Intercom vs Zendesk: Comparison and Alternatives

In-app messaging is useful for a variety of reasons, including onboarding new users, converting users from a free trial, and asking users for feedback. If these features are important for your business, you may want to consider Intercom over Zendesk. For example, if a user has been navigating your website for a few minutes, it can trigger an in-app message asking the user if they require assistance.

Founded in 2007, Zendesk started off as a ticketing tool for customer support teams. It was later when they started adding all kinds of other tools like when intercom and zendesk they bought out Zopim live chat and just integrated it with their toolset. This live chat service provider offers 200+ integrations to its user base.

Why Zendesk is the best alternative to Intercom

Brian Kale, the head of customer success at Bank Novo, describes how Zendesk helped Bank Novo boost productivity and streamline service. Sendcloud adopted these solutions to replace siloed systems like Intercom and a local voice support provider in favor of unified, omnichannel support. Sendcloud is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) company that allows users to generate packing slips and labels to help online retailers streamline their shipping process.

What really struck me though is that people seemed to like Zendesk more. Struck not in a bad way, more like in a very neutral ‘huh, this may be interesting’ way. Easily track your service team’s performance and unlock coaching opportunities with AI-powered insights. After switching to Intercom, you can start training Custom Answers for Fin right away by importing your historic data from Zendesk.

Conversational

A few users also complained of integration issues that caused errors and delayed response times with their clients. Zendesk’s customer support is also very fast, though their live chat is only available for registered users. Pop-up chat, in-app messaging, and notifications are some of the highly-rated features of this live chat software. 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.

Key offerings include automated support with help center articles, a messenger-first ticketing system, and a powerful inbox to centralize customer queries. You need a complete customer service platform that’s seamlessly integrated and AI-enhanced. Check out our list of unified communications providers for more information.

Intercom Differentiation

Agents can easily find resources for customers from their agent workspace. LiveChat is a straightforward chatbot that integrates into a website, similar to Intercom. Next to Ada, LiveChat is also a powerful customer messaging software that satisfies modern companies’ communication needs. It is accessible for representatives using web browsers, selected applications for Windows, Android, Mac OS X, and any mobile devices running iOS. LiveChat is an online chat software that allows customer service representatives to communicate with customers through their website or selected messaging apps. LiveChat makes it easy for companies to manage, customize, and rebrand their platform.

The only relief is that they do reach out to customers, but it gets too late. In terms of customer service, Zendesk fails to deliver an exceptional experience. HubSpot helps seamlessly integrate customer service tools that you and your team already leverage. 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.

Sequence all channels–chat, web post, email, chatbot outreach, tour message, banner, push notification, or carousel–mixing and matching modes of outreach to fit campaign goals. Zendesk wins the collaboration tools category because of its easy-to-use side conversations feature. Zendesk wins the omnichannel capabilities category because it offers voice as a service, which we think is absolutely critical.

In this context, Zendesk and Intercom emerge as key contenders, each offering distinct features tailored to dynamic customer service environments. Intercom wins the sales pipeline tools category because its campaigning and sequencing tools integrate all channels and unique services, like carousels and product tours. The cheapest plan for small businesses – Starter – costs $89 monthly, including 2 seats and 1,000 people reached/mo. But that’s not it, if you want to resolve customer common questions with the help of the vendor’s new tool – Fin bot, you will have to pay $0.99 per resolution per month.

On the other hand, Intercom lacks many ticketing functionality that can be essential for big companies with a huge client support load. So when it comes to chatting features, the choice is not really Intercom vs Zendesk. 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.

Intercom’s UI excels in modern design and intuitive functionality, particularly noted for its real-time messaging and advanced features. It is tailored for automation and quick access to insights, offering a user-friendly experience. Nevertheless, the platform’s support consistency can be a concern, and the unpredictable pricing structure might lead to increased costs for larger organizations. The strength of Zendesk’s UI lies in its structured and comprehensive environment, adept at managing numerous customer interactions and integrating various channels seamlessly. However, compared to the more contemporary designs like Intercom’s, Zendesk’s UI may appear outdated, particularly in aspects such as chat widget and customization options. This could impact user experience and efficiency for new users grappling with its complexity​​​​​​.

Company

Intercom has a very robust advanced chatbot set of tools for your business needs. There is a conversation routing bot, an operator bot, a lead qualification bot, and an article-suggesting bot, among others. It is also not too difficult to program your own bot rules using Intercon’s system. For Intercom’s pricing plan, on the other hand, there is much less information on their website. There is a Starter plan for small businesses at $74 per month billed annually, and there are add-ons like a WhatsApp add-on at $9 per user per month or surveys at $49 per month.

In addition, if you choose to change the look of the chat widget, the customization options become limited. Unlike either Zendesk or Intercom, our team at Ada offers an AI-first approach to improving your customer experience. Ada integrates with Intercom as well as Zendesk and spans a wide range of channels, making it easy for companies of any size to implement.

• When comparing the user interfaces (UI) of Zendesk and Intercom, both platforms exhibit distinct characteristics and strengths catering to different user preferences and needs.
• Like with many other apps, Zapier seems to be the best and most simple way to connect Intercom to Zendesk.
• Compared to being detailed, Zendesk gives a tough competition to Intercom.
• The support team faced spiking ticket volumes, numerous new customer accounts, and the need to shift to remote work.

Customers of Zendesk can purchase priority assistance at the enterprise tier, which includes a 99.9% uptime service level agreement and a 1-hour service level goal. At all tiers, there is an additional fee to work with a member of the Zendesk success team on unique engagements. Many use cases call for different approaches, and Zendesk and Intercom are but two software solutions for each case. Zendesk has more pricing options, and its most affordable plan is likely cheaper than Intercom’s, although without exact Intercom numbers, it is not easy to truly know the cost. Explore 10 engaging product update email templates in our latest blog post. Designed for various product update scenarios, these templates ensure your customers are well-informed…

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. The cheapest (aka Essential) ‘All of Intercom’ package will cost you $136 per month, but if you only need their essential chat tools only, you can get them for $49 per month. As I’ve already mentioned, they started as a help desk/ticketing tool, and honestly, they perfected every bit of it over the years.