Zendesk vs Intercom: Which is better?

Because Intercom started as a live chat service, its messenger functionality is very robust. It feels very modern, and Intercom offers some advanced messenger features that Zendesk does not. 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.

When agents don’t have to waste time toggling between different systems and tools to access the customer details they need, they can deliver faster, more personalized customer service. However, the right fit for your business will depend on your particular needs and budget. If you’re looking for a comprehensive solution with lots of features and integrations, then Zendesk would be a good choice. 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. Intercom’s pricing typically includes different plans designed to accommodate businesses of various sizes and needs.

We regularly check all servers and make advancements, so that your business data is safe according to the fresh standards. With thousands of outstanding data imports done by our service, Help Desk migration service has earned plenty of service-connected awards and inspiring feedback. We proceed to get better our solution and move forward novel capacity to cover we’re involving most of your import and export inquirements. Use HubSpot Service Hub to provide seamless, fast, and delightful customer service. For small companies and startups, Zendesk offers a six-month free trial of up to 50 agents redeemable for any combination of Zendesk Support and Sell products.

Make every CX decision a data-driven one.

Help Desk Migration has an amazing Free Demo Migration that brings immense value. With this feature, you can effortlessly test the migration and get a sneak peek of the results beforehand. During the demo, our Migration Wizard smoothly transfers a sample of 20 random conversations and articles to Intercom. You also have the option to go for a Custom Demo, where you can specify the exact conversation and article IDs you want to migrate. 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.

Transfer effortlessly your ticket side conversations while moving from Zendesk. During the data migration, these conversations will be imported as private comments into your new helpdesk. Whether you’re migrating from Zendesk to Intercom, use our automated migration solution. It will permit you to migrate all your data to a future platform in just a couple of clicks. Thus, you will be able to have your import or export done in a timely fashion without putting pivotal tasks on the shelf. With ThriveDesk, you can supercharge your website’s growth and streamline customer interactions like never before.

While Intercom offers a free trial, it’s important to note that the cost can increase as you scale and add more features or users. However, it’s essential to consider the strengths of Zendesk, which offers a comprehensive and versatile customer support platform. While Intercom excels in certain aspects of customer communication, Zendesk offers its own set of strengths that cater to different aspects of customer support and engagement. Intercom is praised as an affordable option with high customization capabilities, allowing businesses to create a personalized support experience. Although the interface may require a learning curve, users find the platform effective and functional. However, Intercom has fewer integration options than Zendesk, which may limit its capabilities for businesses seeking extensive integrations.

The two essential things that Zendesk lacks in comparison to Intercom are in-app messages and email marketing tools. On the other hand, Intercom lacks many ticketing functionality that can be essential for big companies with a huge client support load. Intercom’s solution offers several use cases, meaning the product’s investments and success resources have a broad focus. But this also means the customer experience ROI tends to be lower than what it would be if you went with a best-in-class solution like Zendesk. In 2023, conversational messaging will play an essential role in customer service.

When comparing Zendesk and Intercom, Zendesk stands out with its robust and versatile customer support solutions. It offers a comprehensive platform for managing customer inquiries and support tickets across multiple channels, providing businesses with a powerful toolset for customer service management. Zendesk’s extensive feature set and customizable workflows are particularly appealing to organizations looking to streamline and scale their customer support operations efficiently. Determining whether Zendesk is better than Intercom hinges on your unique customer support and engagement requirements. Zendesk excels as a robust and versatile customer support platform, offering comprehensive tools for managing customer inquiries and support operations across various channels. If your business values a feature-rich and customizable solution for customer interactions, Zendesk may be the better choice.

Zendesk is distinguished by its robust and versatile customer support solutions. It provides a comprehensive platform for managing customer inquiries, support tickets, and interactions across multiple channels. On the other hand, Intercom shines in its focus on conversational engagement and real-time communication with customers. It offers a chat-first approach, making it ideal for companies looking to prioritize interactive and personalized customer interactions.

Send conversations to Zendesk from your Inbox

Every Zendesk installation is set up differently to match each organization’s own process for managing companies, contacts, tickets and related data. Some objects are easier to transfer than others, depending on how similar they are between https://chat.openai.com/. For example, transferring companies is relatively easy, as both platforms have a similar concept of a company object with similar fields. Tickets have dependencies on other objects and chronological items like ticket comments that need to be preserved during the transfer.

Once connected, you can add Zendesk Support to your inbox, and start creating Zendesk tickets from Intercom conversations. In terms of pricing, Intercom is considered one of the most expensive tools on the market. 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.

These include inline images, knowledge base attachments, CC in tickets, and “Created at” dates for tickets and comments. However, aside from these limitations, you have the freedom to transfer as much help desk and knowledge base data as you need to Intercom. So, rest assured, you can smoothly transition most of your valuable information. HubSpot helps seamlessly integrate customer service tools that you and your team already leverage. Picking customer service software to run your business is not a decision you make lightly.

You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. What’s more, only your company representatives with admin rights can import your Zendesk records. Easily track your service team’s performance and unlock coaching opportunities with AI-powered insights. 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. All plans come with a 7-day free trial, and no credit card is required to sign up for the trial.

• The company’s products include a ticketing system, live chat software, knowledge base software, and a customer satisfaction survey tool.
• However, it’s essential to recognize that Zendesk has its own array of strengths, particularly in its comprehensive and versatile customer support platform.
• 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.

It really shines in its modern messenger interface, making real-time chat a breeze. Its multichannel support is more focused on engaging customers through its chat and messaging systems, including mobile carousels and interactive communication tools. However, compared to Zendesk, Intercom might not offer the same breadth in terms of integrating a wide range of external channels. While it excels in interactive and engaging communication, especially on mobile, some businesses might find its focus on chat-based interfaces limiting if they need extensive email or voice call support.

Designed for all kinds of businesses, from small startups to giant enterprises, it’s the secret weapon that keeps customers happy. 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 Chat PG model is designed to provide continuous, real-time solutions to clients, enhancing the overall reliability and responsiveness of Hivers’ services. Choose Zendesk for a scalable, team-size-based pricing model and Intercom for initial low-cost access with flexibility in adding advanced features.

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. On the other hand, Intercom’s AI-powered chatbots and messaging are designed to enhance your marketing and sales efforts, giving you an edge in the competitive market. When comparing Zendesk and Intercom, evaluating their core features and functionalities is essential to determine which platform best suits your organization’s customer support needs. Let’s explore how Zendesk and Intercom stack up in terms of basic functionalities required by a helpdesk software. Gain valuable insights with Intercom’s analytics and reporting capabilities.

This has helped to make Zendesk one of the most popular customer service software platforms on the market. Both Zendesk and Intercom are standout performers when it comes to providing comprehensive multi channel support, catering to diverse customer needs. Zendesk offers a versatile array of communication channels, including email, chat, social media, phone, and web forms.

View your users’ Zendesk tickets in Intercom and create new ones directly from conversations. 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.

Connect with customers wherever they are for timely assistance and personalized experiences. In a nutshell, none of the customer support software companies provide decent assistance for users. But it’s designed so well that you really enjoy staying in their inbox and communicating with clients. Intercom live chat is modern, smooth, and has many advanced features that other chat tools don’t. It’s highly customizable, too, so you can adjust it according to your website or product’s style.

If you are currently using Zendesk as your customer support platform, you might be wondering how to switch to Intercom and transfer your existing historical customer data. Migrating from one platform to another can be a complicated and time-consuming process, especially if you have a lot of data and customizations in your Zendesk account. In general, Zendesk offers a wide range of live chat features such as customizable chat widgets, automatic greetings, offline messaging, and chat triggers. In addition to these features, Intercom offers messaging automation and real-time visitor insights.

Though the Intercom chat window says that their customer success team typically replies in a few hours, don’t expect to receive any real answer in chat for at least a couple of days. Say what you will, but Intercom’s design and overall user experience leave all its competitors far behind. If I had to describe Intercom’s helpdesk, I would say it’s rather a complementary tool to their chat tools. Just like Zendesk, Intercom also offers its Operator bot, which will automatically suggest relevant articles to clients right in a chat widget. So you see, it’s okay to feel dizzy when comparing Zendesk vs Intercom platforms.

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. The decision to choose a customer support platform should be based on a careful evaluation of your organization’s unique requirements, customer interaction channels, scalability needs, and budget constraints. While Zendesk offers a comprehensive set of features, other platforms may excel in certain areas or provide more tailored solutions that align better with your customer support strategy and objectives. Zendesk and Intercom offer help desk management solutions to their users. Intercom also offers scalability within its pricing plans, enabling businesses to upgrade to higher tiers as their support needs grow.

The company was founded in 2011 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California. Intercom’s products are used by over 25,000 customers, from small tech startups to large enterprises. In the realm of automation and workflow management, Zendesk truly shines as a frontrunner.

But we doubled down and created a truly full-service CX solution capable of handling any support request. Here are our top reporting and analytics features and an overview of where Intercom’s reporting limitations lie. 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. Intercom does just enough that smaller businesses could use it as a standalone CRM or supplement it with a simpler CRM at a lower pricing tier, but bigger companies may not be satisfied with Intercom alone.

But this solution is great because it’s an all-in-one tool with a modern live chat widget, allowing you to easily improve your customer experiences. At the same time, Zendesk looks slightly outdated and can’t offer some features. The decision to choose a customer support platform should be based on a careful evaluation of your organization’s unique needs, customer interaction channels, scalability requirements, and budget constraints. 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. While the company is smaller than Zendesk, Intercom has earned a reputation for building high-quality customer service software.

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But the company’s story isn’t just one of pandemic-induced change—in the first half of the year, Novo’s client base grew from 2,000 to tens of thousands. 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. Whether you’re starting fresh with Intercom or migrating from Zendesk, set up is quick and easy. Understanding these fundamental differences should go a long way in helping you pick between the two, but does that mean you can’t use one platform to do what the other does better? These are both still very versatile products, so don’t think you have to get too siloed into a single use case.

Well, I must admit, the tool is gradually transforming from a platform for communicating with users to a tool that helps you automate every aspect of your routine. We have numerous customers that do this and benefit greatly from our out-of-the-box integration with Intercom. As customers come closer to purchasing, they often find themselves weighing the same pros and cons.

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. For instance, Intercom can guide a new software user through each feature step by step, providing context and assistance along the way. In contrast, Zendesk primarily relies on a knowledge base, housing articles, FAQs, and self-help resources. While this resource center can reduce the dependency on agent assistance, it lacks the interactive element found in Intercom’s onboarding process. When comparing the pricing of Zendesk and Intercom, there are significant differences to take into account.

Intercom has a different approach, one that’s all about sales, marketing, and personalized messaging. Intercom has your back if you’re looking to supercharge your sales efforts. It’s like having a toolkit for lead generation, customer segmentation, and crafting highly personalized messages. This makes it an excellent choice if you want to engage with support and potential and existing customers in real time.

What Zendesk Offers:

An example of the platforms’ different focus is that Intercom includes an email marketing feature, whereas Zendesk doesn’t. With its robust ticketing system, versatile automation capabilities, and extensive reporting tools, Zendesk empowers businesses to handle customer inquiries effectively and improve support efficiency. It’s best used when you need a centralized platform to manage customer support operations, whether through email, chat, social media, or phone.

Those same tools also increase customer retention by 27% while saving 23% on sales and marketing costs. Experience the comprehensive power of Intercom for effective customer communication, automation, support tools, integrations, and analytics. So, get ready for an insightful journey through the landscapes of Zendesk and Intercom, where support excellence converges with AI innovation. Moreover, for users who require more dedicated and personalized support, Zendesk charges an additional premium.

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.

Migrating your Zendesk help content to Intercom Articles is a simple and fast process that does not require any custom development. You can use the Intercom Articles feature to automatically import all of your published articles from Zendesk and organize them into collections that match your existing knowledge base structure. Just browse to Articles within your Intercom dashboard, and click “Migrate from Zendesk”. There will be no sync between Zendesk and Intercom, so changes in Zendesk won’t be reflected in Intercom. To prepare your Zendesk account for migration, take the time to assess and refine your data. Once ready, schedule the migration, create a checklist for configuring settings, disable the source tool, and set up Intercom to match your requirements.

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. These are just some of the factors that can affect the migration process from Zendesk to Intercom. There may be other aspects that are specific to your business or industry that need to be considered as well.

Compare Zendesk versus Intercom to determine who will be the best partner for your business at every phase of the customer journey. Currently based in Albuquerque, NM, Bryce Emley holds an MFA in Creative Writing from NC State and nearly a decade of writing and editing experience. When he isn’t writing content, poetry, or creative nonfiction, he enjoys traveling, baking, playing music, reliving his barista days in his own kitchen, camping, and being bad at carpentry. Intercom does have a ticketing dashboard that has omnichannel functionality, much like Zendesk. Though Zendesk now considers itself to be a “service-first CRM company,” since its founding in 2007, their bread and butter offering has leaned much more heavily toward the “service” part of that equation.

As you dive deeper into the world of customer support and engagement, you’ll discover that zendesk and intercom offer some distinctive features that set them apart. Let’s explore these unique offerings and see how they can benefit your business. 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.

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 need a complete customer service platform that’s seamlessly integrated and AI-enhanced. You can create articles, share them internally, group them for users, and assign them as responses for bots—all pretty standard fare. Intercom can even integrate with Zendesk and other sources to import past help center content. I just found Zendesk’s help center to be slightly better integrated into their workflows and more customizable.

Help Desk Migration service fulfills to upmost security principles, providing utmost greatest security for your records. We are compliant with HIPAA, CCPA, PCI DSS Level 1, GDPR, and other key data safety principles. Rescue yourself from the challenging task of adding wanted record types or data entities throughout Zendesk to Intercom migration. Our service greenlights you map fields and modify your data import and export.