Zendesk vs Intercom: Choosing the best tool for your business

Given that both of these platforms seem aimed at one sort of market or another, it shouldn’t surprise you that we might find a few gaps in the sorts of services they provide. But it’s also a given that many people will approach their reviews to Zendesk and Intercom with some specific missions in mind, and that’s bound to change how they feel about the platforms. Zendesk also offers a straightforward interface to operators that helps them identify the entire interaction pathway with the customers.

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Agents can use basic automation (like auto-closing tickets or setting auto-responses), apply list organization to stay on top of their tasks, or set up triggers to keep tickets moving automatically. I tested both options (using Zendesk’s Suite Professional trial and Intercom’s Support trial) and found clearly defined differences between the two. Here’s what you need to know about Zendesk vs. Intercom as customer support and relationship management tools.

Get accurate info in the right place, at the right time, save hours on busywork, and align your team — giving them the freedom to focus and achieve more than ever. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. This guide will show you how to connect Intercom and Zendesk to Unito to build your first flow with automated 2-way updates. When a conversation is found in Intercom, create a ticket in Zendesk and keep both in sync.

What is the cost of your Intercom to Zendesk data migration?

You should be prepared for this process to take an extended period of time. We recommend running a small batch of records (say 5%), and using that to project time to completion. The time this ultimately takes is heavily dependent on the rate limits of the platforms, and cannot be overridden by developers. Integrating Intercom with Zendesk can enhance your productivity and streamline your workflow. By connecting these two apps using Appy Pie Connect, powered by AI, you can automate repetitive tasks, reduce manual effort, and achieve better collaboration between teams. Use HubSpot Service Hub to provide seamless, fast, and delightful customer service.

Zendesk and Intercom are robust tools with a wide range of customer service and CRM features. Zendesk’s Help Center and Intercom’s Articles both offer features to easily embed help centers into your website or product using their web widgets, SDKs, and APIs. With help centers in place, it’s easier for your customers to reliably find answers, tips, and other important information in a self-service manner. When it comes to advanced workflows and ticketing systems, Zendesk boasts a more full-featured solution. Due to our intelligent routing capabilities and numerous automated workflows, our users can free up hours to focus on other tasks. In a nutshell, none of the customer support software companies provide decent assistance for users.

Users can benefit from using Intercom’s CX platform and AI software as a standalone tool for business messaging. But to provide a more robust customer experience, businesses may need to consider integrating Intercom’s AI tool with a third-party customer service platform, as it falls short of a full-stack offering. Apps and integrations are critical to creating a 360 view of the customer across the company and ensuring agents have easy access to key customer context. 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.

• If you prioritize real-time messaging and customer engagement, Intercom may be the better option for you.
• Zendesk also has an Answer Bot, which instantly takes your knowledge base game to the next level.
• With the bulk user import option, you can efficiently import users in bulk, ensuring a swift and accurate transfer of data.
• If you thought Zendesk prices were confusing, let me introduce you to the Intercom charges.

They charge for customer service representative seats and people reached, don’t reveal their prices, and offer tons of custom add-ons at additional cost. Zendesk also has an Answer Bot, which instantly takes your knowledge base game to the next level. It can automatically suggest relevant articles for agents during business hours to share with clients, reducing your support agents’ workload. Broken down into custom, resolution, and task bots, these can go a long way in taking repetitive tasks off agents’ plates. Talking about the Intercom, it has flexible pricing plans that its experts can help adjust as per your requirements to match contacts and number of seats.

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But, you would not be able to enjoy such a live tracking experience on Intercom. Intercom helps you support your customers with chat, support and management tools. It is used by over 25k companies as it helps them convert more leads, and achieve the best service for their customers. N8n lets you integrate Intercom with Zendesk to build powerful workflows. Design automation that extracts, transforms and loads data between your apps and services.

Whether it’s ticket imports, additional import types, or automating the entire Zendesk import process, we’ve got you covered. Help Desk Migration is your ultimate solution intercom zendesk for a seamless Zendesk import and Zendesk data migration process. We specialize in importing data to Zendesk, utilizing our state-of-the-art Zendesk data importer.

If you’d want to test Intercom vs Zendesk before deciding on a tool for good, they both provide free trials for 14 days. But sooner or later, you’ll have to decide on the subscription plan, and here’s what you’ll have to pay. 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. For standard reporting like response times, leads generated by source, bot performance, messages sent, and email deliverability, you’ll easily find all the metrics you need. Beyond that, you can create custom reports that combine all of the stats listed above (and many more) and present them as counts, columns, lines, or tables.

Both app stores include many popular integrations, such as Salesforce, HubSpot, Mailchimp, and Zapier. Intercom enables customers to self-serve through its messaging platform. Agents can easily find resources for customers from their agent workspace. Zendesk offers robust, pre-built reports for sales and support teams. Here are our top reporting and analytics features and an overview of where Intercom’s reporting limitations lie. The cheapest plan for small businesses – Starter – costs $89 monthly, including 2 seats and 1,000 people reached/mo.

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

However, a fundamental difference between them is their scope and focus. While Zendesk’s emphasis is entirely on customer support, Intercom’s features extend into marketing and sales. Zendesk started as a customer support request SaaS, a legacy that continues today with its robust ticketing and customer messaging solutions. In contrast, Intercom aims to provide an all-in-one business communication platform to support, engage, and convert customers with sales and marketing functions. An example of the platforms’ different focus is that Intercom includes an email marketing feature, whereas Zendesk doesn’t. Zendesk is distinguished by its robust and versatile customer support solutions.

Intercom is the go-to solution for businesses seeking to elevate customer support and sales processes. With its user-friendly interface and advanced functionalities, Intercom offers a comprehensive suite of tools designed to effectively communicate and engage with customers. Ultimately, the choice between Intercom and Zendesk depends on your specific needs and priorities. If you prioritize real-time messaging and customer engagement, Intercom may be the better option for you.

Zendesk is another popular customer service, support, and sales platform that enables clients to connect and engage with their customers in seconds. Just like Intercom, Zendesk can also integrate with multiple messaging platforms and ensure that your business never misses out on a support opportunity. 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. This breadth of options ensures that businesses can effectively engage with their customers through their preferred communication method. While Zendesk is a widely used and versatile customer support and engagement platform, it’s important to consider whether there might be a better software solution tailored to your specific needs.

Customer Support: How Zendesk and Intercom Stack up

These shared inboxes facilitate seamless customer interactions across multiple channels, ensuring that teams can collaborate efficiently and maintain consistent, top-notch support. When comparing the pricing of Zendesk and Intercom, there are significant differences to take into account. Zendesk’s pricing offers a range of plans, including a tiered model with different levels of features and capabilities. While the pricing can be flexible, it may become more costly as your organization’s requirements and usage increase. Now, let’s delve into the Zendesk vs. Intercom comparison to help you make an informed decision when selecting the right customer support and engagement platform that aligns with your specific needs. When it comes to which company is the better fit for your business, there’s no clear answer.

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. Research by Zoho reports that customer relationship management (CRM) systems can help companies triple lead conversion rates. Those same tools also increase customer retention by 27% while saving 23% on sales and marketing costs.

You can always count on it if you need a reliable customer support platform to process tickets, support users, and get advanced reporting. Zendesk directly competes with Intercom when it comes to integrations. This live chat service provider offers 200+ integrations to its user base. With a mix of productivity, collaboration, eCommerce, CRM, analytics, email marketing, social media, and other tools, you get the option to create an omnichannel suite.

This makes it an excellent choice if you want to engage with support and potential and existing customers in real time. Whichever solution you choose, mParticle can help integrate your data. MParticle is a Customer Data Platform offering plug-and-play integrations to Zendesk and Intercom, along with over 300 other marketing, analytics, and data warehousing tools. With mParticle, you can connect your Zendesk and Intercom data with other marketing, analytics, and business intelligence platforms without any custom engineering effort. However, if you are looking for a robust messaging solution with customer support features, go for Intercom. Its intuitive messenger can help your business boost engagement and improve sales and marketing efforts.

On the other hand, if you require robust ticketing and support management features, Zendesk might be the more suitable choice. Consider your budget, team size, and integration requirements before making a decision. 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. In the realm of automation and workflow management, Zendesk truly shines as a frontrunner.

The app includes features like push notifications and real-time customer engagement — so businesses can respond quickly to customer inquiries. When choosing between Zendesk and Intercom for your customer support needs, it’s essential to consider various factors that align with your business goals, operational requirements, and budget. Both platforms offer distinct strengths, catering to customer support and engagement aspects. In addition to Intercom vs Zendesk, alternative helpdesk solutions are available in the market. ThriveDesk is a feature-rich helpdesk solution that offers a comprehensive set of tools to manage customer support effectively.

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. Zendesk offers a free 30-day trial, after which customers will need to upgrade to one of their paid plans. 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. This has helped to make Zendesk one of the most popular customer service software platforms on the market.

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. Zendesk also has a clear and customizable interface, but it has more features, so it might take a bit longer to learn. When it comes to customer communication, Intercom has a perfect layout and customer information storage system. Based on such information, you can easily communicate with your customers and resolve their queries instantly.

But we doubled down and created a truly full-service CX solution capable of handling any support request. 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. Why don’t you try something equally powerful yet more affordable, like HelpCrunch? The highlight of Zendesk’s ticketing software is its omnichannel-ality (omnichannality?).

Popular Intercom and Zendesk integrations

Zendesk is billed more as a customer support and ticketing solution, while Intercom includes more native CRM functionality. 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. Overall, I actually liked Zendesk’s user experience better than Intercom’s in terms of its messaging dashboard. Intercom has a dark mode that I think many people will appreciate, and I wouldn’t say it’s lacking in any way. 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.

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 feels more wholesome and is more client-success-oriented, but it can be too costly for smaller companies. 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. 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.

Zendesk offers more advanced automation capabilities than Intercom, which may be a deciding factor for businesses that require complex workflows. One of Zendesk’s standout features that we need to shine a spotlight on is its extensive marketplace of third-party integrations and extensions. Imagine having the power to connect your helpdesk solution with a wide range of tools and applications that your team already uses. Whether it’s syncing data with your CRM, enhancing communication via messaging platforms, or automating tasks with productivity apps, Zendesk makes it possible. AI and ML make customer service functionalities like chatbots, sentiment analysis, ticket creation, and workflow automation possible. All these features are necessary for operational efficiency and help agents deliver fast, personalized customer experiences.

However, reading the reviews, it’s probably more accurate to say that Zendesk is “mixed” on customer support, whereas Intercom doesn’t have a stellar record. Help desk software creates a sort of “virtual front desk” for your business. That means automating customer service and sales processes so the people visiting your website don’t actually have to interact with anyone before they take action. Zendesk has received a rating of 4.4 out of 5 from 2,693 reviewers. They’ve been rated as one of the easy live chat solutions with more integrated options. This live chat software provider also enables your business to send proactive chat messages to customers and engage effectively in real-time.

There are many features to help bigger customer service teams collaborate more effectively — like private notes or a real-time view of who’s handling a given ticket at the moment, etc. At the same time, the vendor offers powerful reporting capabilities to help you grow and improve your business. 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. Their AI-powered chatbot can enable your business to boost engagement and improve marketing efforts in real-time.

With ThriveDesk, you can supercharge your website’s growth and streamline customer interactions like never before. It can team up with tools like Salesforce and Slack, so everything runs smoothly. The service was excellent, during all the steps of the transition we felt taken care of and monitored perfectly. Employing Help Desk Migration tool, don’t worry about safety of valuable data. We commit to the fresh requirements, run constant advancements, and consistently audit all facilities.

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. Zendesk takes the slight lead here because it offers some advanced help desk features, which Intercom does not. Businesses of all sizes can rely on the Zendesk customer service platform and benefit from workflow management, powerful AI tools, robust insights, and more. If that sounds good to you, sign up for a free demo to see our software in action and get started. Intercom built additional tools to aid in marketing and engagement to supplement its customer service solution.

The cost will mostly lean on the business data volume you need to transfer, the complexity of your requirements, and the options you’ll select or customizations you’ll inquire. Run a Free Demo to test the Migration Wizard performance and figure out how much your migration will cost. Our CSV import feature allows you to effortlessly handle large volumes of data with options to customize the import type to your specific needs. With the bulk user import option, you can efficiently import users in bulk, ensuring a swift and accurate transfer of data. We even offer a bulk organization import feature for your convenience. The Migration Wizard will includes measure for ensuring your data security during all phases of the migration process.