Zendesk vs Intercom Comparison 2024: Which One Is Better?

zendesk to intercom

This SaaS leader entered into the competition in 2011, intending to help its clients reach their target audiences and engage them in a conversation right away. 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. If you are looking for a comprehensive customer support solution with a wide range of features, Zendesk is a good option. If money is limited for your business, a help desk that can be a Zendesk alternative or an Intercom alternative is ThriveDesk.

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. Moreover, Appy Pie Automate offers a range of pre-built integrations and automation workflows for Zendesk and Intercom, which can be customized to meet your specific requirements.

Dominic scrutinizes how Zendesk and Intercom handle ticketing, evaluating response times, ease of use, and customization options. Viewers gain valuable insights into which platform excels in managing and resolving customer queries efficiently. These plans make Hiver a versatile tool, catering to a range of business sizes and needs, from startups to large enterprises looking for a comprehensive customer support solution within Gmail. Help Desk Migration is your ultimate solution 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. Intercom focuses on providing personalized customer messaging and support at every stage of the customer lifecycle.

What is the difference between Intercom and Zendesk?

However, you can browse their respective sites to find which tools each platform supports. Stitch connects to your first-party data sources – from databases like MongoDB and MySQL, to SaaS tools like Salesforce and Zendesk – and replicates that data to your warehouse. With Stitch, developers can provision data for their internal users in minutes, not weeks. Choose Zendesk for a scalable, team-size-based pricing model and Intercom for initial low-cost access with flexibility in adding advanced features. Intercom stands out for its modern and user-friendly messenger functionality, which includes advanced features with a focus on automation and real-time insights. Its AI Chatbot, Fin, is particularly noted for handling complex queries efficiently.

Is Intercom like Zendesk?

Both Zendesk and Intercom offer customer service software with AI capabilities—however, they are not created equal. Zendesk AI was modeled on the world's largest CX-specific dataset. With Zendesk, you get next-level AI-powered support software that's intuitively designed, scalable, and cost-effective.

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.

With Skyvia import you can use data filtering, perform data transformations, and many more. Besides, Skyvia supports the UPSERT operation — inserting new records and updating records already existing in the target. This allows importing data without creating duplicates for existing target records.

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. For smaller teams that have to handle multiple tasks, do not forget to check JustReply.ai, which is a user-friendly customer support tool. It will seamlessly integrate with Slack and offers everything you need for your favorite communication platform. On the other hand, Intercom’s chatbots have more advanced features but do not sacrifice simplicity and ease of use.

Use Autopilot to automate and integrate Intercom and Zendesk.

Publish data products, share data and expose ML models through API endpoints. Easily switch between data sources and work with your data in real-time in Excel. Use Peliqan’s built-in distributed query engine to combine data between sources, e.g. write JOIN queries between tables in the Peliqan DW and external databases. In the Intercom Developer hub, we have an app configured with a webhook that posts to a Superblocks workflow URL when a conversation is closed.

zendesk to intercom

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. They’ve been rated as one of the easy live chat solutions with more integrated options. It enables them to engage with visitors who are genuinely interested in their services. You get to engage with them further and get to know more about their expectations. This becomes the perfect opportunity to personalize the experience, offer assistance to prospects as per their needs, and convert them into customers. This live chat software provider also enables your business to send proactive chat messages to customers and engage effectively in real-time.

Zendesk can be more flexible and predictable in this area as you can buy different tools separately (or even use their limited versions for free). Though Intercom chat window says that their team typically replies in a few hours, I received the answer in a couple of minutes. Their agent was always trying to convert me into a lead along the way, but heck, that’s a side effect of our job. What can be really inconvenient about Zendesk, though is how their tools integrate with each other when you need to use them simultaneously. As I’ve already mentioned, they started as a help desk/ticketing tool, and honestly, they perfected every bit of it over the years.

Add a additional tag to the exported tickets

One more thing to add, there are ways to integrate Intercom to Zendesk. Visit either of their app marketplaces and look up the Intercom Zendesk integration. Like with many other apps, Zapier seems to be the best and most simple way to connect Intercom to Zendesk.

There are a plethora of different help desk tools for all kinds of … Honestly, I was really pleasantly surprised by how responsive the company is. I was able to get responses to virtually every question each time I was asking within a few hours, even considering the time zones. I appreciated the constant follow-up that I received from the Account Managers at Help Desk Migration. The service was excellent, during all the steps of the transition we felt taken care of and monitored perfectly.

No Code Platforms

Let’s evaluate the user experience and interface of both Zendesk and Intercom, considering factors such as ease of navigation, customization options, and overall intuitiveness. We will also consider customer feedback and reviews to provide insights into the usability of each platform. It tends to perform well on the marketing and sales side of things, which is key for a growing company. And considering that its tools (including live chat options) are so easy to use, it’s probably going to be easier for a small business to get integrated and set up. Integrating AI in the help center helps agents find answers to customer inquiries, providing a seamless customer experience. Zendesk’s AI offers automated responses to customer inquiries, increasing the team’s productivity, as they can spend time on the most crucial things.

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 zendesk to intercom 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. Zapier helps you create workflows that connect your apps to automate repetitive tasks.

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. 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.

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 Zendesk and Intercom. 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. To prepare your Zendesk account for migration, take the time to assess and refine your data.

Run a Free Demo to test the Migration Wizard performance and figure out how much your migration will cost. Don’t worry about experiencing hardships whilst doing your Supported Platform data import and export. Help Desk Migration solution will spare you from copy pasting data entities or setting lacking fields throughout Intercom to Zendesk migration. Help Desk Migration app permits you map record fields and transform your data migration. You preserve the structure of your business data with minimum effort.

Zendesk vs Intercom: the ultimate comparison

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. Basically, if you have a complicated support process, go with Zendesk, an excellent Intercom alternative, for its help desk functionality. If you’re a sales-oriented corporation, use Intercom for its automation options. Both tools can be quite heavy on your budget since they mainly target big enterprises and don’t offer their full toolset at an affordable price.

Trust us for your Zendesk data migration needs and discover the convenience of a bulk user import feature that streamlines the process from start to finish. When it comes to Zendesk import, Help Desk Migration is your trusted partner. Our Zendesk import solutions Chat GPT also include the ability to work with CSV data files, allowing you to execute actual imports with ease. You can choose from various import types and options, making Help Desk Migration the go-to platform for all your Zendesk import automation needs.

It is a reliable and effective software for businesses of all sizes. Zendesk allows businesses to group their resources in the help center, providing customers with self-service personalized support. The platform has various customization options, allowing businesses personalized experiences according to their branding.

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. It also provides mid-sized businesses with comprehensive customer relationship management software, as they require more advanced features to handle customer support. Similarly, the ability of Zendesk to scale also makes it the best fit for enterprise-level organizations. Intercom is also a customer service software that integrates entirely with third-party vendors, especially those offering messaging services.

On the other hand, Intercom catches up with Zendesk on ticket handling capabilities but stands out due to its automation features. Zendesk and Intercom are robust tools with a wide range of customer service and CRM features. 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.

You can always count on it if you need a reliable customer support platform to process tickets, support users, and get advanced reporting. Zendesk would be a perfect option for businesses that are searching for a well-integrated support system. It offers a suite that compiles help desk, live chat, and knowledge base to their user base.

Who owns Intercom?

Intercom was founded in August 2011 by Eoghan McCabe (CEO & Chairman), Des Traynor (Chief Strategy Officer), David Barrett, and Ciaran Lee (former CTO).

Since then, it has evolved into a full-fledged CRM that offers a suite of software applications to its over 160,000 customers like Uber, Siemens, and Tesco. 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. Additionally, the platform allows for customizations such as customized user flows and onboarding experiences. One of the pivotal aspects of any customer support platform is its ticketing system.

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. Zendesk supports teams that can then field these issues from a nice unified dashboard. Zendesk has great intelligent routing and escalation protocols as well. 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.

Plain is a new customer support tool with a focus on API integrations – TechCrunch

Plain is a new customer support tool with a focus on API integrations.

Posted: Wed, 09 Nov 2022 08:00:00 GMT [source]

In today’s business world, customer service is fast-paced, and customers have higher expectations. To enhance customer satisfaction, businesses must equip their teams with customer support solutions and customer service software. Ultimately, it’s important to consider what features each platform offers before making a decision, as well as their pricing options and customer support policies.

zendesk to intercom

After an in-depth analysis such as this, it can be pretty challenging for your business to settle with either option. That’s why it would be better to review where both the options would be ideal to use. Zendesk also offers detailed reports that can be shared with others and enable team members to collaborate on them simultaneously. You can either track your performance on a pre-built dashboard or customize and build one for yourself. This customized dashboard will help you see metrics that you’d like to focus on regularly. Now that we know a little about both tools, it is time to make an in-depth analysis and identify which one of these will be perfect for your business.

zendesk to intercom

Zendesk has a strong customer support reputation, a helpful community, and extensive resources. Salesforce Service Regarding live chat capabilities, both Zendesk and Intercom have integrated solutions. However, users often find Intercom’s live chat more user-friendly and feature rich. Intercom’s https://chat.openai.com/ live chat functionality goes beyond the basics, incorporating targeted messaging, proactive messaging, and sophisticated chatbot capabilities. The company’s products include a ticketing system, live chat software, knowledge base software, and a customer satisfaction survey tool.

But keep in mind that Zendesk is viewed more as a support and ticketing solution, while Intercom is CRM functionality-oriented. Which means it’s rather a customer relationship management platform than anything else. The Zendesk chat tool has most of the necessary features like shortcuts (saved responses), automated triggers, and live chat analytics. Intercom is more for improving sales cycle and customer relationships, while Zendesk has everything a customer support representative can dream about, but it does lack wide email functionality. On the other hand, it provides call center functionalities, unlike Intercom.

Help Center in Zendesk also will enable businesses to organize their tutorials, articles, and FAQs, making it convenient for customer to find solutions to their queries. Zendesk, a customer service-focused tool, is renowned for its robust ticketing system and help desk capabilities. On the other hand, Intercom positions itself as a versatile solution, integrating customer communication with marketing and sales.

Intercom’s AI has the transformative power to enhance customer service by offering multilingual support and contextual responses. AI-driven chatbot Fin is designed to automate consumer interactions. Fin uses seamless communication across customer bases, breaking language barriers and catering to global audiences. These weaknesses are not as significant as the features and functionalities Zendesk offers its users. In addition to all these features, Suite Growth Plan offers light agents, multilingual support, multiple ticket forms, and a self-service customer portal. On the other hand, Intercom may have a lower ROI when compared to Zendesk due to the limited depth of features it offers.

It enables targeted communication with customers on your website, inside your web and mobile apps, and by e-mail. You can carry out records import in a few simple moves, applying our automated migration tool. If you’re trying to organize a elaborate data structure, feel free to go with our customized way. 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. The cheapest plan for small businesses – Essential – costs $39 monthly per seat.

Community managers can also escalate posts to support agents when one-on-one help is needed. Intercom allows visitors to search for and view articles from the messenger widget. Customers won’t need to leave your app or website to find the help they need.Zendesk, on the other hand, will redirect the customer to a new web page.

How to export Zendesk data?

In Admin Center, click Account in the sidebar, then select Tools > Reports. If you don't see this option and data exports are enabled in your account, you may be restricted from exporting data. See Restricting data exports to certain admins. If necessary, click the Export tab to display the data export options.

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. Moving on, Dominic delves into the features offered by Zendesk and Intercom. He highlights the strengths and weaknesses of each, shedding light on the key functionalities that set them apart. From automation and knowledge base management to integrations and analytics, Dominic gives viewers a comprehensive overview of what these platforms bring to the table. It really shines in its modern messenger interface, making real-time chat a breeze.

  • When comparing Zendesk and Intercom, various factors come into play, each focusing on different aspects, strengths, and weaknesses of these customer support platforms.
  • A helpdesk solution’s user experience and interface are crucial in ensuring efficient and intuitive customer support.
  • Intercom can even integrate with Zendesk and other sources to import past help center content.
  • Thus, due to its limited agility, businesses with complex business models may not find it appropriate.

You need a complete customer service platform that’s seamlessly integrated and AI-enhanced. As a Zendesk user, you’re familiar with tickets – you’ll be able to continue using these in Intercom. On one hand, Zendesk offers a great many features, way more than Intercom, but it lacks in-app messenger and email marketing tools. On the other hand, Intercom has all its (fewer) tools and features integrated with each other way better, which makes your experience with the tool as smooth as silk.

We take into consideration the resourcefulness of customer data migration. Moreover, that is why we deploy a test mechanism for our migration tool prior to releasing each ticket in order that it comes to its end-point safely and accurately. Our perfect goal has always been to enhance user service satisfaction to accomplish continuous work effectiveness. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. ThriveDesk is a help desk software tailor-made for businesses seeking extensive features and a powerful yet simple live chat assistant.

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. Integrating Zendesk and Intercom using Appy Pie Automate is a smart choice for any business looking to streamline their workflow and increase productivity. With Appy Pie Automate, an AI-driven integration platform, you can easily connect your favorite apps and automate your workflows in just a few clicks.

Zendesk is a leading customer service software that offers a comprehensive suite of tools for businesses to manage customer support, engagement, and relationships. Its user-friendly interface, robust ticketing system, and extensive integration options make it popular for businesses seeking efficient customer service solutions. Intercom and Zendesk, two of the most popular customer service platforms have gained popularity and unique clientele for themselves since their launch.

Is intercom any good?

Intercom is a great all-in-one customer support solution tool to serve customers over multiple channels: websites, WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook and SMS. By using its flow builder and built-in AI features, you can set up advanced chat automations without any coding.

How do I assign a chat in Intercom?

When you need to pass a conversation to someone else you can quickly assign the conversation to the best teammate or team who can answer it. Use the keyboard shortcut A to assign, or select the action icon from below the message composer and select Assign to.

What is the weakness of Zendesk?

Exporting and Reporting Limitations

This limits the ability to analyze customer service performance and ties businesses to the platform. Data Portability Issues: Without the ability to export ticket information, businesses are effectively tied to Zendesk, facing challenges if they switch to another platform.

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