Help Scout vs Zendesk vs. Intercom vs. Front What Help Desk Software Should I Use?

First, a Home button gives you access to your dashboard, where you’ll find a snapshot of your current configuration. Since August 2016 a new version of the agent/admin interface of Zendesk is available, with a more clean and modern metadialog.com design. You can choose from a selection of templates that will match your brand, or you can start creating your design from scratch. If you meet all of these requirements, apply for the Zendesk Startup program; it’s worth it.

• This analysis aims to provide guidance in selecting the best alternative to Zendesk, based on various use cases.
• It allows you to chat with visitors on your website and convert them into customers.
• Intercom has Articles as a knowledge base solution for self-support, as well as internal support.
• They have done an incredible job at building somewhat of a community around their software.
• Help Scout also makes it easy for organizations to track engagements with specific customers from the moment an internal ticket is open to the moment the issue is resolved.
• They „integrate” with almost everything (what that even means is many things… does that mean it’ll do what you want it to do? questionable), they have help docs, an included community platform even.

There are pre-built workflows to help with things like ticket sharing, as well as conversation routing based on metrics like agent skill set or availability. There are even automations to help with things like SLAs, or service level agreements, to do things like send out notifications when headlights are due. Intercom has a full suite of email marketing tools, although they are part of a pricier package. With Intercom, you get email features like targeted and personalized outbound emailing, dynamic content fields, and an email-to-inbox forwarding feature. Email marketing, for example, is a big deal, but less so when it comes to customer service. Still, for either of these platforms to have some email marketing or other email functionality is common sense.

Zendesk vs Intercom vs ProProfs: Features

Zendesk team can be just a little bit faster depending on the time of the day. Intercom is a popular customer communications platform, but its focus has always been on sales and marketing. After starting life as a simple chat widget, Intercom has added lots of new features to its messaging platform, but catering for customer support seems like more of an afterthought. Winner of our Supreme Software Award, Zendesk is a customer support solution that helps boost customer service and improve customer retention. The platform’s modules include chat support, call center solutions, help desk applications, and knowledge base, so you’ll cover all the bases of efficient customer services. Zendesk is a comprehensive CRM and support suite that offers a variety of features for customer support, sales, and marketing.

However, agents are unable to forward a full chat transcript to customers after the conversation has closed. This would be especially useful if chats contain step-by-step instructions for troubleshooting. Your agents can jump right in and start using Intercom without a steep learning curve, which means quicker time to value. Since your agents will be using this tool daily, having an enjoyable user experience will also make it easier for them to become power users and really get the most out of the software. Intercom has all the features a business would need for customer service.

Categories where Zendesk and Intercom compete

Zendesk for Sales offers three plans, ranging from $19 to $99 monthly per user, with free trials available for each plan. Zendesk for Service and Zendesk for Sales are sold as two separate solutions, each with three pricing plans, or tiers. Survey responses automatically save as data in users’ profiles, and Intercom provides survey data in analytics and reporting. Self-service tools let customers resolve their own issues quickly and 24/7, improving satisfaction and reducing excessive agent workload. Zendesk wins the collaboration tools category because of its easy-to-use side conversations feature. Intercom wins the automation and AI category because its chatbots have some impressive capabilities, like lead qualification and advanced routing.

• However, the reasons we will list below are among the significant reasons for searching for Intercom alternative software.
• Although the Zendesk user interface is not as appealing as Intercom’s, it is much easier to navigate for both new and experienced users.
• We hope that this Intercom VS Zendesk comparison helps you choose one that matches your support, marketing, and sales needs.
• Most of our Intercom alternatives have much more straightforward pricing plans that are based on the number of support agents you need seats for, allowing your business to better plan for expenses.
• This is a bit of a letdown as you’ll have to use third party apps to create a self help section.
• Report and Analytics of businesses can gain valuable insights and improve their support strategy.

But that doesn’t mean you have to completely switch from your current provider if you’re not quite ready. As customers come closer to purchasing, they often find themselves weighing the same pros and cons. In our experience, when future clients start thinking about the advantages and disadvantages of Intercom vs. Zendesk, these are the questions they want answers to. As you can imagine, banking from anywhere requires a flexible, robust customer service experience.

Free Tools

Therefore, a helpdesk with a good inbox can make your team efficient in solving problems. Live chat add-on provides you with personal customer communication (via the web, mobile, and messaging) without interrupting their experience. Once you add live chat to your website, your visitors will be able to reach you through the chat widget. Zendesk, just like its competitor, offers a knowledge base solution that is easy to customize. Their users can create a knowledge repository to create articles or edit existing ones as per the changes in the services or product.

Zendesk provides an integrated on-demand helpdesk – customer support portal solution based on the latest Web 2.0 technologies and design philosophies. The product has an elegant, minimalist design implemented in Ruby on Rails and provide… So it will transmit the live data on the users and what they are doing in your app. This option is useful for those who are looking for a smooth switch from Zendesk to Intercom. Zendesk does not provide its customers with email marketing tools for the basic subscriptions at the time of writing.

Articles

If you’re a huge corporation with a complicated customer support process, go Zendesk for its help desk functionality. If you’re smaller more sales oriented startup with enough money, go Intercom. Reflect on what your goals are and which features are most important to your business.

Intercom’s solution offers several use cases, meaning the product’s investments and success resources have a broad focus. But this also means the customer experience ROI tends to be lower than what it would be if you went with a best-in-class solution like Zendesk. Intercom also has an omnichannel customer service solution, but it’s fairly limited, with no native voice capabilities and minimal voice integrations. No matter how a customer contacts your business, your agents will have access to the tools and information they need to continue and close conversations on any channel.

Zendesk or Intercom: Email features

Instead, the platform displays interaction history right there in the workspace, offering agents increased visibility and faster solve times. Customer engagement users can use customer data to set up campaigns based on behavior, demographics, and more across a wide range of channels. Users can also collect feedback using NPS surveys, A/B test messages, and track performance metrics, all in one place. If you’re a small business, you may want to consider Intercom as it offers a nice set of features in its most basic package—without breaking the bank.

This is a bit of a letdown as you’ll have to use third party apps to create a self help section. IOS and Android apps will help you view, manage, and respond to customer conversations from your mobile device. If you own a small business, Zendesk and intercom do the same thing. But Zendesk UI is pretty straightforward, so if you need an uncomplicated system to help customers, collaborate and manage projects; choose Zendesk. You can also create a product tour guide to help new customers understand your product.

Zendesk vs Intercom for customer support

We are Vision Point Systems, a Certified Service Partner of Intercom. We have the skills and experience to help you switch from Zendesk to Intercom smoothly and efficiently. On practice, I can’t promise you anything when it comes to Intercom. Moreover, these are new prices as they’re in the middle of changing their pricing policy right now (and they’re definitely not getting cheaper).