Zen­desk vs Inter­com: Which Tick­et­ing Tool is Best for You?

They need to com­pre­hen­sive­ly ana­lyze if they are get­ting the val­ue of the invest­ed mon­ey. 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. When it comes to Inter­com, it reserves SSO and iden­ti­ty man­age­ment for its high­er-priced tier plan as an add-on. Dis­cov­er how this Shopi­fy store used Tidio to offer bet­ter ser­vice, recov­er carts, and boost sales.

Its strength in cre­at­ing a com­pre­hen­sive self-ser­vice knowl­edge base and its exten­sive inte­gra­tion ecosys­tem make it a ver­sa­tile option. Zen­desk is more robust in terms of its tick­et man­age­ment capa­bil­i­ties, it offers more cus­tomiza­tion options and advanced fea­tures like a vir­tu­al call cen­ter app. On the oth­er hand, Inter­com is more focused on con­ver­sa­tion­al cus­tomer sup­port, and has more help desk fea­tures suit­ed for live chat and mes­sag­ing. Zen­desk and Inter­com are both incred­i­bly pow­er­ful cus­tomer sup­port tools, and they have their own strengths and weak­ness­es.

While it is designed to help sup­port agents be effi­cient,  it might not be as visu­al­ly appeal­ing or intu­itive for users who aren’t very tech-savvy. When you’re choos­ing the right tool that can help you do this, Zen­desk and Inter­com are two pop­u­lar names that are like­ly to come up. Both are known for their range of fea­tures – AI, ana­lyt­ics, automa­tion, and tick­et­ing, amongst oth­ers.

In this sec­tion, we will take a clos­er look at the cus­tomer sup­port options pro­vid­ed by each plat­form. On the oth­er hand, Inter­com prides itself on being the only com­plete cus­tomer ser­vice solu­tion that pro­vides a seam­less expe­ri­ence across automa­tion and human sup­port. By aim­ing to resolve most cus­tomer con­ver­sa­tions with­out human inter­ven­tion, Inter­com allows teams to focus on high­er-val­ue inter­ac­tions. This not only increas­es cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion but also reduces oper­a­tional costs. Messagely’s chat­bots are pow­er­ful tools for qual­i­fy­ing and con­vert­ing leads while your team is oth­er­wise occu­pied or away. With chat­bots, you can gen­er­ate leads to hand over to your sales team and solve com­mon cus­tomer queries with­out the need of a cus­tomer ser­vice rep­re­sen­ta­tive behind a key­board.

Max­i­mize your ROI with Zen­desk

And in this post, we will ana­lyze two pop­u­lar names in the SaaS indus­try – Inter­com & Zen­desk. When choos­ing the right cus­tomer sup­port tool, pric­ing is an essen­tial fac­tor to con­sid­er. In this sec­tion, we will com­pare the pric­ing struc­tures of Inter­com and Zen­desk. In today’s envi­ron­ment, where cus­tomer expec­ta­tions are con­stant­ly evolv­ing, choos­ing the right tick­et­ing tool that aligns with your busi­ness needs is cru­cial.

Over­all, Zen­desk has a slight edge over Inter­com when it comes to tick­et­ing capa­bil­i­ties. It pro­vides a vari­ety of cus­tomer ser­vice automa­tion fea­tures like auto-clos­ing tick­ets, set­ting auto-respons­es, and cre­at­ing chat trig­gers to keep tick­ets mov­ing auto­mat­i­cal­ly. Mean­while, Inter­com excels with its com­pre­hen­sive AI automa­tion capa­bil­i­ties, all built on a uni­fied AI sys­tem.

Most notably, it doesn’t have built-in func­tion­al­i­ty to con­nect tick­ets with Microsoft Teams or Slack. You can foun addi­tiona infor­ma­tion about ai cus­tomer ser­vice and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence and NLP. Users would need a third-par­ty inte­gra­tion like Tray.io to con­nect those chan­nels. With Zen­desk, you can use lead track­ing fea­tures to fil­ter and seg­ment your leads in real time.

Zen­desk excels in tra­di­tion­al tick­et man­age­ment and offers a robust set of fea­ture. On the oth­er hand, Intercom’s cut­ting-edge AI capa­bil­i­ties and in-app mes­sag­ing fea­tures help com­pa­nies pro­vide a more intu­itive and on-the-go cus­tomer sup­port. Inter­com is a cus­tomer mes­sag­ing plat­form that enables busi­ness­es to engage with cus­tomers through per­son­al­ized and real-time com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Zen­desk pro­vides a range of cus­tomer sup­port options, includ­ing email, phone, and live chat sup­port. They also offer a com­pre­hen­sive knowl­edge base that includes arti­cles, videos, and tuto­ri­als to help users get the most out of the plat­form. Inter­com, on the oth­er hand, offers more advanced automa­tion fea­tures than Zen­desk.

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. That being said, while both plat­forms offer exten­sive fea­tures, they can be cost­ly, espe­cial­ly for small­er enter­pris­es. Ulti­mate­ly, your choice should reflect whether your pri­or­i­ty is com­pre­hen­sive cus­tomer sup­port (Zen­desk) or a blend of CRM and sales sup­port (Inter­com).

If your goal is to deliv­er out­stand­ing cus­tomer sup­port to your audi­ence, then Zen­desk is a good option. It comes with a uni­fied omnichan­nel dash­board, cus­tom reports, and an advanced tick­et­ing sys­tem. How­ev­er, if you aim to nur­ture leads and grow sales, then Inter­com is the bet­ter option. Its AI-pow­ered tools and vir­tu­al assis­tants make it a for­mi­da­ble CRM-pow­ered soft­ware. Zen­desk ful­ly uti­lizes AI tools to enhance user expe­ri­ences at every stage of the cus­tomer jour­ney. Its AI chat­bots lever­age machine learn­ing to gain a deep­er under­stand­ing of cus­tomer inter­ac­tions.

That being said, it some­times lacks the advanced cus­tomiza­tion and automa­tion offered by oth­er AI-pow­ered chat­bots, like Intercom’s. Zendesk’s Answer Bot is capa­ble of help­ing cus­tomers with com­mon queries by pro­vid­ing canned respons­es and links to rel­e­vant help arti­cles. It relies on fair­ly basic automa­tion while rout­ing more com­plex issues to live agents. Hav­ing only appeared in 2011, Inter­com lacks a few years of expe­ri­ence on Zen­desk. It also made its name as a mes­sag­ing-first plat­form for fos­ter­ing per­son­al­ized con­ver­sa­tion­al expe­ri­ences for cus­tomers. How­ev­er, after pat­ting your­self on the back, you now real­ize you’re faced with the daunt­ing task of choos­ing between the two.

How­ev­er, if you’re look­ing for a stream­lined, all-in-one mes­sag­ing plat­form, there is no bet­ter option than Mes­sage­ly. You don’t have to pay per con­tact on your data­base, and you there are many free fea­tures you can use. You can also con­tact Zen­desk sup­port 24/7, where­as Inter­com sup­port only has live agents dur­ing busi­ness hours. It’s divid­ed into about 20 top­ics with dozens of arti­cles each, so nav­i­gat­ing through it can be com­pli­cat­ed.

The dash­board also pro­vides insights into user behav­ior and engage­ment met­rics. Inter­com is ide­al for per­son­al­ized mes­sag­ing, while Zen­desk offers robust tick­et man­age­ment and self-ser­vice options. What sets Zen­desk apart is its user-friend­ly inter­face, cus­tomiz­able work­flows, and scal­a­bil­i­ty. It caters to a wide range of indus­tries, par­tic­u­lar­ly excelling in e‑commerce, SaaS, tech­nol­o­gy, and telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions. It is favored by cus­tomer sup­port, helpdesk, IT ser­vice man­age­ment, and con­tact cen­ter teams. In this arti­cle, we com­pre­hen­sive­ly do a com­par­i­son of Zen­desk vs Inter­com, exam­in­ing their key fea­tures, ben­e­fits, and indus­try use cas­es.

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. Zen­desk excels with its pow­er­ful tick­et­ing and cus­tomer sup­port capa­bil­i­ties, mak­ing it ide­al for stream­lin­ing ser­vice oper­a­tions. Zen­desk offers your agents a uni­fied work­space to col­lab­o­rate on sup­port tick­ets. This sin­gle win­dow allows your team mem­bers to com­bine sev­er­al chan­nels for bet­ter effi­cien­cy and improved cus­tomer expe­ri­ence.

Orga­nize cus­tomer data

There is a sim­ple email inte­gra­tion tool for what­ev­er email provider you reg­u­lar­ly use. This gets you unlim­it­ed email address­es and email tem­plates in both text form and HTML. Help desk SaaS is how you man­age gen­er­al cus­tomer com­mu­ni­ca­tion and for han­dling cus­tomer ques­tions. Inter­com has lim­it­ed scal­a­bil­i­ty com­pared to Zen­desk, which is unsuit­able for large-scale enter­pris­es. If trans­paren­cy in pric­ing is not an issue for you and you are a small busi­ness, con­tact Inter­com. If, after the addi­tion­al prices they charge, the plan works for you, Inter­com is a great way to man­age your cus­tomer rela­tion­ships.

Zen­desk and Inter­com offer basic fea­tures, includ­ing live chat, a help desk, and a pre-built knowl­edge base. They have great UX and a nor­mal pric­ing range, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult for busi­ness­es to choose one, as both soft­ware almost looks sim­i­lar in their offer­ings. 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.

• Inter­com live chat is mod­ern, smooth, and has many advanced fea­tures that oth­er chat tools lack.
• Zen­desk is a much larg­er com­pa­ny than Inter­com; it has over 170,000 cus­tomers, while Inter­com has over 25,000.
• Since Inter­com doesn’t offer a CRM, its pric­ing is divid­ed into basic mes­sag­ing and mes­sag­ing with automa­tions.

Fin’s advanced algo­rithm and machine learn­ing enable the pre­ci­sion han­dling of queries. Fin enables busi­ness­es to set new stan­dards for offer­ing cus­tomer ser­vice. AI is inte­gral to cus­tomer rela­tion­ship man­age­ment soft­ware and facil­i­tates https://chat.openai.com/ con­sumer inter­ac­tions. AI helps busi­ness­es gain detailed insight into con­sumer data in real-time. It also helps pro­mote automa­tion in rou­tine tasks by automat­ing repet­i­tive process­es and helps agents save time and errors.

What­ev­er you think of Intercom’s design and gen­er­al user expe­ri­ence, you can’t deny that it out­per­forms all of its com­peti­tors. Every­thing, from the tools to the web­site, reflects their metic­u­lous atten­tion to detail. It can be clas­si­fied as a chat­box for aver­age users, just like the ones found on a vari­ety of web­sites. 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 vs Zen­desk: pric­ing

Learn more about the dif­fer­ences between lead­ing chat sup­port solu­tions Inter­com and Zen­desk so that you can choose the right tool for your needs. Also, all of Hiver’s pric­ing plans come with a 7‑day free tri­al, and no cred­it card is required to sign up for the tri­al. To sum up, if you are look­ing for a helpdesk with no advanced AI capa­bil­i­ties, you can choose Inter­com. Their basic plan is cheap­er than Zen­desk, but you’ll not get to use any of their AI-pow­ered add-ons.

Inter­com is bet­ter for small­er com­pa­nies that are look­ing for a sim­ple and capa­ble cus­tomer ser­vice plat­form. Instead, using it and set­ting it up is very easy, and very advanced chat­bots and pre­dic­tive tools are includ­ed to boost your cus­tomer ser­vice. With a mul­ti-chan­nel tick­et­ing sys­tem, Zen­desk Sup­port helps you and your team to know exact­ly who you’re talk­ing to and inter­com vs zen­desk keep track of tick­ets through­out all chan­nels with­out los­ing con­text. The set­up is designed to seam­less­ly con­nect your cus­tomer sup­port team with cus­tomers across all plat­forms. Inter­com’s report­ing is aver­age com­pared to Zen­desk, as it offers some stan­dard report­ing and ana­lyt­ics tools. Its ana­lyt­ics do not pro­vide deep­er insights into con­sumer inter­ac­tions as well.

How to cre­ate a CRM strat­e­gy and why you need one in 2024

While both offer a wide num­ber of inte­gra­tion options, Zen­desk wins the top spot in this cat­e­go­ry. While both Zen­desk and Inter­com offer ways to track your sales pipeline, each plat­form han­dles the process a Chat GPT bit dif­fer­ent­ly. Zen­desk which is less user-friend­ly and charges more for qual­i­ty sup­port, might not work for small­er busi­ness­es. What dif­fer­en­ti­ates them is the kind of reports they equip your teams with.

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. 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. By using its work­force man­age­ment func­tion­al­i­ty, busi­ness­es can ana­lyze employ­ee per­for­mance, and imple­ment strate­gies to improve them.

Cus­tomer­ly Report­ing

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. 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. You can use Zen­desk Sell to track tasks, stream­line work­flows, improve engage­ment, nur­ture leads, and much more.

• Inter­com’s user inter­face is also quite straight­for­ward and easy to under­stand; it includes a range of fea­tures such as live chat, mes­sag­ing cam­paigns, and automa­tion work­flows.
• 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.
• What can be real­ly incon­ve­nient about Zen­desk is how its tools inte­grate with each oth­er when you need to use them simul­ta­ne­ous­ly.
• While this may seem like a pos­i­tive for Zen­desk, it’s impor­tant to con­sid­er that a larg­er com­pa­ny may not be as agile or respon­sive to cus­tomer needs as a small­er com­pa­ny.
• They charge for agent seats and con­nec­tions, don’t dis­close their prices, and pack­age add-ons at a pre­mi­um.

For exam­ple, you can cre­ate a smart list that only includes leads that haven’t respond­ed to your mes­sage, allow­ing you to sep­a­rate prospects for lead nur­tur­ing. You can then lever­age cus­tomiz­able sequences, email automa­tion, and desk­top text mes­sag­ing to help keep these prospects engaged. Again, Zen­desk has sur­passed the num­ber of review­ers when com­pared to Inter­com. Some of the high­ly-rat­ed fea­tures include tick­et cre­ation user expe­ri­ence, email to case, and live chat report­ing. Inter­com offers a sim­plis­tic dash­board with a detailed view of all cus­tomer details in one place.

With our com­mit­ment to qual­i­ty and integri­ty, you can be con­fi­dent you’re get­ting the most reli­able resources to enhance your cus­tomer sup­port ini­tia­tives. Pop-up chat, in-app mes­sag­ing, and noti­fi­ca­tions are some of the high­ly-rat­ed fea­tures of this live chat soft­ware. Inter­com has received gen­er­al­ly pos­i­tive cus­tomer reviews, with an over­all rat­ing of 4.5 out of 5 stars on Gart­ner Peer Insights. Cus­tomers appre­ci­ate the platform’s ease of use, flex­i­bil­i­ty, and robust fea­ture set. How­ev­er, some users have report­ed issues with the platform’s pric­ing and cus­tomer sup­port.

This orga­ni­za­tion is impor­tant because it brings togeth­er cus­tomer inter­ac­tions from all chan­nels in this one place. And, Zen­desk is noth­ing if not geared for help­ing agents deal with large tick­et vol­umes effi­cient­ly. If you pri­or­i­tize seam­less, per­son­al­ized cus­tomer inter­ac­tions, it’s arguably the bet­ter option of the two.

Inter­com does not offer a native call cen­ter tool, so it can­not han­dle calls through a cloud-based phone sys­tem or call­ing app on its own. How­ev­er, you can con­nect Inter­com with over 40 com­pat­i­ble phone and video inte­gra­tions. While both Zen­desk and Inter­com offer robust fea­tures, their pric­ing mod­els might still be a hur­dle for busi­ness­es look­ing to just start out with a help desk on a com­par­a­tive­ly small­er bud­get. So, the actu­al pric­ing of Inter­com would depend on whether or not you’re going to need their AI fea­tures – the AI Copi­lot and AI Agent.

Com­pared to Zen­desk, Inter­com offers few inte­gra­tions, which may hin­der its scal­a­bil­i­ty. Inter­com’s user inter­face is also quite straight­for­ward and easy to under­stand; it includes a range of fea­tures such as live chat, mes­sag­ing cam­paigns, and automa­tion work­flows. Addi­tion­al­ly, the plat­form allows for cus­tomiza­tions such as cus­tomized user flows and onboard­ing expe­ri­ences. The Zen­desk sales CRM offers tiered pric­ing plans designed to sup­port busi­ness­es of all sizes, from star­tups to enter­pris­es.

Where­as, Fin AI Agent is an actu­al chat­bot that responds on its own to cus­tomers’ ques­tions. Both Zen­desk and Inter­com offer automa­tion fea­tures to stream­line work­flows and improve effi­cien­cy, but the way they do it is dif­fer­ent. Per­son­al­ized mes­sag­ing, in-app mes­sag­ing, prod­uct tours, and chat­bot capa­bil­i­ties set Inter­com apart from Zen­desk.

Zen­desk helps you man­age and update your leads, ana­lyze your pipeline, and cre­ate cus­tomiz­able reports on the go with our mobile CRM app. Plus, vis­it tag­ging and geolo­ca­tion fea­tures allow your sales team to effort­less­ly log in-per­son sales vis­its, let­ting you mon­i­tor all your sales inter­ac­tions in one cen­tral­ized place. Pipedrive pro­vides a mobile app to man­age sales leads, view your cal­en­dar, and access your to-do list. And while Pipedrive’s mobile app can help you look at where your leads are on the map, you won’t be able to log sales vis­its using geolo­ca­tion fea­tures.

Like Inter­com, Zen­desk has received gen­er­al­ly pos­i­tive cus­tomer reviews, with an over­all rat­ing of 4.4 out of 5 stars on Gart­ner Peer Insights. Cus­tomers appre­ci­ate the platform’s ease of use, cus­tomiza­tion options, and robust report­ing capa­bil­i­ties. How­ev­er, some users have report­ed issues with the platform’s cus­tomer sup­port and pric­ing. One of the stand­out fea­tures of Zendesk’s user inter­face is the abil­i­ty to view cus­tomer inter­ac­tions in a time­line for­mat, which can help track the progress of a customer’s sup­port request.

The pric­ing struc­ture of Inter­com is com­plex, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult for Inter­com users to under­stand their final costs. Inter­com charges the price based on rep­re­sen­ta­tive seats and peo­ple reached, with addi­tion­al expens­es for add-ons. Pro­vide a clear path for cus­tomer ques­tions to improve the shop­ping expe­ri­ence you offer. Inter­com has more cus­tomiza­tion fea­tures for fea­tures like bots, themes, trig­gers, and fun­nels. You can cre­ate arti­cles, share them inter­nal­ly, group them for users, and assign them as respons­es for bots—all pret­ty stan­dard fare. Inter­com can even inte­grate with Zen­desk and oth­er sources to import past help cen­ter con­tent.

While Zen­desk fea­tures are plen­ty, some­one using it for the first time can find it over­whelm­ing. Inter­com has a com­mu­ni­ty forum where users can engage with each oth­er and gain insights from their expe­ri­ences. Many use cas­es call for dif­fer­ent approach­es, and Zen­desk and Inter­com are but two soft­ware solu­tions for each case. There are also sev­er­al dif­fer­ent Shopi­fy inte­gra­tions to choose from, as well as CRM inte­gra­tions like Hub­Spot and Sales­force. No mat­ter what Zen­desk Suite plan you are on, you get work­flow trig­gers, which are sim­ple busi­ness rules-based actions to stream­line many tasks.

The AI Copi­lot is lim­it­ed to assist­ing ten con­ver­sa­tions per sup­port agent and for any­thing more, it costs $35 per month per agent. How­ev­er, if you’re inter­est­ed in under­stand­ing cus­tomer behav­ior, prod­uct usage, and in need of AI-pow­ered pre­dic­tive insights, Intercom’s user ana­lyt­ics might be a bet­ter fit. Intercom’s ana­lyt­ics focus­es more on user behav­ior and engage­ment met­rics, with insights into cus­tomer inter­ac­tions, and impor­tant reten­tion met­rics.

All client con­tacts, whether via phone, chat, email, social media, or any oth­er chan­nel, land in one dash­board, where your agents can quick­ly and effi­cient­ly resolve them. Zen­desk and Inter­com each have their own marketplace/app store where users can find all the inte­gra­tions for each plat­form. How­ev­er, for busi­ness­es seek­ing a more cost-effec­tive and user-friend­ly solu­tion, Hiv­er presents a com­pelling alter­na­tive. It works on top of your inbox and offers essen­tial helpdesk func­tion­al­i­ties. More­over, for users who require more ded­i­cat­ed and per­son­al­ized sup­port, Zen­desk charges an addi­tion­al pre­mi­um.

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. You can use both Zen­desk and Inter­com simul­ta­ne­ous­ly to lever­age their respec­tive strengths and pro­vide com­pre­hen­sive cus­tomer sup­port across dif­fer­ent chan­nels and touch­points. Inter­com is more for improv­ing sales cycles and cus­tomer rela­tion­ships, while Zen­desk, an excel­lent Inter­com alter­na­tive, has every­thing a cus­tomer sup­port rep­re­sen­ta­tive can dream about. Giv­en that we’re nei­ther Inter­com nor Zen­desk, we our­selves were curi­ous to see how these two titans of cus­tomer ser­vice dif­fer. While Zen­desk doesn’t have a native asset man­age­ment fea­ture, you can eas­i­ly add a third-par­ty asset man­age­ment provider via one of our 1,500-plus inte­gra­tions.

When it comes to self-ser­vice por­tals for things like knowl­edge­bas­es, Inter­com has a use­ful set of resources. Inter­com also has a com­mu­ni­ty forum where users can help one anoth­er with ques­tions and solu­tions. 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. Star­tups usu­al­ly have low bud­gets for such invest­ments, mak­ing it eas­i­er for these small busi­ness­es to choose the right plan. The fea­tures in Zen­desk can scale with grow­ing com­pa­nies, so Star­tups can eas­i­ly cus­tomize their plan to chang­ing needs.