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

Truly omnichannel customer experiences are impossible to provide if every conversation is confined to a single platform. However, many current chat platforms make it difficult to switch seamlessly between live chat and other channels of communication, resulting in a frustrating, fragmented customer experience. Obviously, we need to be upfront and mention we may be biased towards HubSpot. But we’ve chosen HubSpot as our preferred technology stack for a reason! If you can have all of the pieces of your jigsaw from the same place, why would you go anywhere else?

We wish some of their great features were offered in multiple plans, but none features overlap among plans. Intercom offers admin full visibility and control over all company inboxes, as well as agent access controls and role management. Intercom wins the sales pipeline tools category because its campaigning and sequencing tools integrate all channels and unique services, like carousels and product tours. Users with light access–such as knowledgeable agents and supervisors–can be added to tickets for browsing and feedback. While light agents cannot interact with the customer on the ticket, they can make notes and interact privately with other team members and agents involved with the ticket. In fact, agents can even add customers to private messaging chats when necessary, and the customer will receive the whole conversation history by email to ensure they’re up to date.

Messages

There’s the cheapest plan for small businesses – Starter – that cost $74 per month and will include 1 seat and 1,000 people reached/mo. If you thought that Zendesk prices were confusing, let me introduce you to the Intercom charges. It’s virtually impossible to predict what you’re going to pay for Intercom at the end of the day.

On the other hand, if you have the budget and need the most features for your money, then Zendesk is the better choice. If you need help desk software that can provide you with a first-class personalized service without costing an arm and a leg, Customerly is the answer. We offer a free plan and a 14-day free trial of our paid plans. Though a tool may contain impressive features, the most important question remains how users view the software in everyday usage. Let’s look at ratings of Zendesk vs. Freshdesk on popular review sites and see some positive and negative opinions.

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Intercom’s integration capabilities are limited, and some apps don’t integrate well with third-party customer service technology. This can make it more difficult to import CRM data and obtain complete context from customer data. For example, Intercom’s Salesforce integration doesn’t create a view of cases in Salesforce. Intercom has a wider range of uses out of the box than Zendesk, though by adding Zendesk Sell, you could more than make up for it. Both options are well designed, easy to use, and share some pretty key functionality like behavioral triggers and omnichannel-ality (omnichannel-centricity?). But with perks like more advanced chatbots, automation, and lead management capabilities, Intercom could have an edge for many users.

• So when I realized lots of companies actually prefer Zendesk over Intercom, I was surprised.
• HubSpot Service Hub aids companies to offer outstanding experiences through deep integrations with other tools from the Hubspot suite.
• When an agent clicks on a conversation, the full conversation history populates the middle screen.
• Choosing the right platform is much easier when you know what you’re looking for.
• Like when they bought out the Zopim live chat and integrated it with their toolset.
• In addition, you get access to reporting that lets you know how helpful your knowledge base actually is and how often customers are reaching out to support.

The Intercom Messenger, in particular, performs well compared to the Zendesk alternative. Analytics features Intercom has is done through add-ons such as Google Analytics, Statbot, Microsoft Teams, and more. Zendesk has over 160,000 customers, including some well-known brands like Siemens, Uber and Instacart. Zendesk identifies itself as a growth-enabling, all-in-one solution.

Intercom Agent Dashboard

What’s really nice about this is that even within a ticket, you can switch between communication modes without changing views. So if an agent needs to switch from chat to phone to email (or vice versa) with a customer, it’s all on the same ticketing page. There’s even on-the-spot translation built right in, which is extremely helpful.

• It has a help center that notifies your team of new customer inquiries, requests, or issues.
• The forever free plan comes with basic features such as a single inbox, file attachments, and can be used to handle upto 100 tickets/month.
• Overall, I actually liked Zendesk’s user experience better than Intercom’s in terms of its messaging dashboard.
• Zendesk can also save key customer information in their platform, which helps reps get a faster idea of who they are dealing with as well as any historical data that might assist in the support.
• Let’s start by giving a brief introduction to both platforms.
• The Intercom versus Zendesk conundrum is probably the greatest problem in the world of customer support tools.

They may be utilized to alert consumers about product updates, provide assistance, and promote specials that are relevant to them. The Zendesk Workspace provides agents a single workspace with access to all team collaboration and customer communication channels so that an agent can manage all conversations without switching metadialog.com interfaces. 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.

The “SaaS” Live Chat: Intercom

For support teams, ensuring that agents are on the same page is an essential part of the customer experience. Intercom plays a very important role in the customer experience through messaging platforms, team collaboration products, and a valuable knowledge base solution. If your team is looking for a robust live chat option to engage website visitors, Olark is the perfect Intercom alternative for you. Also, this software offers a feature called ‘Business Messenger’ that comes with its own AI chatbot. Moreover, Intercom bots can converse naturally with customers by using conversation starters, and respond with self-help, and knowledge base articles.

When it comes to creating an optimum knowledge base experience, both Intercom and Zendesk are excellent choices with similar capabilities for your needs. Here, we’ve outlined the support options that Intercom and Zendesk provide to companies using their platforms. 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. Inside a ticket, the workspace center console displays the ticket’s conversation. The right side of the screen displays all customer contact information and company interaction history, and the agent can contact the customer via any channel with just a few clicks.

Top Similarities Between Gorgias and Intercom

If you’re an enterprise organization and need an all in one customer support solution,

Zendesk would be a great fit. You know how Gmail updates automatically whenever a new email comes in? Enchant not only does this, but

everything about a customer request automatically updates in real time for everybody that’s logged in to the system. This is especially important in a collaborative environment where team members can pass requests to each

other or even work on the same request together.

Intercom self-service chatbot widgets, highly customizable and capable of conversing in 32 different languages, embed into your website or application. Intercom wins the automation and AI category because its chatbots have some impressive capabilities, like lead qualification and advanced routing. With so many solutions to choose from, finding the right option for your business can feel like an uphill battle. We give the edge to Zendesk here, as it’s typically aimed for more complex environments. It’s also more exclusively focused on providing help support, whereas Intercom sometimes moonlights as being part-time sales. The result is that Zendesk generally wins on ratings when it comes to support capacity.