We don’t need to tell you that quality customer service counts. But to provide this service, you need to support your team with the right tools. And with so many options currently on the market, this can be easier said than done.
So we’ve simplified things. By comparing two of the industry’s most popular platforms, Intercom and Zendesk, you can decide which features mean the most to you and narrow down your selection process.
What is Intercom?
Intercom is a customer service platform built with an emphasis on AI tools — like its AI agent, Fin, which provides customers with a convenient, empathetic experience. Intercom is also equipped with a variety of other AI-driven tools, as well as standard customer service features like shared inboxes, basic chatbots, and ticketing systems.
What is Zendesk?
Zendesk is a popular cloud-based platform aimed at enhancing the customer service experience. It is primarily focused on improving communication while streamlining the agent experience to deliver a more efficient user journey.
Who can benefit from Intercom vs Zendesk?
Intercom typically targets customer service and support teams. However, their tools can also be used by any business looking to streamline workflows, with core offerings tailored toward support agents and leaders alike.
Zendesk is widely adopted across industries, from the financial sector to retail, targeting businesses looking to scale their customer service operations. It also offers side products for sales and HR teams, though its primary selling point is as a customer service platform.
Intercom vs Zendesk — side by side
| Features | Intercom | Zendesk |
|---|---|---|
| CRM | Can connect with CRMs through integrations. | Offers Add-on CRM capabilities with Zendesk Sunshine. |
| Ticketing system | Offers advanced management for customer, back office, and tracker tickets for a seamless experience. | Centralizes ticketing with built on automation, smart routing, and reporting to optimize agent performance. |
| Integrations | Features more than 300 integrations and apps available in the App Store. | Offers more than 1,700 pre-built apps and integrations. |
| AI and automation | Uses Fin AI agent to resolve most common issues without using your agents’ valuable time. Fin can also function as a copilot in your agents’ inbox, facilitating effective customer conversations through guidance, troubleshooting, training tools, and AI-powered analytics. | Uses AI to optimize customer service workflows through tools such as Content Cues, Answer Bot, and auto-generated ticket summaries. These solutions boost efficiency and make your agents’ lives easier. |
| Help desk | Offers a public knowledge base and community Developer Hub to help answer FAQs. | Features a help center with access to Zendesk’s online resources, as well as a centralized knowledge base for easy answers to common problems. |
| Omnichannel | Provides access to a shared inbox that connects your email, live chat, social, phone, and WhatsApp conversations in real time. | Offers support for channels such as email, social media, SMS, web and app messaging, voice, and Apple Messages for business. |
| Analytics | Fin Copilot can be used to gather and analyze relevant customer data and metrics. | Customizes metrics, reports, and dashboards to view your essential data in whichever way you choose. |
| Quality assurance (QA) | Not available. | For an additional monthly cost per agent, Zendesk offers advanced QA tools such as voice QA, QA for AI agents, and more. |
Pricing and plans
Both of these solutions offer several packages you can choose from based on your requirements and budget. Keep in mind that the prices listed for these core plans are what you’ll pay if you’re billed annually and charged per agent per month.
Intercom
- Essential: For $29, this includes features such as a shared inbox, basic chatbots, ticketing system, public help center, proactive support, live chat, inbound email, and analytics.
- Advanced: Starting from $85, this plan gives you access to all features in the Essential subscription, plus advanced custom reports, social channels, workflow automation, and multiple team inboxes.
- Expert: For $132, you can access all features in the Advanced plan, plus workload management, multiple help centers, SSO and identity management, and custom roles.
However, certain communication methods and AI features come at an additional cost:
- Email campaigns: Are available from $0.00025 to $0.045 per email sent, based on volume.
- SMS: From $0.01 to $0.09 per SMS sent or received, based on volume and region.
- WhatsApp: From $0.03 to $0.10 per conversation, based on volume or bulk options.
- Phone: Starts at $0.012 per minute (functionality is also limited based on core plan).
- Fin AI Agents: $0.99 per successful customer resolution.
- Fin AI Copilot: Free to use in 10 tickets or conversations per agent per month, but costs an additional $29 per agent per month for unlimited access.
Zendesk
- Support Team: At $19 per agent per month, this beginner plan offers access to key features such as the ticketing system, Unified Agent Workspace, customer details, conversation history, analytics dashboards, and more.
- Suite Team: At $55 per agent per month, this plan introduces AI, automation, and omnichannel service into your toolbelt with features like AI agents, customer and internal knowledge bases, social media messaging, and text messaging.
- Suite Professional: For $115 per agent per month you can access optimization tools like custom analytics, skills-based routing, service level agreements, self-service portals and more to your list of capabilities.
- Suite Enterprise: Enterprise pricing varies according to needs, which requires meeting with the sales team. But depending on your budget, you can add advanced features like a sandbox, approval workflows, audit logs, AI-powered content cues, customer agent roles, and more.
Supercharge customer support with Jotform
Once you’ve decided on the perfect customer service tool for your team, the good news doesn’t stop there. Because now, you can integrate Zendesk or Intercom with Jotform.
Pro Tip
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Photo by Zen Chung
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