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Also, we’ll analyze, which are the marketing moves that transform these software tools in successful brands, and how they manage to personalize their messages to differentiate their brands from the competition. Anyone looking for a customer relationship management (CRM) tool to run and improve the whole customer journey can use and benefit from Zendesk. As of 2023, it’s quite possible to say that there are only two words that metadialog.com keep the customers coming, customer experience. Once you have considered these factors, you can begin to narrow down your choices and find the customer communication and engagement platform that is right for your business. Ask for feedback from your customers as soon as the conversation ends to get a better understanding of how your interactions are influencing the entire customer experience, and make adjustments ASAP.

It clearly shows their “sales DNA”, but it does make picking the right subscription a bit less easy. After finishing the 14-day trial of getting to know the team inbox, you get a free onboarding call with one of Trengo’s product specialists that can answer all your questions about the tool. So, now that you have an understanding of what Intercom is all about, it is time to present you with the best Intercom alternatives. I took the time to research a lot of different competitors but eventually came up with a short list to keep it easy for you. This means that the Accelerate plan with twenty users will cost you at least $989 per month.

Decoding Customer Engagement: HubSpot vs Intercom

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.

It is more affordable than Intercom and is designed specifically for managing shared inboxes. While Intercom also has shared inbox features, it is a more comprehensive platform that includes sales and marketing tools. Missive’s live chat feature allows your business to connect with your customers in real-time through your website or mobile app.

Zendesk vs. Intercom: Collaboration Tools

Broken down into custom, resolution, and task bots, these can go a long way in taking repetitive tasks off agents’ plates. 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. Overall, I actually liked Zendesk’s user experience better than Intercom’s in terms of its messaging dashboard.

Front is an all-in-one customer service platform that helps teams provide personalized and efficient customer service. With Front, you can manage different channels from one central hub, allowing teams to quickly respond to inquiries and collaborate with each other for a streamlined workflow. Additionally, Front allows customers to self-serve with its self-service portal feature which can be customized to match your brand’s look and feel. Our Smart AI Features help to increase efficiency and help to balance between business and Customer Support and Growing Business. Unify Customer Queries from multiple platforms in one and never miss out on any customers. Self-Service smart features like AI-powered Knowledge Base help customers or visitors to first go through guidance before reaching out to your support team.

Intercom pricing

Help Scout on the other hand can be best described as a customer-centric tool. They have done an incredible job at building somewhat of a community around their software. Intercom is 4 years younger than Zendesk and has fancied itself as a messaging platform right from the beginning.

Both platforms offer reporting dashboards out of the box, but Intercom’s real-time data will cost more. While customers can view your Help Center or Docs site directly, the two platforms also allow you to surface the articles throughout your website or in your app using their web widgets. While Intercom has collision detection, Help Scout’s implementation is more useful. Help Scout provides color-coded visual cues to let you know when someone is viewing or replying to a conversation. In addition, if you’re composing a response and someone else updates the conversation, Help Scout will hold your message until you’ve viewed the updates. This helps prevent customers from receiving duplicate or conflicting information.

Intercom Inbox Features

In this article, we have highlighted some of the most popular alternatives to Intercom. They do provide also different functionality and some serves more niche needs, but maybe in your case it is a better match. We hope that this information has been helpful in your search for the perfect customer communication platform for your business needs. The third factor is the type of customer service you provide which can influence your choice of the best CCM solutions.

• It offers a range of messaging tools, including live chat, email, and chatbots, and has a knowledge base feature for self-service support.
• Zendesk wins the major category of help desk and ticketing system software.
• The top of the agent workspace shows an agent’s open tickets, ticket statistics, and satisfaction statistics, as well as tabs depicting all current tickets.
• 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.
• When you’re troubleshooting something with a user, knowing exactly what’s happening on the backend can be enormously helpful.
• They have done an incredible job at building somewhat of a community around their software.

It has a shared inbox as well as basic collaboration and automation features. Front also has features to personalize customer communication via e-mail. Intercom is a software company that offers a help desk software for customer conversations to take place within a comprehensive platform with very innovative features that happen at lightning speed. From creating customer portals to integrating social media channels, Zoho Desk allows users to benefit from itself as an above-average help desk tool. However, Zoho’s case is an exception because it’s a bargain for the functions it offers. Freshdesk is a product of Freshworks, which focuses on aiding customer support teams solely.

Zendesk vs. Freshdesk: Features

Help desk SaaS is how you manage general customer communication and for handling customer questions. 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. Zendesk also offers a straightforward interface to operators that helps them identify the entire interaction pathway with the customers.

• Child tickets can be assigned to other people or teams and are never visible to the customer.
• However, it could also be scaled to manage your whole customer support operation.
• Yet, the platform also understands the importance of real-time updates of documents and information.
• But marketing by itself can’t close big deals, create tailored solutions, or spot upsell opportunities — everything that’s crucial for Inward Expansion.
• Though some features are limited to Zoho Desk’s most expensive plans, the platform offers many free features and great value.
• Additionally, you can set a schedule to display an online/offline status based on your team’s presence.

Overall, I think this sales funnel does a wonderful job at surfacing problems and positioning Zendesk as the solution. My only complaint is that it’s unusually long, slightly repetitive, and packed full of unrelated CTAs. You are asked to enter your industry, company size, customer type, and customer satisfaction score (CSAT). In 2015 and 2019, they created two simple tools called Zendesk Benchmark and Zendesk CX Trends. Zendesk then proceeds to create as many supporting articles as needed to cover every single aspect of the topic.

#2 Drift

Zendesk, just like its competitor, offers a knowledge base solution that is easy to customize. Their users can create a knowledge repository to create articles or edit existing ones as per the changes in the services or product. It also provides detailed reports on how each self-help article performs in your knowledge base and helps you identify how each piece can be improved further. Intercom offers an integrated knowledge base functionality to its user base. Using the existing knowledge base functionality, they can display self-help articles in the chat window before the customer approaches your team for support. You can create these knowledge base articles in your target audience’s native language as their software is multilingual.

• Managers can choose to automatically route tickets and agents can prioritize conversations that need immediate attention.
• Drift offers customizable chat playbooks, email automation, and access to conversation histories—all of which come together to help teams capture and convert more leads.
• This can be particularly advantageous for businesses operating in highly regulated industries or those with strict IT policies.
• Another feature is the Shared Inbox, where all conversations and teammates can be found in one place, enabling easy referencing and team mentions.
• Zendesk Suite offers self-service help center functionality called Guide in each of its tiers.
• Trengo is the Intercom alternative that comes closest to solving the earlier mentioned issues.

That helps companies resolve a negative comment right away or upsell to a satisfied customer. Best alternative to Zendesk for e-commerce businesses looking to streamline their customer service and support capabilities. Customization options include creating custom rules, macros, blueprints, SLAs, escalations, and notifications to automate tasks and workflows.

The 14 Best Zendesk Competitors and Alternatives

Create entry rules that trigger when the messaging campaign begins, choosing the target audiences and when follow-up messages generate. Create code-free screencast tours of products, websites, webpages, and applications within your website. Set triggers to target particular audiences at the right time, utilize carousels as part of a communication campaign, and compare carousels with A/B testing.

The main product of this article is Zendesk Support Suite, as it corresponds to customer requests through customer service channels. Our new Scores feature allows you to set up points-based scoring models for customers, product engagement, and leads using any attributes or activities you choose. Talk is built into the Ortto marketing and customer data platform, so your team has all the data they need at their fingertips to provide personalized, relevant responses, faster than ever before. Groove is similar to Missive, Help Scout, and Helpwise in the sense that it presents itself as an email client and works in the same fashion. You can also assign the conversation to a team member, leave notes in a conversation and mention someone in the conversation just like Missive. However, it doesn’t offer features for sales and marketing that are offered by Intercom.

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. If I had to describe Intercom’s help desk, I would say it’s rather a complementary tool to their chat tools. It’s great, it’s convenient, it’s not nearly as advanced as the one by Zendesk.

When new users onboard, Intercom drops them into an inbox tutorial that focuses on teaching the ins and outs of keyboard shortcuts. Providing a way to track the progress of their requests helps reassure the customer and promotes transparency. It also relieves agents from having to field frequent status requests. Now that we have the general guidance out of the way, it’s time to deep-dive into the details, starting with the topic of tickets. Intercom is better suited to enterprise companies; Help Scout is the best choice for growing businesses.

If your business has an app, in-app messaging can be used to send messages to customers. You can use this with the push notification of the app to keep your customers in the loop of possible promos, rewards, and more. Check out the Help Scout Integrations page to see all the integrations we’ve built. What makes Intercom stand out from the crowd are their chatbots and lots of chat automation features that can be very helpful for your team. You can integrate different apps (like Google Meet or Stripe among others) with your messenger and make it a high end point for your customers.