Sync public articles with Zendesk

Its robust workflows streamline the ticket resolution system and efficiently handle all customer complaints. It also enables agents to perform customized workflow management, assign tickets to the right agent for request handling, and track the ticket’s progress. However, businesses must choose between Zendesk vs Intercom based on their needs and requirements. In today’s business world, customer service is fast-paced, and customers have higher expectations. To enhance customer satisfaction, businesses must equip their teams with customer support solutions and customer service software. Intercom’s ticketing system and help desk SaaS is also pretty great, just not as amazing as Zendesk’s.

You can see their attention to detail in everything — from their tools to their website. Intercom doesn’t really provide free stuff, but they have a tool called Platform, which is free. The free Intercom Platform lets you see who your customers are and what they do in your workspace. It’s modern, it’s smooth, it looks great and it has so many advanced features.

This site does not include all software companies or all available software companies offers. However, this is somewhat subjective, and depending on your business needs and favorite tools, you may argue we got it all mixed up, and Intercom is truly superior. Some startups and small businesses may prefer one app, while large https://chat.openai.com/ companies and enterprise operations will have their own requirements. So, by now, you can see that according to this article, Zendesk inches past Intercom as the better customer support platform. Integrations are the best way to enhance the toolkit of your apps by connecting them for interoperable actions and features.

ProProfs Live Chat Editorial Team is a diverse group of professionals passionate about customer support and engagement. We update you on the latest trends, dive into technical topics, and offer insights to elevate your business. Don’t miss out on the latest tips, tools, and tactics at the forefront of customer support. Given that both of these platforms seem aimed at one sort of market or another, it shouldn’t surprise you that we might find a few gaps in the sorts of services they provide.

Intecom’s pricing strategies are not as transparent as Zendesk’s pricing. Some of the links that appear on the website are from software companies from which CRM.org receives compensation. This site does not include all companies or all available Vendors. One more thing to add, there are ways to integrate Intercom to Zendesk.

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. Triggers should prove especially useful for agents, allowing them to do things like automate notifications for actions like ticket assignments, ticket closing/reopening, or new ticket creation.

Reporting and analytics

With so many features to consider, not to mention pricing, user experience, and scalability, we don’t blame you if you feel your head spinning. If delivering an outstanding customer experience and employee experience is your top priority, Zendesk should be your top pick over Intercom. Zendesk has the CX expertise to help businesses of all sizes scale their service experience without compromise. What can be really inconvenient about Zendesk is how its tools integrate with each other when you need to use them simultaneously. You can publish your self-service resources, divide them by categories, and integrate them with your messenger to accelerate the whole chat experience.

It also features an AI-driven ticketing system, an omnichannel dashboard to manage all customer communications in one place, and customizable chat widgets to enhance user engagement. When it comes to utility, Zendesk’s utility may not be as robust as a pure CRM solution. However, customers do have the option to go to Zendesk Sell for a more robust experience. You can also use Intercom as a customer service platform, but given its broad focus, you may not get the same level of specialized expertise.

These are both still very versatile products, so don’t think you have to get too siloed into a single use case. G2 ranks Intercom higher than Zendesk for ease of setup, and support quality—so you can expect a smooth transition, effortless onboarding, and continuous success. Whether you’re starting fresh with Intercom or migrating from Zendesk, set up is quick and easy. If you’re already using Intercom and want to continue using it as the front-end CRM experience, integrating with Zendesk can improve it. Check out our chart that compares the capabilities of Zendesk vs. Intercom.

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. For standard reporting like response times, leads generated by source, bot performance, messages sent, and email deliverability, you’ll easily find all the metrics you need. Beyond that, you can create custom reports that combine all of the stats listed above (and many more) and present them as counts, columns, lines, or tables.

If you see either of these warnings, wait 60 seconds for your Zendesk rate limit to be reset and try again. If this becomes a persistent issue for your team, we recommend contacting Zendesk. There is also an opinion that Zendesk’s interface and design are slightly less convenient in comparison to Intercom’s, which provides a more streamlined user interface. Creating multiple support request forms to quickly find out the most relevant problems of your clients. – Analysis of conversation trends; track conversation trends with tagging and reporting.

It tends to perform well on the marketing and sales side of things, which is key for a growing company. And considering that its tools (including live chat options) are so easy to use, it’s probably going to be easier for a small business to get integrated and set up. As any free tool, the functionalities there are quite limited, but nevertheless. If you’re a really small business or a startup, you can benefit big time from such free tools. The Suite Team plan, priced at $69 per agent, adds features like live chat and messaging, while the Suite Growth plan at $115 per agent introduces automation and advanced analytics. When comparing Zendesk and Intercom, it’s essential to understand their core features and their differences to choose the right solution for your customer support needs.

Linking your Zendesk Account

You can even improve efficiency and transparency by setting up task sequences, defining sales triggers, and strategizing with advanced forecasting and reporting tools. 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. You can create articles, share them internally, group them for users, and assign them as responses for bots—all pretty standard fare.

Some businesses may require supplemental products to meet specific needs. Intercom’s CRM utility is a solid foundation for managing customer relationships and sales in one platform. Intercom’s app store has popular integrations for things like WhatsApp, Stripe, Instagram, and Slack. There is a really useful one for Shopify to provide customer support for e-commerce operations. HubSpot and Salesforce are also available when support needs to work with marketing and sales teams.

The highlight of Zendesk’s ticketing software is its omnichannel-ality (omnichannality?). Whether agents are facing customers via chat, email, social media, or good old-fashioned phone, they can keep it all confined to a single, easy-to-navigate dashboard. That not only saves them the headache of having to constantly switch between dashboards while streamlining resolution processes—it also leads to better customer and agent experience overall. While not included with its customer service suite, it offers a full-fledged standalone CRM called Zendesk Sell. While it’s a separate product with separate costs, it does integrate seamlessly with Zendesk’s customer service platform. Intercom also uses AI and features a chatbot called Fin, but negative reviews note basic reporting and a lack of customization.

Compared to being detailed, Zendesk gives a tough competition to Intercom. Operators can easily switch from one conversation to another, therefore helping operators manage more interactions simultaneously. After this live chat software comparison, you’ll get a better picture of what’s better for your business. Overall, when comparing 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. But I don’t want to sell their chat tool short as it still has most of necessary features like shortcuts (saved responses), automated triggers and live chat analytics.

Zendesk vs. Intercom: A comparison for 2024

They offer an omnichannel chat solution that integrates with multiple messaging platforms and marketing channels and even automates incoming support processes with bots. It is quite the all-rounder as it even has a help center and ticketing system that completes its omnichannel support cycle. So yeah, two essential things that Zendesk lacks in comparison to Intercom are in-app messages and email marketing tools. Intercom on the other hand lacks many ticketing functionality that can be essential for big companies with a huge customer support load. On the other hand, Intercom enables agents to convert a conversation into a ticket with one click.

Both Zendesk and Intercom offer customer service software with AI capabilities—however, they are not created equal. Zendesk AI was modeled on the world’s largest CX-specific dataset. With Zendesk, you get next-level AI-powered support software that’s intuitively designed, scalable, and cost-effective.

With a mix of productivity, collaboration, eCommerce, CRM, analytics, email marketing, social media, and other tools, you get the option to create an omnichannel suite. 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 they bought out Zopim live chat and just integrated it with their toolset. Zendesk excels with its AI-enhanced user experience and robust omnichannel support, making it ideal for businesses focused on customer service.

Both Zendesk and Intercom have integration libraries, and you can also use a connecting tool like Zapier for added integrations and add-ons. The main idea here is to rid the average support agent of a slew of mundane and repetitive tasks, giving them more time and mental energy to help customers with zendesk to intercom tougher issues. Every single bit of business SaaS in the world needs to leverage the efficiency power of workflows and automation. Customer service systems like Zendesk and Intercom should provide a simple workflow builder as well as many pre-built automations which can be used right out of the box.

Welcome to another blog post that helps you gauge which live chat solution is compatible with your customer support needs. And in this post, we will analyze two popular names in the SaaS industry – Intercom & Zendesk. 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. To sum things up, Zendesk is a great customer support oriented tool which will be a great choice for big teams with various departments.

You’d probably want to know how much it costs to get each platform for your business, so let’s talk money now. You can create dozens of articles in a simple, intuitive WYSIWYG text editor, divide them by categories and sections, and customize them with your custom themes. You can collect ticket data from customers when they fill out the ticket, update them manually as you handle the conversation. This means you can use the Help Desk Migration product to import data from a variety of source tools (e.g. Zendesk, ZOHOdesk, Freshdesk, SFDC etc) to Intercom tickets. If you choose to remove your sync with Zendesk, the data related to synced articles will also be deleted so this may cause the numbers in article reporting to decrease.

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 Chat GPT send out notifications when headlights are due. Intercom, of course, allows its customer support team to collaborate and communicate too, but overall, Zendesk wins this group. Intercom has a very robust advanced chatbot set of tools for your business needs.

Some aspects give an edge or create differentiation in the operations of both software, which users may oversee while making a choice. We will discuss these differentiating factors to help you make the right choice for your business and help it excel in offering extraordinary customer service. The primary function of Intercom’s mobile app is the business messenger suite, including personalized messaging, real-time support tools, push notifications, in-app messaging and emailing. Intercom also does mobile carousels to help please the eye with fresh designs. Zendesk has many amazing team collaboration and communication features, like whisper mode, which lets multiple agents chime in to help each other without the customer knowing.

It does help you organize and create content using efficient tools, but Zendesk is more suitable if you want a fully branded customer-centric experience. However, it is a great option for businesses seeking efficient customer interactions, as its focus on personalized messaging compensates for its lack of features. Because of the app called Intercom Messenger, one can see that their focus is less on the voice and more on the text. This is fine, as not every customer support team wants to be so available on the phone. The best help desks are also ticketing systems, which lets support reps create a support ticket out of issues that can then be tracked. Ticket routing helps to send the ticket to the best support team agent.

Here, agents can deal with customers directly, leave notes for each other to enable seamless handovers, or convert tickets into self-help resources. As the place where your agents will be spending most of their time, a functional and robust Helpdesk will be critical to their overall performance and experience. While there are some universal things to look out for, like the range of features, ease of use, and a seamless omnichannel experience, it’s also about your subjective experience.

Now that we know a little about both tools, it is time to make an in-depth analysis and identify which one of these will be perfect for your business. Here’s a list of criteria we’ve used to differentiate the two for you. 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. If you’d want to test Zendesk and Intercom before deciding on a tool for good, they both provide free trials. Intercom has a standard trial period for a SaaS product which is 14 days, while Zendesk offers a 30-day trial.

Intercom’s native mobile apps are good for iOS, Android, React Native, and Cordova, while Zendesk only has mobile apps for iPhones, iPads, and Android devices. 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?

Yes, you can continue using Intercom as the consumer-facing CRM experience, but integrate with Zendesk for customer service in the back end for more customer support functionality. Intercom offers fewer integrations, supporting just over 450 third-party apps. This makes it challenging to customize the software as your business grows. Furthermore, data on customer reviews, installation numbers, and ecommerce integrations is not readily available. It provides a real-time feed and historical data, so agents can respond instantly to consumer queries, as well as learn from past CX trends.

You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. On the other hand, Intercom has all its (fewer) tools and features integrated with each other way better, which makes your experience with the tool as smooth as silk. The Zendesk marketplace hosts over 1,500 third-party apps and integrations. The software is known for its agile APIs and proven custom integration references.

• Zendesk, just like its competitor, offers a knowledge base solution that is easy to customize.
• 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.
• After an in-depth analysis such as this, it can be pretty challenging for your business to settle with either option.

For those of you who have been waiting for the big showdown between these two customer support heavyweights, we are glad to present the ultimate Zendesk vs Intercom comparison article. Intercom’s reporting is less focused on getting a fine-grained understanding of your team’s performance, and more on a nuanced understanding of customer behavior and engagement. Intercom primarily focuses on messaging but offers limited channel breadth compared to Zendesk, requiring paid add-ons for critical channels like WhatsApp.

Nowadays, it’s a crucial component in helping businesses focus on high-priority interactions and scale their customer service. It started as a ticketing tool just for customer service teams and has evolved over the years into a complete customer support platform. Since, its name has become somewhat synonymous with customer service and support.

The final prices are revealed after engaging in sales demos and are not revealed upfront. This lack of transparency can create budgeting problems for businesses. Zendesk offers various features, which may differ according to the plan. 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.

Companies might assume that using Intercom increases costs, potentially impacting businesses’ ROI. Zendesk’s automation features are limited to offering basic automation to streamline repetitive tasks. While Zeendesk provides automation services for ticket support systems, notifications, chatbots, etc., it may not be an extensive feature compared to Intercom. Zendesk allows businesses to group their resources in the help center, providing customers with self-service personalized support. The platform has various customization options, allowing businesses personalized experiences according to their branding. Help Center in Zendesk also will enable businesses to organize their tutorials, articles, and FAQs, making it convenient for customer to find solutions to their queries.

Their customer service management tools have a shared inbox for support teams. When you combine the help desk with Intercom Messenger, you get added channels for customer engagement. Zendesk is among the industry’s best ticketing and customer support software, and most of its additional functionality is icing on the proverbial cake. Intercom, on the other hand, is designed to be more of a complete solution for sales, marketing, and customer relationship nurturing. You can use it for customer support, but that’s not its core strength.

You’d probably want to know how much it costs to get Zendesk or Intercom for your business, so let’s talk money now. As I’ve already mentioned, they started as a help desk/ticketing tool, and honestly, they perfected every bit of it over the years. As it turns, it’s quite difficult to compare Zendesk against Intercom as they serve different purposes and will fit different businesses. 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.

And, Zendesk is nothing if not geared for helping agents deal with large ticket volumes efficiently. However, you won’t miss out on any of the essentials when it comes to live chat. Automated triggers, saved responses, and live chat analytics are all baked in. The only other downside is that the chat widget can feel a bit static and outdated.

In 2016, Zendesk reported that 87,000 paid customers from over 150 countries used its products. In 2018, Intercom raised $125 million in funding, which brought its value up to $1.25 billion and provided the company with all the rights to call itself a unicorn. First of all, Intercom positions itself as a business messenger, the primary aim of which is to deliver modern and reliable customer communication tool. Deleted, inactive and suspended users will not be migrated to Intercom.

• You need a complete customer service platform that’s seamlessly integrated and AI-enhanced.
• As an avid learner interested in all things tech, Jelisaveta always strives to share her knowledge with others and help people and businesses reach their goals.
• Once chosen, select what fields you want to migrate, and what these should be mapped to.
• This packs all resolution information into a single ticket, so there’s no extra searching or backtracking needed to bring a ticket through to resolution, even if it involves multiple agents.
• In addition, the costs of Zendesk’s services are slightly easier to calculate.
• Once you add them all to the picture, their existing plans can turn out to be quite expensive.

In addition to all these features, Suite Growth Plan offers light agents, multilingual support, multiple ticket forms, and a self-service customer portal. On the other hand, Intercom may have a lower ROI when compared to Zendesk due to the limited depth of features it offers. Although it provides businesses with valuable messaging and automation tools, they may require more than this to achieve a higher level of functionality.

Conversely, Intercom has a shared inbox tool that routes conversations from every channel, including live chat, email, SMS, and more, into one place. However, it offers a limited channel scope compared to Zendesk, and users will have to get paid add-ons for channels like WhatsApp. Agents can quickly grasp the context of customer interaction through these support tickets and sentiment analysis that AI facilitates.

Find reporting for all articles (including synced articles) in the Articles report. Public Articles that are synced from Zendesk will be shown in the Knowledge Hub as view-only and can’t be edited. All changes must be made through Zendesk and will automatically propagate to Intercom with the next sync. However, you can configure the settings for synced articles such as enabling them for Fin or managing audience rules.

Well, I must admit, the tool is gradually transforming from a platform for communicating with users to a tool that helps you automate every aspect of your routine. If I had to describe Intercom’s helpdesk, I would say it’s rather a complementary tool to their chat tools. Yes, you can install the Messenger on your iOS or Android app so customers can get in touch from your mobile app.

These include chatbot automation features, customer segmentation, and targeted SMS messaging to reach the right audience efficiently. Keep up with emerging trends in customer service and learn from top industry experts. Master Tidio with in-depth guides and uncover real-world success stories in our case studies.