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

Check out the Help Scout Integrations page to see all the integrations we’ve built. LiveChat offers features for businesses looking for help with support, sales, and marketing, making it a similar tool to Intercom — but for a fraction of the cost. Help Scout’s shared inbox makes it easy to collaborate on customer support issues and ensures the customer experience is seamless from all sides. If you’ve been an Intercom user who’s unhappy with the features surrounding customer support, Help Scout is the perfect alternative for your team. 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…

Broken down into custom, resolution, and task bots, these can go a long way in taking repetitive tasks off agents’ plates. Kustomer is one of the best Zendesk alternatives for teams that need CRM capabilities. Though help desk software and CRMs historically existed in their own worlds, Kustomer worked to combine the two concepts into one useful solution. Kustomer allows users to see the whole picture of each client and update every system at once, saving energy and time. Help Scout is a Zendesk alternative that works well for small businesses.

Pricing – Zendesk vs Intercom

This platform acts as a help desk tool capable of receiving and managing client requests from various channels. For example, LiveAgent allows users to communicate via email, social media, telephone, or live chat. Many users agree that LiveAgent strikes a great balance between a simple interface and a feature-rich ticketing system.

Businesses of all sizes can rely on the Zendesk customer service platform and benefit from workflow management, powerful AI tools, robust insights, and more. If that sounds good to you, sign up for a free demo to see our software in action and get started. Advanced workflows are useful to customer service teams because they automate processes that make it easier for agents to provide great customer service.

Tools & Services

The help desk solution was created to build the best customer communications for SaaS, education, healthcare, finance, and eCommerce companies. It’s much easier if you decide to go with the Zendesk Suite, which includes Support, Chat, Talk, and Guide tools. There are two options there — Professional for $109 or Enterprise for $179 if you pay monthly.

Team inboxes aggregate tickets applicable to the whole team–or a specific department–that any agent can address. Zendesk offers tiered pricing based on the level of service you need, the size of your teams, and other factors. Every feature is available in the broadest option, Zendesk Suite, which is the version most companies would be implementing. After all, most businesses find it easier to use one solution for all of their needs rather than parceling duties out to different tools. If you are looking for more integration options and budget is not an issue, Intercom can be the perfect live chat solution for your business. It is also ideal for businesses who are searching for conversational chatbot functionality.

Feature Set Comparison: Zendesk vs Intercom

Whether you’ve just started searching for a customer support tool or have been using one for a while, chances are you know about both 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.

For businesses with complex products — especially in SaaS — having these features can go a low way towards making it easier for support agents to resolve support tickets. Overall, Appy Pie Connect powered by AI offers a user-friendly interface and affordable pricing plans, with a wide range of app integrations and multi-step integrations. IFTTT is a good option for simple one-step integrations and has a mobile app interface. Workato and Tray.io offer more advanced features for complex integrations, with flexible pricing plans based on usage and features. Ultimately, the best integration tool for you will depend on your specific needs and requirements. Sugar Serve is a cloud-based customer engagement and support solution designed to deliver personalized customer experiences seamlessly integrated with SugarCRM.

Intercom Tag to Submit New Zendesk Ticket

If you’re a growing business, you might want to go with Intercom. If your business is established and you need to cut down on those ticket resolution times, Zendesk may be worth it. I’m a Business Development Manager at Vision Point Systems where I lead a variety of efforts in sales, marketing, and technical consultation. Prior to this role, I spent 5 years as a technical consultant, primarily focused on the Appian Low-Code platform. I use this experience to work closely with VPS’ customers and platform partners on how to best derive value from our solutions. Some objects are easier to transfer than others, depending on how similar they are between Zendesk and Intercom.

If compared to Intercom’s chatbot, Zendesk offers a relatively latest platform that makes support automation possible. So far, the chatbot can transfer chats to agents or resolve less complex queries in seconds. That means all you have to do is add the code to your website and enable it right away. Intercom offers a simplistic dashboard with a detailed view of all customer details in one place.

Intercom reviews

This means that you can send targeted messages to different groups of users based on how they interact with your product. Intercom also offers a suite of tools for customer support, including a knowledge base, a help center, and a community forum. Founded in 2007, Zendesk started off as a ticketing tool for customer support teams.

For example, with this integration, businesses can ask customers for feedback after they have interacted with customer service representatives or completed a purchase on their website. Experience firsthand how our software can transform your customer support strategy and drive overall business success. There is power to be realized in partnerships and the strategic combination of forces, and companies using chatbots for customer service can further enhance the CX, taking it to new heights. Netomi’s virtual agents sit alongside human agents to supplement and enhance the capacity of support teams, ensuring the seamless resolution of customer queries. It delivers a multi-channel support system with customer service automation.

Zendesk vs. Intercom: Collaboration Tools

You can use this with the push notification of the app to keep your customers in the loop of possible promos, rewards, and more. Help desk software creates a sort of “virtual front desk” for your business. That means automating customer service and sales processes so the people visiting your website don’t actually have to interact with anyone before they take action. If you are currently using Zendesk as your customer support platform, you might be wondering how to switch to Intercom and transfer your existing historical customer data. Migrating from one platform to another can be a complicated and time-consuming process, especially if you have a lot of data and customizations in your Zendesk account. 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.

• Session replays are video-like recordings of user sessions in your web app.
• So with that, you’re in good company, and if you’ve used any of the above services and have reached out to their support team, I’m sure you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.
• Polytomic is another integration that allows you to sync data from a variety of sources.
• With Zendesk, organizational data silos can be a thing of the past.
• Ortto’s Talk was built to address the limitations of existing platforms, offering a powerful alternative that leverages data and Ortto’s advanced AI.
• This is due to not only the price but the features included, such as Help Desk and the ability to manage incoming tickets.

Check out the research-backed comparison below to better understand how each solution can add value to your organization. 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.

Zendesk vs. Intercom: A brief overview

Create a chatbot with minimal coding and customize it to your heart’s content. To begin with, putting help desk platforms “side by side” is a thankless job as software differs in functionality, price, and purposes. The compared vendors share a strategy of delivering their services as either separate add-ons or all-in-one tools. The software is versatile and allows agents to connect with clients via chat, email, phone, or social media.

This is a bit of a letdown as you’ll have to use third party apps to create a self help section. The Help Center is designed to give you a complete self-service support option (knowledge base). Users can use the information you are providing or turn to a community forum for answers. The Intercom Platform shows you who your customers are and what they do in your web or mobile app, for free. Honestly, when it comes to Zendesk, it is not the most modern tool out there. There are four different subscription packages you can choose from, all of which also have Essential, Pro, and Premium options for businesses of different sizes.

Research by Zoho reports that customer relationship management (CRM) systems can help companies triple lead conversion rates. Those same tools also increase customer retention by 27% while saving 23% on sales and marketing costs. Zendesk’s mobile app is also good for ticketing, helping you create new support tickets with macros and updates. It’s also good for sending and receiving notifications, as well as for quick filtering through the queue of open tickets. 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.

• Email marketing, for example, is a big deal, but less so when it comes to customer service.
• So, if you want to use social media or other channels, then you will need to upgrade your plan.
• Knowledge Base is one of the self-service sections that includes articles or documents providing technical help to customers and employees.
• Our goal is to be objective,

  simple and your first stop when researching for a new service to help you grow your business.

• Intercom calculates the price based on the number of seats (users) you request.
• If your business has an app, in-app messaging can be used to send messages to customers.

In this case, each customer service software has a unique way of generating reports such as scheduling, the scope of the analysis, and more. The platform offers Zendesk Talk as its call center solution to keep up with other help desks. This feature is browser-based, so you don’t need additional software or hardware. Overall, when comparing metadialog.com 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. You can use this support desk to help customers or you can forward potential new users to your sales department.