Zendesk Alternative for Customer Support

If the original response leads to reply messages with the customer, the additional replies are not counted as additional billable tickets unless the reply occurs outside of a 5-day window. Plans start at $10/month for 50 tickets/month and scale to $900/month for 5,000 tickets/month. Automation that doesn’t require any agent involvement starts at an additional $30/month and voice and SMS are sold as add-ons and run $30 and $20 per month respectively. As always, whisper ‘Head West’ at checkout for a special discount. Gorgias typically takes about a week to install and doesn’t need development resources like Zendesk might require. Zendesk is feature rich, but there is a steeper learning curve than Gorgias.

• In any case, if you choose Zendesk or Intercom, you get wide chatting possibilities.
• 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.
• More things are possible with Zendesk, but they require technical people to do custom configurations.
• The irony with Zendesk is that you’re paying for features that you’ll never use, while the ones you actually need are offered as add-ons at an extra cost.
• Giving support teams easy access to relevant contextual data creates better, more human customer service.
• It’s a customer service platform that is highly customizable and easy to use for both end users and support engineers.

Zendesk competitors offer similar features that are not only more user-friendly but also budget-friendly. Customization options include creating custom rules, macros, blueprints, SLAs, escalations, and notifications to automate tasks and workflows. With HappyFox, users can provide support to their clients via email, live chat, social media, and by phone. This enables support staff to reach customers where they want to be reached – making the entire process easier for everyone.

Top Zoho Desk  features:

It’s not as simple to get started with Intercom as it is with Zendesk. Although the Zendesk user interface is not as appealing as Intercom’s, it is much easier to navigate for both new and experienced users. What can be really inconvenient about Zendesk, though is how their metadialog.com tools integrate with each other when you need to use them simultaneously. 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.

• And in this post, we will analyze two popular names in the SaaS industry – Intercom & Zendesk.
• The top alternatives to Zendesk are HubSpot, Freshdesk, Help Scout, Zoho Desk, Salesforce Service Cloud, and Intercom.
• Moreover, Gorgias is one of the few platforms that place ticket limits on monthly plans.
• However, if you wish to get all professional B2B essentials then it will wound up costing around $64/agent/mo which is quite a sum.
• Both Gorgias & Intercom are equipped with most of the features to help you manage your store’s customer service.
• So, depending on your use cases we will have different “best” Zendesk alternatives for you.

In this article, we’ll walk you through 8 best Zendesk alternatives. For each option, we’ll cover top features, pricing, pros and cons, as well as who should use it. Our mission is to empower SME ecommerce & DTC brands with powerful software without breaking the bank. If you are such a brand, DelightChat might be the right customer support software for you.

Pricing

This powerful platform focuses on streamlining customer service processes, providing businesses with the tools necessary to manage and resolve customer inquiries effectively. Zoho Desk makes ticket management a breeze for your customer support team by enabling the  tracking and handling of customer requests across channels, brands, products, departments, and more. Omnichannel support ensures accessibility via email, phone, live chat, social media, feedback widgets, web forms, and self-service portals.

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. Many use cases call for different approaches, and Zendesk and Intercom are but two software solutions for each case. One more thing to add, there are ways to integrate Intercom to Zendesk. Visit either of their app marketplaces and look up the Intercom Zendesk integration.

Service Hub Overview

Also, their in-app messaging functionality is worth a separate mention as it’s one of their distinctive tools (especially since Zendesk doesn’t really have one). With Intercom, you can send targeted email, push, and in-app messages which can be based on relevant time or behavior triggers. So when it comes to chatting features, the choice is not really Intercom vs Zendesk.

Whichever solution you choose, mParticle can help integrate your data. MParticle is a Customer Data Platform offering plug-and-play integrations to Zendesk and Intercom, along with over 300 other marketing, analytics, and data warehousing tools. With mParticle, you can connect your Zendesk and Intercom data with other marketing, analytics, and business intelligence platforms without any custom engineering effort. In general, Zendesk offers a wide range of live chat features such as customizable chat widgets, automatic greetings, offline messaging, and chat triggers. In addition to these features, Intercom offers messaging automation and real-time visitor insights.

Sales pipeline and lead nurturing

With Zendesk, companies can manage customer interactions across multiple channels, build lasting customer relationships and improve customer engagement. With the increase of AI in every field, Chatbots allow you to free up time by automatically answering common customer questions as they are considered as a perfect solution for customer support service. Fullview Replays allows you to watch video-like recordings of user sessions right from Intercom. Your support agents can quickly see customer bugs and issues in context — even before a user reaches out to them with a problem. They can offer proactive support that’s fast, efficient and eliminates the friction typically present in these kinds of interactions. No more screenshots, long email chains or ‘please describe the issue you are having’ requests.

In addition, Intercom is very big on chatbots as a form of contact deflection. Task bots, for instance, can collect contextual information about an issue or suggest a helpful article. Resolution bots can automate the answers to commonly asked questions, and the platform’s custom bot builder lets you build your own bot from the ground up.

Zendesk Guide Features

It provides all-in-one services for teams in sales, marketing, support, and even human resources and finance. Zoho will help with the management of client communication via chat, email, phone, social media, etc. Every organization can benefit from the various apps and bundles offered by Zoho Desk software. Throughout its 15 years long existence, Zendesk has helped hundreds of thousands of businesses in providing their customers with superior customer service and support.

It enables companies to quickly and easily create an online self-service portal, ticketing system and live chat. Limited access to data and generic, generative AI means that businesses are unable to provide their customers with truly personalized communications at scale. Advanced AI powers Ortto’s next-generation live chat tool, Talk, which lets businesses leverage insights from their customer data platform to provide truly personalized conversations at scale. Unlike existing solutions, with functional data limitations that are more hindrance than help, Talk is built into Ortto’s marketing automation, analytics, and customer data platform.

Zendesk Pricing vs Intercom Pricing

The eligibility requirement for this program is also way easier than Intercom’s. In terms of pricing, Intercom is considered one of the hardest on your pocket. Zendesk can be more flexible and predictable in this area as you can buy different tools separately (or even use their limited versions for free). Say what you will, but Intercom’s design and overall user experience are leaving all its competitors far behind. It’s beautifully crafted and thought through, and their custom-made illustrations are just next level stuff. You can see their attention to detail in everything — from their tools to their website.

But, if you just need a secure and quick data transfer, opt for Help Desk Migration. Pricing starts at $39 and varies based on the number of records you want to migrate. Our team is experienced in consolidating Zendesk instances and merging instances of other help desk and service desk systems. Here, we’ve outlined the support options that Intercom and Zendesk provide to companies using their platforms. Zendesk for Sales offers three plans, ranging from $19 to $99 monthly per user, with free trials available for each plan. Zendesk for Service and Zendesk for Sales are sold as two separate solutions, each with three pricing plans, or tiers.