Zendesk vs Intercom in 2023: Detailed Analysis of Features, Pricing, and More

Like with many other apps, Zapier seems to be the best and most simple way to connect Intercom to Zendesk. No matter what Zendesk Suite plan you are on, you get workflow triggers, which are simple business rules-based actions to streamline many tasks. You get call recording, muting and holding, conference calling, and call blocking.

When comparing the omnichannel support functionalities of Zendesk and Intercom, both platforms show distinct strengths and weaknesses. When comparing the automation and AI features of Zendesk and Intercom, both platforms come with unique strengths and weaknesses. Learn how top CX leaders are scaling personalized customer service at their companies. Zendesk for Service and Zendesk for Sales are sold as two separate solutions, each with three pricing plans, or tiers. Intercom plan prices are determined based on your specific business needs, so interested users must contact them for specific price details. Inside a ticket, the workspace center console displays the ticket’s conversation.

Sales teams can also view outbound communications, and any support agent can access resources from the Intercom workspace. Prioritize the agent experience to maximize productivity and customer satisfaction while reducing employee turnover. Learn how to create effective customer win-back campaigns, and download our templates to reengage with consumers. The difference between margin and profit is that margin is expressed as a percentage, and profit is a numerical value. Both measure business performance, but margins are easier to compare to other businesses or industries that operate on different scales.

Profit margin examples

Some small businesses avoid raising prices, fearing that customers will jump ship. However, if you provide a quality product with great customer service, a bump in your pricing will rarely deter customers from making a purchase. Zendesk users, on the other hand, usually say good things about its powerful support system.

• In order to obtain an idea of the financial consequences that will be incurred by your team as well as the predicted number of clients, it is essential to compare their plans in a meticulous manner.
• But we doubled down and created a truly full-service CX solution capable of handling any support request.
• 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.
• This gives your team the context they need to provide fast and excellent support.

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. To sum things up, one can get really confused trying to make sense of the Zendesk suite pricing, let alone calculate costs. Zendesk is a ticketing system before anything else, and its ticketing functionality is overwhelming in the best possible way.

Zendesk has more all-in-one potential with additional CRM, but Intercom comes closer to being a standalone CRM out of the box

Their chat widget looks and works great, and they invest a lot of effort to make it a modern, convenient customer communication tool. 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. So when it comes to chatting features, the choice is not really Intercom vs Zendesk.

You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. Create a help center combining knowledge base articles and a customer contact request form, embeddable into any webpage or mobile app. Customers can search the help center by query keywords and sort through articles in 40 languages. Zendesk for Service, a customer service solution, provides unified customer-facing communication channels, self-service, collaboration, customer routing, and analytics–all organized in one dashboard.

The company’s products include a ticketing system, live chat software, knowledge base software, and a customer satisfaction survey tool. Zendesk also offers a number of integrations with third-party applications. zendesk and intercom offer help desk management solutions to their users.

The three types of profit margins to calculate for your business include gross profit margin, operating profit margin, and net profit margin. There is a better user experience with Intercom because the layout is more streamlined. The goal is to make it easier for new users to get around the site and use all of its features without having to go through extra steps. This focus on making things easier for users is meant to make users happier generally and get more people to use the Intercom platform. Also, Intercom has a special proposition for early-stage startups, which can get Intercom’s pro products for $49/month for up to one year.

After signing up and creating your account, you can start filling in your information, such as your company name and branding and your agents’ profiles and information. The setup can be so complex that there are tutorials by third parties to teach new users how to do it right. 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. 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.

You may then use the difference as the net profit in the formula below. Profit margin is the percentage of income remaining after costs are deducted from sales revenue. Which platform is “better” depends on the precise requirements and objectives that you have. The internal notes tool makes working together even better by giving team members a place to add context, share insights, or talk about specifics within the platform. This feature is great for keeping communication clear and organised because it lets team members work together on jobs, projects, or interactions with clients without any problems.

Has live chat analytics to monitor customer satisfaction, employee performance. Overall, Zendesk’s Chat is less customizable than Intercom’s but still has all the essentials. In 2018, Intercom raised $125 million in funding, which brought its value up to $1.25 billion and provided the company with all the rights to call itself a unicorn. First of all, Intercom positions itself as a business messenger, the primary aim of which is to deliver modern and reliable customer communication tool.

Collaboration tools enable agents to work together in resolving customer tickets and making sales. Automatic assignment rules establish criteria that automatically route tickets to the right agent or team, based on message or user data. Operator, Intercom’s automation engine, empowers Intercom chatbots to gather key information from each website visitor to qualify leads and route customers to the right destination. With simple setup, and handy importers you’ll be up and running in no time, ready to unlock the Support Funnel and deliver fast and personal customer support. 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.

Intercom’s live chat reports aren’t just offering what your customers are doing or whether they are satisfied with your services. They offer more detailed insights like lead generation sources, a complete message report to track customer engagement, and detailed information on the support team’s performance. A collection of these reports can enable your business to identify the right resources responsible for bringing engagement to your business.

Like Zendesk, Intercom allows you to chat with online visitors and assist with their issues. Depending on your needs, you can set up Intercom on your website or mobile app and add your automations. Setting up Intercom help centers is also very easy and intuitive, with no previous knowledge required.

You can create a help platform to assist users in guiding themselves, or you can use AI-enabled responses to create a more “human” like effect. 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.

They both offer some state-of-the-art core functionality and numerous unusual features. 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. 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.

By providing banking without boundaries, the company aims to provide users with quick access to their finances, wherever they happen to be. Businesses should always consider a tool’s TCO before committing to a purchase. Many software vendors aren’t upfront about the cost of using their products, maintenance costs, or integration fees.

They’ve been marketing themselves as a messaging platform right from the beginning. 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. Their reports are attractive, dynamic, and integrated right out of the box. You can even finagle some forecasting by sourcing every agent’s assigned leads. We have numerous customers that do this and benefit greatly from our out-of-the-box integration with Intercom.

Let’s dive in and dissect the two, based on an in-depth trial experience. 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 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.

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. Zendesk, on the other hand, may not stress the same conversation-driven method, even though it has powerful team management tools. Its strength is that it offers a wide range of tools for organising teams, such as booking systems, knowledge bases, and customer service features.

Respond to all conversations across different messaging platforms in one place and avoid juggling between dozens of tabs. Collaborate with your teammates by easily assigning the right rep to best handle a customer query. You can construct an omnichannel suite by combining productivity, e-commerce, CRM, analytics, social media, and other applications.

Zendesk customers are switching to Intercom every single day

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. 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. Intercom also has an omnichannel customer service solution, but it’s fairly limited, with no native voice capabilities and minimal voice integrations.

Many users complain that Intercom’s help is unavailable the majority of the time, forcing them to repeatedly ask the same question to a bot. When they do respond, they’re usually unhelpful or want to immediately transfer you to the sales department. That being said the customer support for both Zendesk and Intercom is lacking.

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. Key offerings include automated support with help center articles, a messenger-first ticketing system, and a powerful inbox to centralize customer queries. Check out our list of unified communications providers for more information. For very small companies and startups, Intercom also offers a Starter plan–with a balanced suite of features from each of the above solutions–at $74 monthly per user. The Zendesk Admin Center panels allow administrators to control settings, accessibility, automations, and workflows for everything from chatbots to integrations and custom APIs.

Their customer service management tools have a shared inbox for support teams. When you combine the help desk with Intercom Messenger, you get added channels for customer engagement. 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.

Operators can easily switch from one conversation to another, therefore helping operators manage more interactions simultaneously. Don’t miss out on the latest tips, tools, and tactics at the forefront of customer support. Overall, when comparing Zendesk to Intercom, Zendesk’s features will probably win out over time. But the most important thing is that you get a help desk that you believe in—and that you integrate it into a website as thoroughly as possible. Customer support and security are vital aspects to consider when evaluating helpdesk solutions like Zendesk and Intercom.

• Zendesk, unlike Intercom, is a more affordable and predictable customer service platform.
• Intercom does not have a built-in call center solution, but you can integrate Intercom with other call center software.
• There are many powerful integrations included, such as Salesforce, HubSpot, Mailchimp, Slack, and Zapier.
• Zendesk, on the other hand, is known for its powerful ticketing system and smart analytics tools.
• There is automatic email archiving and incoming email authentication.

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. While Intercom does not offer free trials, they do offer demo versions of each plan.

In addition, some of the services Zendesk offers have a free plan (find them below in the tables). While Intercom and Zendesk both offer robust features, they may not be the perfect fit for everyone. To help you explore more options, we’ve put together a list of the best Zendesk alternatives as well as the best Intercom alternatives you might want to consider. Intercom’s pricing isn’t very transparent, with the starter pack costing $74 per month for two seats.

While both platforms have a significant presence in the industry, they cater to varying business requirements. Zendesk, with its extensive toolkit, is often preferred by businesses seeking an all-encompassing customer support solution. 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.