Successfully Migrating from Zendesk to Intercom: A Guide from VPS

This allows clients to quickly and easily find the answers to both simple and more complex questions without needing to have a customer service rep step in. Of course, Intercom’s messaging services also make it easy for agents to provide assistance as necessary. Zendesk and Intercom also both offer analytics and reporting capabilities that allow businesses to analyze and monitor customer agents’ productivity. As a result, companies can identify trends and areas for improvement, allowing them to continuously improve their support processes and provide better service to their customers.

What truly sets Intercom apart is its data-driven approach to customer engagement. It actively collects and utilizes customer data to facilitate highly personalized conversations. For instance, it can use past interactions and behaviors to tailor recommendations or responses. Intercom, while differing from Zendesk, offers specialized features aimed at enhancing customer relationships.

Community managers can also escalate posts to support agents when one-on-one help is needed. You can also add apps to your Intercom Messenger home to help users and visitors get what they need, without having to start a conversation. 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 migrating from Zendesk to Intercom, a few specific data elements can’t be transferred. These include inline images, knowledge base attachments, CC in tickets, and “Created at” dates for tickets and comments.

Zendesk has over 1,300 integrations, compared to Intercom’s 300+ apps, making it the leader in this category. However, you can browse their respective sites to find which tools each platform supports. Zendesk also offers a sales pipeline feature through its Zendesk Sell product. You can set up email sequences that specify how and when leads and contacts are engaged. With Zendesk Sell, you can also customize how deals move through your pipeline by setting pipeline stages that reflect your sales cycle. Using Zendesk, you can create community forums where customers can connect, comment, and collaborate, creating a way to harness customers’ expertise and promote feedback.

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? These are both still very versatile products, so don’t think you have to get too siloed into a single use case.

Intercom vs Zendesk: pricing

But we doubled down and created a truly full-service CX solution capable of handling any support request. Intercom is more for improving sales cycle and customer relationships, while Zendesk has everything a customer support representative can dream about, but it does lack wide email functionality. On the other hand, it provides call center functionalities, unlike Intercom. But they also add features like automatic meeting booking (in the Convert package), and their custom inbox rules and workflows just feel a little more, well, custom. I’ll dive into their chatbots more later, but their bot automation features are also stronger. Finally, Help Scout enables companies to create customer-facing self-service portals.

• Right out of the gate, you’ve got dozens of pre-set report options on everything from satisfaction ratings and time in status to abandoned calls and Answer Bot resolutions.
• Both tools can be quite heavy on your budget since they mainly target big enterprises and don’t offer their full toolset at an affordable price.
• This Zendesk alternative is best for small businesses looking for a simple yet powerful help desk software with email-based support.
• These include inline images, knowledge base attachments, CC in tickets, and “Created at” dates for tickets and comments.
• This serves the dual benefit of adding convenience to the customer experience and lightening agents’ workloads.

Advanced workflows are useful to customer service teams because they automate processes that make it easier for agents to provide great customer service. 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 also has an omnichannel customer service solution, but it’s fairly limited, with no native voice capabilities and minimal voice integrations.

This serves the dual benefit of adding convenience to the customer experience and lightening agents’ workloads. Zendesk also has an Answer Bot, which instantly takes your knowledge base game to the next level. It can automatically suggest relevant articles for agents during business hours to share with clients, reducing your support agents’ workload. All customer questions, be it via phone, chat, email, social media, or any other channel, are landing in one dashboard, where your agents can solve them quickly and efficiently.

Nevertheless, the platform’s support consistency can be a concern, and the unpredictable pricing structure might lead to increased costs for larger organizations. Apps and integrations are critical to creating a 360 view of the customer across the company and ensuring agents have easy access to key customer context. When agents don’t have to waste time toggling between different systems and tools to access the customer details they need, they can deliver faster, more personalized customer service. There are many features to help bigger customer service teams collaborate more effectively — like private notes or a real-time view of who’s handling a given ticket at the moment, etc. At the same time, the vendor offers powerful reporting capabilities to help you grow and improve your business. In the realm of automation and workflow management, Zendesk truly shines as a frontrunner.

Zendesk vs Intercom – which should you choose?

Both Zendesk and Intercom offer robust solutions, but the choice ultimately depends on specific business needs. Here are our top reporting and analytics features and an overview of where Intercom’s reporting limitations lie. But keep in mind that Zendesk is viewed more as a support and ticketing solution, while Intercom is CRM functionality-oriented. Which means it’s rather a customer relationship management platform than anything else. But it’s designed so well that you really enjoy staying in their inbox and communicating with clients. While Zendesk is a widely used and versatile customer support and engagement platform, it’s important to consider whether there might be a better software solution tailored to your specific needs.

There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data. Yes—as your business’s needs grow, you will require a more sophisticated case management system. But that doesn’t mean you have to completely switch from your current provider if you’re not quite ready.

Basically, if you have a complicated support process, go with Zendesk, an excellent Intercom alternative, for its help desk functionality. If you’re a sales-oriented corporation, use Intercom for its automation options. Both tools can be quite heavy on your budget since they mainly target big enterprises and don’t offer their full toolset at an affordable price.

Migrating from one platform to another can be a complicated and time-consuming process, especially if you have a lot of data and customizations in your Zendesk account. With a knowledge base, you can allow your customers to self-help themselves, thus reducing your customer support by up to 60%. Furthermore, you can also have your team get instant answers to the questions they need without having to email themselves all using knowledge base software. That is, while some may be looking for an all-in-one customer support tool, others may be looking for a more simple and straightforward option to accomplish a specific task. Front’s omnichannel, shared inbox allows you to collect customer messages from all your communication channels. This enables all departments to collaborate seamlessly, organizing their messages and delivering timely support to customers while maintaining a personal connection.

With its robust ticketing system, versatile automation capabilities, and extensive reporting tools, Zendesk empowers businesses to handle customer inquiries effectively and improve support efficiency. It’s best used when you need a centralized platform to manage customer support operations, whether through email, chat, social media, or phone. Zendesk is ideal for businesses seeking to enhance their customer service processes and maintain a high level of customer satisfaction across all communication channels. Determining whether Zendesk is better than Intercom hinges on your unique customer support and engagement requirements. Zendesk excels as a robust and versatile customer support platform, offering comprehensive tools for managing customer inquiries and support operations across various channels. If your business values a feature-rich and customizable solution for customer interactions, Zendesk may be the better choice.

Zendesk vs Intercom: Choosing the best tool for your business

However, there are occasional criticisms regarding the effectiveness of its AI chatbot and some interface navigation challenges. The overall sentiment from users indicates a satisfactory level of support, although opinions vary. Intercom is a customer support platform known for its effective messaging and automation, enhancing in-context support within products, apps, or websites. It features the Intercom Messenger, which works with existing support tools for self-serve or live support. Why don’t you try something equally powerful yet more affordable, like HelpCrunch? The highlight of Zendesk’s ticketing software is its omnichannel-ality (omnichannality?).

We conducted a little study of our own and found that all Intercom users share different amounts of money they pay for the plans, which can reach over $1000/mo. The price levels can even be much higher if we’re talking of a larger company. To sum things up, one can get really confused trying to make sense of the Zendesk suite pricing, let alone calculate costs.

This is because Zendesk has rate limits on how many records can be accessed or transferred per minute or hour. The rate limits also depend on what type of licensing plan you have with Zendesk. For example, an Enterprise plan will allow you to transfer your data at a faster rate than a Professional plan. Similarly to LiveAgent, HappyFox is an all-in-one solution for an organization’s help desk software needs. Here are the best Zendesk alternatives and competitors to consider, based on hundreds of real reviews.

With thousands of outstanding data imports done by our service, Help Desk migration service has earned plenty of service-connected awards and inspiring feedback. We proceed to get better our solution and move forward novel capacity to cover we’re involving most of your import and export inquirements. Our integration with Intercom enables bi-directional contact and case synchronization, so you can continue using Intercom as your front-end digital experience and use Zendesk for case management. As customers come closer to purchasing, they often find themselves weighing the same pros and cons. In our experience, when future clients start thinking about the advantages and disadvantages of Intercom vs. Zendesk, these are the questions they want answers to.

Zendesk is a ticketing system before anything else, and its ticketing functionality is overwhelming in the best possible way. They’ve been marketing themselves as a messaging platform right from the beginning. Once connected, you can add Zendesk Support to your inbox, and start creating Zendesk tickets from Intercom conversations. Before you start, you’ll need to retrieve your Zendesk credentials and create a Zendesk API key. You can do this by going to your settings within Zendesk (click on the cog on the left hand side), and navigating to API in the ‘Channels’ section.

In fact, the Zendesk Marketplace has 1,300+ apps and integrations, from billing software to marketing automation tools. In today’s world of fast-paced customer service and high customer expectations, it’s essential for business leaders to equip their teams with the best support tools available. Zendesk and Intercom both offer noteworthy tools, but if you’re looking for a full-service solution, there is one clear winner. Founded in 2007, Zendesk started as a ticketing tool for customer success teams. It was later that they started adding all kinds of other features, like live chat for customer conversations.

These tours serve as virtual guides, leading customers through a website and product offerings in an engaging and personalized manner. This approach not only enhances user understanding but also significantly boosts user engagement. In contrast, Intercom follows a pricing structure that can be straightforward for businesses looking for specific functionalities. However, it’s important to note that Intercom’s pricing can vary depending on factors such as the number of users, conversations, and additional features you require. In some cases, Zendesk may be considered a more cost-effective option compared to Intercom, particularly for businesses with smaller budgets or those looking for more predictable pricing.

Check out the details of entities you can import or export applying automation by yourself from tech support team. Zendesk’s per-agent pricing structure makes it a budget-friendly option for smaller teams, allowing costs to scale with team growth. Monese is another fintech company that provides a banking app, account, and debit card to make settling in a new country easier. By providing banking without boundaries, the company aims to provide users with quick access to their finances, wherever they happen to be. Intercom is the new guy on the block when it comes to help desk ticketing systems.

So yeah, all the features talk actually brings us to the most sacred question — the question of pricing. You’d probably want to know how much it costs to get each of the platforms 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 with your custom themes. Intercom has more customization features for features like bots, themes, triggers, and funnels. 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.

However, this may be sufficient for smaller businesses or those using an existing CRM that integrates with Intercom. Sugar Serve is a cloud-based customer engagement and support solution designed to deliver personalized customer experiences seamlessly integrated with SugarCRM. This powerful platform focuses on streamlining customer service processes, providing businesses with the tools necessary to manage and resolve customer inquiries effectively. Leveraging AI-powered chatbots, Zoho Desk employs Zia, an intelligent assistant, to share relevant knowledge base solutions with customers and agents. Zendesk is renowned for its comprehensive toolset that aids in automating customer service workflows and fine-tuning chatbot interactions.

Yes, you can find the Intercom integration in the Zendesk Marketplace—and it’s free to install. In terms of pricing, Intercom is considered one of the most expensive tools on the market. If you’d want to test Intercom vs Zendesk before deciding on a tool for good, they both provide free trials for 14 days.

On the other hand, Intercom, starting at a lower price point, could be more attractive for very small teams or individual users. However, additional costs for advanced features can quickly increase the total expense. When comparing the reporting and analytics features of Zendesk and Intercom, both platforms offer robust tools, but with distinct focuses and functionalities. The two essential things that Zendesk lacks in comparison to Intercom are in-app messages and email marketing tools.

The decision to choose a customer support platform should be based on a careful evaluation of your organization’s unique requirements, customer interaction channels, scalability needs, and budget constraints. While Zendesk offers a comprehensive set of features, other platforms may excel in certain areas or provide more tailored solutions that align better with your customer support strategy and objectives. For instance, a customer inquiry about zendesk intercom product availability can trigger an automated response providing real-time stock information within Zendesk. While Intercom does incorporate automated responses via chatbots, it doesn’t exhibit the same level of sophistication and versatility in its automation capabilities as Zendesk. Zendesk’s advanced automation features make it the preferred choice for businesses seeking to optimize their workflow and enhance customer support efficiency.

Remove Tag(s) from Ticket

Freshdesk also understands the importance of real-time updating of information and documentation. The software includes agent “collision detection,” ensuring that multiple agents don’t accidentally pick up and work on a single inquiry when only one person is needed. Additionally, agents can tag and categorize documents as appropriate, allowing their customers to Chat PG easily find the answers they’re looking for. Customers can find these answers by either browsing the knowledge base manually or by using Helpjuice’s intelligent search capabilities. For small companies and startups, Intercom offers a Starter plan — with a balanced suite of features from each of the solutions below — at $74 per month per user, billed annually.

• You can do this by going to your settings within Zendesk (click on the cog on the left hand side), and navigating to API in the ‘Channels’ section.
• With over 100,000 customers across all industries and regions, Zendesk knows what it takes to interact with customers while retaining and growing relationships.
• However, as Monese grew and eyed a European expansion, it became clear that the company needed to centralize data in a single solution that would scale along with them.
• Zendesk’s help center tools should also come in handy for helping customers help themselves—something Zendesk claims eight out of 10 customers would rather do than contact support.

What can be really inconvenient about Zendesk is how their tools integrate with each other when you need to use them simultaneously. If I had to describe Intercom’s helpdesk, I would say it’s rather a complementary tool to their chat tools. Just like Zendesk, Intercom also offers its Operator bot, which will automatically suggest relevant articles to clients right in a chat widget. You can publish your self-service resources, divide them by categories, and integrate them with your messenger to accelerate the whole chat experience. So you see, it’s okay to feel dizzy when comparing Zendesk vs Intercom platforms.

However, aside from these limitations, you have the freedom to transfer as much help desk and knowledge base data as you need to Intercom. So, rest assured, you can smoothly transition most of your valuable information. With our Migration tool, you can conveniently import and export massive portions of varied records types to or from Zendesk to Intercom.

AI and ML make customer service functionalities like chatbots, sentiment analysis, ticket creation, and workflow automation possible. All these features are necessary for operational efficiency and help agents deliver fast, personalized customer experiences. Additionally, Hiver’s live chat feature integrates seamlessly with Gmail, providing real-time support to customers.

Now, let’s delve into the Zendesk vs. Intercom comparison to help you make an informed decision when selecting the right customer support and engagement platform that aligns with your specific needs. Best Zendesk alternative for organizations prioritizing CRM integration and personalized customer service. Best alternative to Zendesk for e-commerce businesses looking to streamline their customer service and support capabilities. LiveAgent also gamifies the process of providing customer service, allowing agents to earn “badges” for completing certain customer-related tasks as needed. This enables organizations to identify top performers – and also to determine where extra training may be necessary for some.

When comparing Zendesk and Intercom, Zendesk stands out with its robust and versatile customer support solutions. It offers a comprehensive platform for managing customer inquiries and support tickets across multiple channels, providing businesses with a powerful toolset for customer service management. Zendesk’s extensive feature set and customizable workflows are particularly appealing to organizations looking to streamline and scale their customer support operations efficiently. Zendesk is distinguished by its robust and versatile customer support solutions.

Whether you’re a startup or an enterprise-level organization, we’ve got you covered. If you’ve been looking for a tool to help you manage customer inquiries and service requests for any period of time, you’ve probably heard of Zendesk. With both tools, you can also use support bots to automatically https://chat.openai.com/ suggest specific articles, track customers’ ratings, and localize help center content to serve your customers in their native language. The customer service reps I talked to were very helpful during the entire process. Pick the most appropriate time to initiate the help desk migration workflow.

Zendesk takes the slight lead here because it offers some advanced help desk features, which Intercom does not. This feature ensures that each customer request is handled by the best-suited agent, improving the overall efficiency of the support team. Zendesk provides limited customer support for its basic plan users, along with costly premium assistance options. On the other hand, Intercom is generally praised for its support features, despite facing challenges with its AI chatbot and the complexity of its help articles. Novo has been a Zendesk customer since 2019 but didn’t immediately start taking full advantage of all our features and capabilities. At first, the company relied on Intercom for its live chat support needs, but with the rapid changes and sky-high service needs, it quickly became apparent that the support team needed a full-service solution.

Don’t let the migrating process overwhelm you or stop you from moving to Intercom. Let us handle the technical details and guide you through the transition with ease and confidence. We have the skills and experience to help you switch from Zendesk to Intercom smoothly and efficiently. Without further ado, let’s dive into the 14 best competitors to Zendesk’s popular help desk software. Zapier lets you build automated workflows between two or more apps—no code necessary. Quickly automate workflows with Intercom and Zendesk using Zapier’s templates.

This structured approach ensures that no customer query goes unnoticed or unattended, regardless of the channel through which it was initiated. It introduces shared inboxes tailored for different teams, such as sales, marketing, and customer success. These shared inboxes facilitate seamless customer interactions across multiple channels, ensuring that teams can collaborate efficiently and maintain consistent, top-notch support. When it comes to integrations, Zendesk and Intercom both offer diverse possibilities, but here, Zendesk takes the lead. Zendesk boasts an extensive array of integration options, with over 1,500 apps in its ecosystem. While there can be add-ons, such as premium customer support, you can generally anticipate what you’ll be paying for your Zendesk subscription.

Honestly, I was really pleasantly surprised by how responsive the company is. I was able to get responses to virtually every question each time I was asking within a few hours, even considering the time zones. I appreciated the constant follow-up that I received from the Account Managers at Help Desk Migration. The service was excellent, during all the steps of the transition we felt taken care of and monitored perfectly. Companies often rely on external vendors or contract employees to optimize their operations and lower costs.

In contrast, Intercom specializes in real-time communication and conversational engagement, making it a strong contender for businesses that prioritize instant interactions and personalized customer engagement. Its chat-based approach, automation capabilities, and chatbots are ideal for handling routine inquiries efficiently. AzureDesk also offers customer support teams to create a knowledge base to help with enabling customers to find answers on their own. Integration with popular apps like JIRA and Slack further enhances its capabilities. With Freshdesk, organizations can set up automations to handle specific customer inquiries as appropriate. This includes automatic delivery of help desk tickets to the correct department or agent, prioritization of inquiries based on severity, and escalation of urgent issues.

Right out of the gate, you’ve got dozens of pre-set report options on everything from satisfaction ratings and time in status to abandoned calls and Answer Bot resolutions. You can even save custom dashboards for a more tailored reporting experience. As with just about any customer support software, you can easily view standard user data within the messenger related to customer journey—things like recent pages viewed, activity, or contact information. 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. Their template triggers are fairly limited with only seven options, but they do enable users to create new custom triggers, which can be a game-changer for agents with more complex workflows. Zendesk also packs some pretty potent tools into their platform, so you can empower your agents to do what they do with less repetition.

By considering the factors mentioned above, you can narrow down your choices and select the ideal Zendesk competitor that aligns with your business requirements and goals. Zapier helps you create workflows that connect your apps to automate repetitive tasks. A trigger is an event that starts a workflow, and an action is an event a Zap performs. When it comes to satisfying your customers, there’s no doubt that Intercom s … Help Desk Migration Wizard shields your information from unwanted getting access with two-factor access.

You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. They bought out the Zopim live chat solution and integrated it with their toolset. Intercom’s pricing typically includes different plans designed to accommodate businesses of various sizes and needs. While Intercom offers a free trial, it’s important to note that the cost can increase as you scale and add more features or users. When comparing the cost of Intercom to Zendesk, it’s important to consider the pricing structures and potential variations based on your specific customer support and engagement needs. Additionally, Freshdesk enables agents to collaborate with other agents through features such as Team Huddle, Shared Inbox and Ownership, etc. to efficiently solve customer problems. Moreover, Freshdesk supports multi-channel communication management, allowing agents to interact with customers via email, phone, social media, live chat and WhatsApp.

Zendesk and Intercom are tailored to enhance your customer support and engagement, providing robust tools for managing customer inquiries, automating responses, and facilitating communication. While Zendesk’s emphasis is entirely on customer support, Intercom’s features extend into marketing and sales. Zendesk started as a customer support request SaaS, a legacy that continues today with its robust ticketing and customer messaging solutions. In contrast, Intercom aims to provide an all-in-one business communication platform to support, engage, and convert customers with sales and marketing functions. An example of the platforms’ different focus is that Intercom includes an email marketing feature, whereas Zendesk doesn’t.