted that Intercom can integrate with Zendesk, so if there are Zendesk products that you like, aside from the chat feature, you can still use those. Therefore, Intercom may be a better fit for larger businesses with multiple agents helping people.

• Intercom offers call center features for your business via add-ons.
• Installing such widgets allows the company to streamline the process of initially engaging with the knowledge base.
• When I see companies using Help Scout, I can’t help but just feel connected to them – just like that, they feel like a friend.
• There are even automations to help with things like SLAs, or service level agreements, to do things like send out notifications when headlights are due.
• It has essential features like help desk automation, chat tools, customer feedback surveys, and a knowledge base.
• I’ll dive into their chatbots more later, but their bot automation features are also stronger.

Other customer service add-ons with Zendesk include custom training and professional services. Users can benefit from using Intercom’s CX platform and AI software as a standalone tool for business messaging. 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. 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?).

Zendesk or Intercom: Team communication

For any help desk software to succeed, the dashboard interface is extremely crucial. Whether it is about organizing customer issues or communicating with team members, dashboards can make an impactful difference. Intercom can be a good choice for medium to large businesses that wish to go for aesthetics/user experience over pricing as the tool is quite heavily priced.

• The script will need to align with the data mapping document and account for system rate limits.
• Let’s look one more time at the main features Intercom and Zendesk offer, so we can leave you with the product that ultimately fits your business’ needs the best.
• There is a really useful one for Shopify to provide customer support for e-commerce operations.
• With Skyvia import you can use data filtering, perform data transformations, and many more.
• While they like the ease of use this product offers its users, they’ve indeed rated them low in terms of services.
• I just found Zendesk’s help center to be slightly better integrated into their workflows and more customizable.

Zendesk chat vs Intercom offers similar chat features but still has a couple of differences. In any case, if you choose Zendesk or Intercom, you get wide chatting possibilities. As an example, Intercom and Zendesk are scored at 8.9 and 9.7, respectively, for all round quality and performance. Similarly, Intercom and Zendesk have a user satisfaction rating of 96% and 98%, respectively, which shows the general satisfaction they get from customers.

Customer Outreach and Engagement That Doesn’t Come at a Premium

This feature is available on all the channels your customers use to get in touch with your brand. Intercom Inbox has features that vaguely remind Zendesk Support, but the offered package Acquire customer (Messages and Inbox) is more paralleled with Zendesk Support + Chat. Intercom offers admin full visibility and control over all company inboxes, as well as agent access controls and role management.

They do have a ton of similarities, but recognizing the differences may help you to make the crucial decision about which one to use for your business. For freelancers and enterprises, Zendesk is likely to be a better fit. The trigger feature reduces cart abandonment and increases conversions. It plans on using this funding to research machine learning technology instead of just lining their own pockets. It is worthwhile to explore the features of both, prior to making a decision on which one you should use. In the duel between Zendesk vs Intercom, it seems that Zendesk chat rises slightly above Intercom.

Popular Intercom Zendesk Integration Scenarios

As for Intercom’s general pricing structure, there are three plans, but you’ll have to contact them to get exact prices. Just three of the reasons we outperform traditional ticketing systems metadialog.com like Zendesk on G2. With over 100,000 customers across all industries and regions, Zendesk knows what it takes to interact with customers while retaining and growing relationships.

If you’re looking for a Zendesk alternative that’s easy to use and cost-effective, Groove might be a great fit for your business. Front is an all-in-one customer service platform that helps teams provide personalized and efficient customer service. With Front, you can manage different channels from one central hub, allowing teams to quickly respond to inquiries and collaborate with each other for a streamlined workflow. Additionally, Front allows customers to self-serve with its self-service portal feature which can be customized to match your brand’s look and feel. However, if you are looking for Zendesk features such as live chat, chatbots, etc then Jetdocs is not the platform for you. Jetdocs excels at B2B ticketing experience with features tailored for such an environment but lacks some aspects the B2C & D2C companies require.

What is the purpose of a knowledge base?

You can opt for code via JavaScript or Rails or even integrate directly with the likes of Google Tag Manager, WordPress, or Shopify. Richpanel is another Zendesk alternative that is designed for eCommerce businesses. What this means is that, unlike Zendesk, Richpanel does not require you to cherry-pick customizations and features that suit you.

• Combined with data accessible to your fingertips, Crisp helps you to personalize each interaction on every channel to build the best customer experience possible.
• Pricing starts at $39 and varies based on the number of records you want to migrate.
• Honestly, on the first look, Intercom’s pricing structure is confusing and can leave anyone scratching their heads.
• With Crisp, you’ll be able to engage with customers in meaningful ways – from automated conversations to one-on-one interactions.
• In addition, many customers have reported being directed towards a never-ending search through help articles rather than receiving direct assistance from a human representative.
• So, for some small businesses, this may lead to considerable cost reduction.