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Intercom’s chatbot feels a little more robust than Zendesk’s (though it’s worth noting that some features are only available at the Engage and Convert tiers). You can set office hours, live chat with logged-in users via their user profiles, and set up a chatbot. Customization is more nuanced than Zendesk’s, but it’s still really straightforward to implement. You can opt for code via JavaScript or Rails or even integrate directly with the likes of Google Tag Manager, WordPress, or Shopify. Zendesk also packs some pretty potent tools into their platform, so you can empower your agents to do what they do with less repetition.

• Operation is executed in a cloud automatically on schedule or manually at any time.
• Zendesk was founded in 2007 and as such, is one of the oldest customer service management software offerings available on the market today.
• There are also several different Shopify integrations to choose from, as well as CRM integrations like HubSpot and Salesforce.
• For small companies and startups, Zendesk offers a six-month free trial of up to 50 agents redeemable for any combination of Zendesk Support and Sell products.
• Once connected, you can add Zendesk Support to your inbox, and start creating Zendesk tickets from Intercom conversations.
• Because Intercom started as a live chat service, its messenger functionality is very robust.

In the category of customer support, Zendesk appears to be just slightly better than Intercom based on the availability of regular service and response times. However, it is possible Intercom’s support is superior at the premium level. There are 3 Basic support plans at $19, $49 and $99 per user per month billed annually, and 5 Suite plans at $49, $79, $99, $150, and $215 per user per month billed annually. Just like Zendesk, Intercom also offers its own Operator bot, which will automatically suggest relevant articles to customers right in a chat widget. Also, their in-app messaging functionality is worth a separate mention as it’s one of their distinctive tools (especially since Zendesk doesn’t really have one). With Intercom, you can send targeted email, push, and in-app messages which can be based on relevant time or behavior triggers.

Integrate with Zendesk Chat in minutes

I was able to get responses to virtually every question each time I was asking within a few hours, even considering the time zones. The service was excellent, during all the steps of the transition we felt taken care of and monitored perfectly. Help Desk Migration accomplishes to top security principles, providing maximum safety for your business data.

Try it out today and experience the benefits of seamless app integration. Founded in 2007, Zendesk started off as a ticketing intercom to zendesk tool for customer support teams. Like when they bought out the Zopim live chat and integrated it with their toolset.

Analytics in action

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. Intercom recently ramped up its features to include helpdesk and ticketing functionality.

Check these 7 Zendesk alternatives that will help you improve your customer support, sales, and marketing. To sum up this Intercom vs Zendesk battle, Zendesk is a great customer support oriented tool which will be a great choice for big teams with various departments. Intercom feels more wholesome and is more customer success oriented, but can be too costly for smaller companies.

Features Zendesk

Intercom stands out here due to its ability  to tailor sales workflows. You can also set up interactive product tours to highlight new features in-product and explain how they work. Zendesk takes the slight lead here because it offers some advanced help desk features, which Intercom does not. Intercom’s app store has popular integrations for things like WhatsApp, Stripe, Instagram, and Slack.

The process to integrate Intercom and YouTube may seem complicated and intimidating. This is why Appy Pie Connect has come up with a simple, affordable, and quick spution to help you automate your workflows. Zendesk and Intercom both have an editor preview feature that makes it easier to add images, videos, call-to-action buttons, and interactive guides to your help articles. Many use cases call for different approaches, and Zendesk and Intercom are but two software solutions for each case. As for the category of voice and phone features, Zendesk is a clear winner. Zendesk Support has voicemail, text messages, and embedded voice, and it displays the phone number on the widget.

Self-Service Functionality

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.

Intercom has announced integration with Zendesk through its Bot for Zendesk app. The app allows Zendesk users to manage support tickets more efficiently and get answers from users via chatbots. Intercom offers similar services using its own platform and it can be integrated with other applications.

HubSpot Solution Partners

Automation and AI save resources and time–every automated workflow and routing decision frees an agent to work on more complex issues. Set triggers to target particular audiences at the right time, utilize carousels as part of a communication campaign, and compare carousels with A/B testing. With so many solutions to choose from, finding the right option for your business can feel like an uphill battle. “Favorable” and “Critical” user reviews are selected using the review helpfulness score. The helpfulness score predicts the relative value a user receives from a given review based on a number of factors. Factors may include the content in the review, feedback provided by other readers, the age of the review, and other factors that indicate review quality.

• Both tools can be quite heavy on your budget, since they’re mainly targeting big enterprises and don’t offer their full toolset at an affordable price.
• I appreciated the constant follow-up that I received from the Account Managers at Help Desk Migration.
• You could say something similar for Zendesk’s standard service offering, so it’s at least good to know they have Zendesk Sell, a capable CRM option to supplement it.
• 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.
• It enables targeted communication with customers on your website, inside your web and mobile apps, and by e-mail.
• It’s easy to connect Intercom + Zendesk without coding knowledge.

Skyvia’s import supports all DML operations, including UPDATE and DELETE. This allows using import to perform mass update operations or mass deleting data, matching some condition. Skyvia offers you a convenient and easy way to connect Intercom and Zendesk with no coding.

Zendesk Pricing vs Intercom Pricing

As with just about any customer support software, you can easily view standard user data within the messenger related to customer journey—things like recent pages viewed, activity, or contact information. 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. From there, you can include FAQs, announcements, and article guides and then save them into pre-set lists for your customers to explore. You can even moderate user content to leverage your customer community.

Intercom’s role-based permissions allow administrators full control over each department’s and agent’s capabilities, and access to channels and information. Administrator reports allow managers to observe real-time CSAT scores, conversation volume, first response time, and time to close. Survey composer allows you to create the question and answer format, also customizing color, rating scales, and greetings. Send surveys at key points throughout the customer buying cycle, utilizing multiple types of question formats.

Connect Intercom and Zendesk with automated 2-way updates

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.

• 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’s mobile app is also good for ticketing, helping you create new support tickets with macros and updates.
• Intercom’s large series of bots obviously run on automations as well.
• Save your team time and provide more consistent support by establishing customer service workflows that enable you to automate repetitive tasks and route tickets to the right team member more efficiently.
• Help Desk Migration ensures you experience no downtime and continue serving your customers seamlessly.
• This feature ensures that each customer request is handled by the best-suited agent, improving the overall efficiency of the support team.

You can even finagle some forecasting by sourcing every agent’s assigned leads. Though Zendesk now considers itself to be a “service-first CRM company,” since its founding in 2007, their bread and butter offering has leaned much more heavily toward the “service” part of that equation. Keeping this general theme in mind, I’ll dive deeper into how each software’s features compare, so you can decide which use case might best fit your needs. Understanding these fundamental differences should go a long way in helping you pick between the two, but does that mean you can’t use one platform to do what the other does better?

Zendesk and Intercom each have their own marketplace/app store where users can find all the integrations for each platform. With Panoply, your data has the metadialog.com power to transform your business. Panoply prepares your data into easy-to-analyze tables and connects to all popular BI tools and analytical notebooks.

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. 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.

These are both still very versatile products, so don’t think you have to get too siloed into a single use case. Intercom and Zendesk are primarily classified as “Engagement/Lifecycle Marketing” and “Help Desk” tools respectively. While Intercom does not offer free trials, they do offer demo versions of each plan. Below, we’ve compared the usability of Zendesk’s and Intercom’s agent dashboards and administrator controls. Create code-free screencast tours of products, websites, webpages, and applications within your website. 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.