Switching from Zendesk to Intercom Help Center

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. The former is one of the oldest and most reliable solutions on the market, while the latter sets the bar high in terms of innovative and out-of-the-box features. One place Intercom really shines as a standalone CRM is its data utility.

As for Intercom’s general pricing structure, there are three plans, but you’ll have to contact them to get exact prices. Zendesk is designed with the agent in mind, delivering a modern, intuitive experience. The customizable Zendesk Agent Workspace enables reps to work within a single browser tab with one-click navigation across any channel. Intercom, on the other hand, can be a complicated system, creating a steep learning curve for new users. Test any of HelpCrunch pricing plans for free for 14 days and see our tools in action right away. 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.

Zendesk, just like its competitor, offers a knowledge base solution that is easy to customize. Their users can create a knowledge repository to create articles or edit existing ones as per the changes in the services or product. It also provides detailed reports on how each self-help article performs in your knowledge base and helps you identify how each piece can be improved further.

This unpredictability in pricing might lead to higher costs, especially for larger companies. While it offers a range of advanced features, the overall costs and potential inconsistencies in support could be a concern for some businesses​​​​. It really shines in its modern messenger interface, making real-time chat a breeze.

Additionally, the platform allows for customizations such as customized user flows and onboarding experiences. That said, Team doesn’t have a lot of extra customization for its price, and you might want to consider jumping straight to the next tier. All of Zendesk Sell’s plans include task and appointment setting too. When our team of testers tried the task-list feature firsthand, they loved its versatility and found it really user-friendly. If you are looking for more integration options and budget is not an issue, Intercom can be the perfect live chat solution for your business. It is also ideal for businesses who are searching for conversational chatbot functionality.

Zendesk is angled more for managing customer support, while Intercom is better for managing customer relationships

While Intercom is primarily a support solution, it does have add-ons that offer other functionalities such as product tours. Zendesk is renowned for its comprehensive toolset that aids in automating customer service workflows and fine-tuning chatbot interactions. Its strengths are prominently seen in multi-channel support, with effective email, social media, and live chat integrations, coupled with a robust internal knowledge base for agent support. Zendesk, unlike Intercom, is a more affordable and predictable customer service platform. Also, it’s the pioneer in the support and communication tools market. You can always count on it if you need a reliable customer support platform to process tickets, support users, and get advanced reporting.

There is also something called warm transfers, which let one rep add contextual notes to a ticket before transferring it to another rep. You also get a side conversation tool. A customer service department is only as good as its support team members, and these highly-prized employees need to rely on one another. Tools that allow support agents to communicate and collaborate are important aspect of customer service software. 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.

While they like the ease of use this product offers its users, they’ve indeed rated them low in terms of services. Zendesk also offers a straightforward interface to operators that helps them identify the entire interaction pathway with the customers. Compared to being detailed, Zendesk gives a tough competition to Intercom. Operators can easily switch from one conversation to another, therefore helping operators manage more interactions simultaneously. 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.

You’ll also have access to a full featured mobile CRM on your smartphone, so you can improve productivity while on the go. Whether it’s peer-to-peer, internal-to-external, or tool-to-tool, Zendesk makes all types of collaboration easy. 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.

It also includes extensive integrations with over 350 CRM, email, ticketing, and reporting tools. The platform is recognized for its ability to resolve a significant portion of common questions automatically, ensuring faster response times. 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. This method helps offer more personalized support as well as get faster response and resolution times. They have a dedicated help section that provides instructions on how to set up and effectively use Intercom.

Intercom offers just over 450 integrations, which can make it less cost-effective and more complex to customize the software and adapt to new use cases as you scale. The platform also lacks transparency in displaying reviews, install counts, and purpose-built customer https://chat.openai.com/ service integrations. So when it comes to chatting features, the choice is not really Intercom vs Zendesk. The latter offers a chat widget that is simple, outdated, and limited in customization options, while the former puts all of its resources into its messenger.

Zendesk vs. Intercom: A brief overview

Intercom’s large series of bots obviously run on automations as well. As mentioned before, the bot builder is a visual drag-and-drop system that requires no coding knowledge; this is also how other basic workflows are designed. The more expensive Intercom plans offer AI-powered content cues, triage, and conversation insights. 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. Your typical Zendesk review will often praise the platform’s simplicity and affordability, as well as its constant updates and rolling out of new features, like Zendesk Sunshine.

Just like Intercom, Zendesk’s customer service is quite disappointing. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. The only relief is that they do reach out to customers, but it gets too late. In terms of customer service, Zendesk fails to deliver an exceptional experience. This can be a bummer for many as they can always stumble upon an issue. One of the most significant downsides of Intercom is its customer support.

This packs all resolution information into a single ticket, so there’s no extra searching or backtracking needed to bring a ticket through to resolution, even if it involves multiple agents. 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. Again, Salesforce is an even more popular option for sales, but when you compare Salesforce and Zendesk, the Salesforce price is a bit intimidating. Freshsales is a good alternative in the same price range and offers a bit more when it comes to features.

Below you’ll find the best Intercom alternatives for different use cases. This guide will help you choose the right apps for your business from the more than 1,200 available on the Marketplace. Yes, you can install the Messenger on your iOS or Android app so customers can get in touch from your mobile app. 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. If you’ve already set up macros in Zendesk just copy and paste them over. Once connected, you can add Zendesk Support to your Help Desk, and start creating Zendesk tickets from Intercom conversations.

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. If you’re already using Intercom and want to continue using it as the front-end CRM experience, integrating with Zendesk can improve it. Yes, Zendesk has an Intercom integration that you can find in the Zendesk Marketplace—it’s free to install.

They both offer some state-of-the-art core functionality and numerous unusual features. Broken down into custom, resolution, and task bots, these can go a long way in taking repetitive tasks off agents’ plates. 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).

Zendesk also offers a sales pipeline feature through its Zendesk Sell product. You can set up email sequences that specify how and when leads and contacts are engaged. With Zendesk Sell, you can also customize how deals move through your pipeline by setting pipeline stages that reflect your sales cycle. When comparing the automation and AI features of Zendesk and Intercom, both platforms come with unique strengths and weaknesses. The offers that appear on the website are from software companies from which CRM.org receives compensation.

Intercom offers an integrated knowledge base functionality to its user base. Using the existing knowledge base functionality, they can display self-help articles in the chat window before the customer approaches your team for support. You can create these knowledge base articles in your target audience’s native language as their software is multilingual. Intercom, on the other hand, excels in providing a seamless customer service experience by merging automation with human support. Its proactive support features, unified inbox, and customizable bots are highly beneficial for businesses looking to engage customers dynamically and manage conversations effortlessly. Zendesk is an AI-powered service solution that’s easy to set up, use, and scale.

Zendesk is a great option for large companies or companies that are looking for a very strong sales and customer service platform. It offers more support features and includes more advanced analytics and reports. 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. Multilingual content and other advanced features come with a $49 price per agent per month. Intercom’s UI excels in modern design and intuitive functionality, particularly noted for its real-time messaging and advanced features.

Like with many other apps, Zapier seems to be the best and most simple way to connect Intercom to Zendesk. Intercom’s native mobile apps are good for iOS, Android, React Native, and Cordova, while Zendesk only has mobile apps for iPhones, iPads, and Android devices. As for the category of voice and phone features, Zendesk is a clear winner.

While Zendesk features are plenty, someone using it for the first time can find it overwhelming. With over 160,000 customers across all industries and regions, Zendesk has the CX expertise to provide you with best practices and thought leadership to increase your overall value. But don’t just take our word for it—listen to what customers say about why they picked Zendesk. In terms of pricing, Intercom is considered one of the most expensive tools on the market. Yes, you can integrate the Intercom solution into your Zendesk account. It will allow you to leverage some Intercom capabilities while keeping your account at the time-tested platform.

It is used by businesses to simplify their email support and provide automated customer service. The ProProfs Live Chat Editorial Team is a passionate group of customer service experts dedicated to empowering your live chat experiences with top-notch content. We stay ahead of the curve on trends, tackle technical hurdles, and provide practical tips to boost your business. With our commitment to quality and integrity, you can be confident you’re getting the most reliable resources to enhance your customer support initiatives. Pop-up chat, in-app messaging, and notifications are some of the highly-rated features of this live chat software.

Since Zendesk has many features, it takes a while to learn how to use the options you’ll be needing. If I had to describe Intercom’s help desk, I would say it’s rather a complementary tool to their chat tools. It’s great, it’s convenient, it’s not nearly as advanced Chat GPT as the one by Zendesk. They have a 2-day SLA, no phone support, and the times I have had to work with them they have been incredibly difficult to work with. Very rarely do they understand the issue (mostly with Explore) that I am trying to communicate to them.

But they also add features like automatic meeting booking (in the Convert package), and their custom inbox rules and workflows just feel a little more, well, custom. I’ll dive into their chatbots more later, but their bot automation features are also stronger. Zendesk is popular due to its user-friendly interface, extensive customization options, scalability, multichannel support, robust analytics, and seamless integration capabilities. These features make it suitable for businesses of all sizes, helping them streamline their support operations and enhance the overall customer experience. 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.

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. Intercom has more customization features for features like bots, themes, triggers, and funnels. This service helps businesses create online call centers built into Zendesk CRM.

Some of the highly-rated features include ticket creation user experience, email to case, and live chat reporting. 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. 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.

As with just about any customer support software, you can easily view standard user data within the messenger related to customer journey—things like recent pages viewed, activity, or contact information. 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.

However, additional costs for advanced features can quickly increase the total expense. When comparing the reporting and analytics features of Zendesk and Intercom, both platforms offer robust tools, but with distinct focuses and functionalities. Key offerings include automated support with help center articles, a messenger-first ticketing system, and a powerful inbox to centralize customer queries.

What makes Intercom stand out from the crowd are their chatbots and lots of chat automation features that can be very helpful for your team. You can integrate different apps (like Google Meet or Stripe among others) with your messenger and make it a high end point for your customers. Intercom offers an easy way to nurture your qualified leads (prospects) into customers with Intercom Series. Now that we’ve discussed the customer service-focused features of Zendesk and Intercom, let’s turn our attention to how these platforms can support sales and marketing efforts.

Intercom users often mention how impressed they are with its ease of use and their ability to quickly create useful tasks and set up automations. Even reviewers who hadn’t used the platform highlight how beautifully designed it is and how simple it is to interact with for both users and clients alike. Intercom works with any website or web-based product and aims to be your one-way stop for all of your customer communication needs.

Once you add them all to the picture, their existing plans can turn out to be quite expensive. The ProProfs Live Chat Editorial Team is a diverse group of professionals passionate about customer support and engagement. We update you on the latest trends, dive into technical topics, and offer insights to elevate your business.

And once you do, you can place it in The Zendesk Marketplace for all Zendesk customers to find. Yes, you can support multiple brands or businesses from a single Help Desk, while ensuring the Messenger is a perfect match for each of your different domains. 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.

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. You can use both Zendesk and Intercom simultaneously to leverage their respective strengths and provide comprehensive customer support across different channels and touchpoints.

With a multi-channel ticketing system, Zendesk Support helps you and your team to know exactly who you’re talking to and keep track of tickets throughout all channels without losing context. The setup is designed to seamlessly connect your customer support team with customers across all platforms. This feature ensures that each customer request is handled by the best-suited agent, improving the overall efficiency of the support team.

So when I realized lots of companies actually prefer Zendesk over Intercom, I was surprised. I mean I stumbled upon this article where people from Outreach.io were telling why they’d switched from Intercom to Zendesk, then I saw this comparison, where Zendesk seemed to beat Intercom at the end. Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page. 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.

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. Both Zendesk and Intercom have their own “app stores” where users can find all of the integrations for each platform. Although Zendesk isn’t hard to use, it’s not a perfectly smooth experience either. Users report feeling as though the interface is outdated and cluttered and complain about how long it takes to set up new features and customize existing ones.

How easy it is to program a chatbot and how effective a chatbot is at assisting human reps is an important factor for this category. Intercom bills itself first and foremost as a platform to make the business of customer service more personalized, among other things. They offer an advanced feature for customer data management that goes beyond basic CRM stuff. It gives detailed contact profiles enriched by company data, behavioral data, conversation data, and other custom fields. Zendesk wins the major category of help desk and ticketing system software. It lets customers reach out via messaging, a live chat tool, voice, and social media.

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. Both Zendesk and Intercom offer compelling features and capabilities aimed at improving customer service through efficient ticketing systems.

Zendesk and Intercom both have an editor preview feature that makes it easier to add images, videos, call-to-action buttons, and interactive guides to your help articles. If you’re running a business, you’d know that occasional disruptions to your products or services are inevitable…. When comparing the user interfaces (UI) of Zendesk and Intercom, both platforms exhibit distinct characteristics and strengths catering to different user preferences and needs. Intercom, on the other hand, is ideal for those focusing on CRM capabilities and personalized customer interactions. Many use cases call for different approaches, and Zendesk and Intercom are but two software solutions for each case. The Zendesk marketplace is also where you can get a lot of great add-ons.

Our main testing categories for CRM systems are:

It integrates customer support, sales, and marketing communications, aiming to improve client relationships. Known for its scalability, Zendesk is suitable for various business sizes, from startups to large corporations. Zendesk also offers digital support during business hours, and their website has a chatbot. Premiere Zendesk plans have 24/7 proactive support with faster response times. Other customer service add-ons with Zendesk include custom training and professional services.

When it comes to which company is the better fit for your business, there’s no clear answer. It really depends on what features you need and what type of customer service strategy you plan to implement. When it comes to sales, though, Zendesk Sell doesn’t cut the mustard. It lacks the overall functional of other, better options, while costing more for certain plans.

• Pricing for both services varies based on the specific needs and scale of your business.
• Now that we’ve covered a bit of background on both Zendesk and Intercom, let’s dive into the features each platform offers.
• Zendesk provides limited customer support for its basic plan users, along with costly premium assistance options.

Hivers offers round-the-clock proactive support across all its plans, ensuring that no matter the time or issue, expert assistance is always available. This 24/7 support model is designed to provide continuous, real-time solutions to clients, enhancing the overall reliability and responsiveness of Hivers’ services. The primary function of Intercom’s mobile app is the business messenger suite, including personalized messaging, real-time support tools, push notifications, in-app messaging and emailing.

There are also several different Shopify integrations to choose from, as well as CRM integrations like HubSpot and Salesforce. No matter what Zendesk Suite plan you are on, you get workflow triggers, which are simple business rules-based actions to streamline many tasks. Intercom’s dashboards may not be as aesthetically pleasing as Zendesk’s, but they still allow users to navigate their tools with few distractions.

Intercom offers reporting and analytics tools with limited capabilities for custom reporting, user behavior metrics, and advanced visualization. It also lacks advanced features like collaboration reporting, custom metrics, metric correlation, and drill-in attribution. Intercom does not have a dedicated workforce management solution, zendesk and intercom either. As a result, customers can implement the help desk software quickly—without the need for developers—and see a faster return on investment. Plus, our transparent pricing doesn’t have hidden fees or endless add-ons, so customers know exactly what they’re paying for and can calculate the total cost of ownership ahead of time.

When choosing a solution to replace Intercom, make sure it offers the features you need and is priced to meet your budget. You can collect ticket data from customers when they fill out the ticket, update them manually as you handle the conversation. View your users’ Zendesk tickets in Intercom and create new ones directly from conversations.

Its ability to seamlessly integrate with various applications further amplifies its versatility. Choosing the right customer service platform is pivotal for enhancing business-client interactions. In this context, Zendesk and Intercom emerge as key contenders, each offering distinct features tailored to dynamic customer service environments. Intercom, of course, allows its customer support team to collaborate and communicate too, but overall, Zendesk wins this group.

• You can also follow up with customers after they have left the chat and qualify them based on your answers.
• Its intuitive messenger can help your business boost engagement and improve sales and marketing efforts.
• Even reviewers who hadn’t used the platform highlight how beautifully designed it is and how simple it is to interact with for both users and clients alike.
• Intercom is a customer support messenger, bot, and live chat service provider that empowers its clients to provide instant support in real-time.

With a very streamlined design, Intercom’s interface is far better than many alternatives, including Zendesk. It has a very intuitive design that goes far beyond its platform and into its articles, product guides, and even its illustrations. Users also point out that it can take a couple of hours to get used to the flow of tickets, which doesn’t happen in CRM, and they aren’t pleased with the product’s downtime.

Their AI-powered chatbot can enable your business to boost engagement and improve marketing efforts in real-time. They offer an omnichannel 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.