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Zendesk vs Intercom 2024 (Which is Better Customer Service Software?)

While Zendesk and Intercom are both great customer service tools, they do have some key differences. In this comparison article, we’re going to dive into the features, pricing, and customer satisfaction of each software to help you to make the decision.

Zendesk is best for large enterprises looking for all-in-one support software. $49/month per user zendesk.com
Intercom is best for large businesses looking for industry-leading customer service tools. Price on request intercom.com

Which One is Better, Zendesk or Intercom?

The help desk software market is growing more competitive by the day. Two popular options are Intercom and Zendesk. Both have their pros and cons, but which one is better for your business? Here are our three use cases to see which one is better.

Better Features

Based on the number of features, Zendesk is the better option.

Better Price

Zendesk is a more affordable option than Zendesk.

People’s Choice

Based on trusted customer reviews, Intercom is the winner.

Overall Winner:

Zendesk 2-1

Zendesk vs IntercomPros and Cons

Both Intercom and Zendesk have their pros and cons, but one may be a better fit for your company depending on your needs. In this section, we will compare and contrast the pros and cons of both platforms to help you make the best decision for your business.

Zendesk Pros & Cons

Pros:

  • Reliable work-horse for large enterprises
  • All-in-one solution
  • Help Center
  • AI-powered automated answers
  • Email, voice, SMS, and live chat support
  • 1,000+ apps and integrations –
  • Robust APIs
  • Free trial

Cons:

  • Too complex for small businesses and hard to use
  • Confusing pricing plans

Intercom Pros & Cons

Pros:

  • Public help center
  • Intercom messenger
  • Live chat for support
  • Twitter, Facebook and Instagram integration
  • Conversation routing bot
  • Article suggestions bot

Cons:

  • Price only on request
  • Complex for small businesses

Zendesk vs Intercom Price Comparison

Let’s take a look at these two’s pricing plans to see which one offers better pricing.

Zendesk Pricing Plans

Zendesk’s pricing comes in three tiers: Suite Team, Suite Growth, and Suite Professional. Each tier offers various features such as messaging, support channels, AI-powered tools, and dashboards. Users can choose the plan that best fits their needs and budget. Higher tiers offer more advanced features for larger teams with increased support demands. All pricing is based on a per-user per-month cost.

Suite Team — $49 per user per month

  • Industry-leading ticketing system
  • Messaging across web, mobile and social
  • Email, voice, SMS, and live chat support
  • Help Center
  • AI-powered automated answers

Suite Growth — $79 per user per month

  • Self-service customer portal
  • AI-powered knowledge management
  • Customizable ticket layouts
  • Service Level Agreement (SLA) management
  • Multilingual support and content

Suite Professional — $99 per user per month

  • Live agent activity dashboard
  • Integrated community forums
  • Private conversation threads
  • Customizable and shareable dashboards
  • Advanced voice capabilities

Intercom Pricing Plans

Intercom’s pricing comes in three tiers: Support, Engage, and Convert. Each tier includes various features such as live chat for support, team inboxes, help articles, conversational bots, outbound messaging, and meeting booking. Pricing for each tier is available upon request.

Support — Price on request

  • Live chat for support
  • Team inboxes
  • Tickets
  • Help articles
  • Conversational bots
  • Resolution bot

Engage — Price on request

  • Outbound email and in-product messaging
  • Push messages & notifications
  • Custom bots
  • Mobile Carousels
  • Banner messages
  • Salesforce & Marketo integrations

Convert — Price on request

  • Conversational chatbots
  • Live chat for sales
  • Smart lead qualification
  • Multiple team inboxes
  • Automatic meeting booking
  • Conversation routing rules

Zendesk vs Intercom Features Comparison

While these tools share some similarities, there are also some key differences. In this section, we will compare these two software programs’ features and help you decide which one is right for you.

Zendesk Features

Zendesk makes customer service better. Zendesk builds software to meet customer needs, set your team up for success, and keep your business in sync. It’s everything you need, in one powerful package.

  • Ticketing system
  • Live Chat
  • Help Center
  • Voice (call center)
  • AI and chatbots

Ticketing system

A great customer experience starts with a fully integrated ticketing system. It’s the go-to place for questions, requests, and concerns from customers. And it provides you with complete information about each customer so that you can offer personalized support.

  • Email with unlimited addresses: Zendesk’s email integration is ready to use out-of-the-box, and you can create unlimited email addresses. Plus, their customizable HTML and text templates make it easy to brand your communications.
  • Contact form: Place a contact form on your website so customers can reach out to you 24/7.

Live Chat

With Zendesk, you can get messaging that is personalized and engaging right out of the box or customize it to your own liking.

  • Web widget: Support your customers by embedding support onto your website. This will allow them to take actions like submit a ticket or chat with an agent in order to get the help they need quickly and easily.
  • Mobile SDKs: Support your app development for iOS and Android by utilizing Zendesk’s native software kits.
  • Unlimited concurrent chats: Unlike some competitors, Zendesk’s agents can handle multiple chats at the same time.
  • Automatic translation: The dashboard automatically translates conversations (powered by Google Translate).

Help Center

Not only is self-service quick and convenient for customers, but they actually prefer it! That’s why a knowledge base is such an important part of your customer experience strategy. Zendesk’s help center software organizes critical information and empowers both customers and agents with that data.

  • Contextual self-service: With the web widget and mobile SDK, you can embed your help center and suggest relevant articles to your audience.
  • Multilingual content: Give your customers the ability to receive help from you in their own language by localizing your help center into over 40 different languages.
  • Theme customization: You can use themes to unify the look and feel of your help centers, no matter how many products or brands you have.
  • Search: Allow customers to find the answers they need by expanding the help center search to include all relevant resources.

Voice (call center)

Even in this day and age of technology, sometimes the quickest solution is to talk with a real person. Zendesk’s integrated voice solution not only syncs with all other channels but also lets agents have access to customer information as soon as they receive the call. Now that’s what’s called convenience!

  • Voicemail: With automatic voicemail-to-ticket creation, you can easily keep track of customers’ needs and follow up with them promptly. Enable optional voicemail transcription to get a quick overview of why each customer is calling.
  • Text messages: With Zendesk’s easy-to-use messaging system, you can respond to customer inquiries quickly and easily. Automated alerts keep you updated on current issues, and proactive text messages help prevent future problems.
  • Call routing: With Zendesk, you can ensure that your customers will always be able to reach a live agent by routing calls directly to a specific group of agents or sets of groups. You can also route calls received after business hours or when agents are busy to an alternate phone number.
  • Call recording: Recording calls makes it easy to QA, saves time by reference, and shows when troubleshooting.

AI and chatbots

With Zendesk’s AI capabilities, your support team can get answers to customers quickly and efficiently. Whether or not agents are logged in, the bot will always be there to help.

  • Answer Bot AI-powered bot solution: Answer Bot provides instantaneous responses to customer questions by using machine learning to reply immediately with available, relevant information. Answer Bot can deliver answers via email, ticket form, live chat, messaging channels such as Slack or API and/or SDK.
  • Automate interactions: The key to setting up your bot lies in Flow Builder. This tool allows you to direct the conversation between a bot and your customers. Furthermore, you can publish flows in multiple languages without needing any coding knowledge.
  • Intelligent triage: With Zendesk’s advanced AI, you’ll barely have to lift a finger to understand what customers need and how they’re feeling. This way, you can always connect them with the perfect agent for the job.

Intercom Features

Intercom messenger

By adding the Intercom Messenger to your product, app, or website, you’re able to create meaningful engagement with your customers that will result in fruitful relationships.

Inbox

Intercom’s Inbox includes all of the essential features that support teams need to stay organized, collaborate with teammates, and reach more customers efficiently.

Customizable bots

By asking the right questions, Custom Bots prioritize and route new conversations for more efficient support. Chatbots can be tailored specifically to your business needs—connect them to your tech stack, let them automate your workflows, or have them extend your sales and support teams.

Help articles

Make it easy for your customers to find the answers they need, when they need them. With Intercom’s central answering system, you can optimize for all channels – website, mobile app, in-product messages, or chat.

Product tours

Introduce customers to your product with guided experiences that drive adoption. Intercom’s customizable product tours ensure that users get the most out of your product, leading to increased engagement and satisfaction.

Account-based marketing

When potential customers visit your website, greet them with a personalized message so that they can connect with sales while they are most interested.

People’s Choice: Zendesk vs Intercom

One key aspect when comparing these two services is to compare how other customers rate them. Both of the software has multiple trusted reviews so it’s easy to compare which one is better.

Zendesk Reviews

Zendesk has an average of 4.3-star 3rd party reviews (in legit sites like G2 and Capterra). Other customers seem to love it and consider it as a great option for their customer service software needs.

Intercom Reviews

Intercom has an average of 4.4-star 3rd party reviews (in legit sites like G2 and Capterra). Other customers seem to love it and consider it as a great option for their customer service software needs.

Top 10 Customer Support Software

Now it should be clear which platform is better for your needs. In case you’re still not happy with either of them, take a look at this list of the top 10 customer support software that has similar features.

  • #1 Editor’s Choice

1

543 reviews

Best all-in-one customer support software for help desk ticketing.

  • Best price-to-features ratio
  • Used by 10,000+ businesses
  • 15-day free trial

Best 2024

  • 9.6

? Help Scout Offer: 14-Day Free Trial

Help Scout offers a 14-day free trial for all of their available plans. Get your business ticketing system and live chat ready today with Help Scout.

1,170 reviews

Best for Live Chat customer support with fully-fledged customer software add-ons.

  • Affordable ticketing-only plan
  • All-in-one solution
  • Call center support

Excellent

  • 9.4

5,165 reviews

Best for large enterprises looking for an all-in-one customer support solution.

  • Reliable work-horse for large enterprises
  • AI-powered automated answers
  • Email, voice, SMS, and live chat support

Excellent

  • 8.9

3,307 reviews

Best for social media comment management and customer support.

  • #1 platform to connect all social media messages
  • Answer all social media messages in one place
  • Publish social media posts

Very Good

  • 8.8

1,489 reviews

Best for scaling customer support teams that need top-notch features.

  • Custom surveys
  • CRM integrations
  • VoIP calling

Very Good

  • 8.5

176 reviews

Best for minimal & affordable customer service software.

  • Affordable
  • Built-in email marketing
  • Great 3rd party reviews

Good

  • 8.3

2,592 reviews

Best affordable all-in-one customer support solution.

  • 21-day free trial
  • Community forums
  • Social media inquiries to tickets

Good

  • 8.1

1,358 reviews

Best call center customer service software for small and large businesses.

  • Unlimited calling, SMS, & MMS on the Standard plan
  • Ai-powered call and voicemail transcriptions
  • Integrates with Zendesk, Zoho, Hubspot & more

Good

  • 7.8

741 reviews

Best for Gmail-based customer service & help desk software.

  • Works on Gmail
  • Simple & easy-to-use
  • Knowledge base

Good

  • 7.6

484 reviews

Best for solving E-commerce support requests with conversion intent.

  • E-commerce integration (Shopify, Magento, and BigCommerce)
  • Help Center / FAQ
  • Satisfaction survey

Good

  • 7.3

Zendesk vs Intercom Wrap

Choosing the right help desk software can be tricky. There are a lot of factors to consider, and each product has its own unique set of features. In this article, we’ve compared two popular help desk software on the market: Intercom and Zendesk. We’ve looked at both products from a variety of angles, including price, customer support, features, and more.

So, which one is the best? Well, that depends on your needs and budget. Ultimately, it comes down to what works best for you.

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