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

Businesses should carefully evaluate their requirements and choose the best method for their needs and budget. Zendesk’s user interface is also modern and user-friendly but with a slightly different design aesthetic than Intercom. The dashboard is highly customizable, allowing users to access the features they use most frequently easily. The clean and professional design focuses on bold typography and contrasting colors. They’ve been rated as one of the easy live chat solutions with more integrated options. The only relief is that they do reach out to customers, but it gets too late.

Users can submit support tickets through the platform, and customer support teams can manage and track those tickets to ensure they are resolved promptly. This feature ensures that users receive the support they need when needed. One of the standout features of Intercom’s customer support is its chatbot functionality. The chatbot can help users with common support issues and answer frequently asked questions. This feature can reduce the workload of customer support teams and provide faster response times to users. Intercom and Zendesk are two of the most popular customer support tools available.

Lastly, Intercom offers an academy that offers concise courses to help users make the most out of their Intercom experience. Customers of Zendesk can purchase priority assistance at the enterprise tier, which includes a 99.9% uptime service level agreement and a 1-hour service level goal. At all tiers, there is an additional fee to work with a member of the Zendesk success team on unique engagements. Easily track your service team’s performance and unlock coaching opportunities with AI-powered insights. You can also follow up with customers after they have left the chat and qualify them based on your answers. Since Intercom doesn’t offer a CRM, its pricing is divided into basic messaging and messaging with automations.

Zendesk vs Intercom in 2023: Detailed Analysis of Features, Pricing, and More

It will allow you to leverage some Intercom capabilities while keeping your account at the time-tested platform. Like Zendesk, Intercom offers its Operator bot, which automatically suggests relevant articles to clients right in a chat widget. With over 160,000 customers across all industries and regions, Zendesk has the CX expertise to provide you with best practices and thought leadership to increase your overall value. But don’t just take our word for it—listen to what customers say about why they picked Zendesk. This is not a huge difference; however, it does indicate that customers are generally more satisfied with Intercom’s offerings than Zendesk’s.

Utilizing modern CRM software can help your sales team boost their productivity and sales performance. Pipedrive also includes lead management features like automatic lead nurturing, labeling, and bulk imports. However, Pipedrive does not include native desktop text messaging features. One user noted that, in some cases, it can take Pipedrive at least eight hours to populate saved leads, making it difficult to quickly communicate with hot leads. CX platforms empower you with social listening, using which you can monitor the digital space for specific keywords and sentiments related to your brand.

Since both are such well-established market leader companies, you can rest assured that whichever one you choose will offer a quality customer service solution. Zendesk is popular due to its user-friendly interface, extensive customization options, scalability, multichannel support, robust analytics, and seamless integration capabilities. These features make it suitable for businesses of all sizes, helping them streamline their support operations and enhance the overall customer experience. Today, both companies offer a broad range of customer support features, making them both strong contenders in the market.

One of Zendesk’s other key strengths has also been its massive library of integrations. It works seamlessly with over 1,000 business tools, like Salesforce, Slack, and Shopify. With its features and pricing, Zendesk is geared toward businesses that full in the range from mid-sized to enterprise-level. Broken down into custom, resolution, and task bots, these can go a long way in taking repetitive tasks off agents’ plates. 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.

Both Zendesk and Intercom offer automation features to streamline workflows and improve efficiency, but the way they do it is different. It’s modern, it’s smooth, it looks great and it has so many advanced features. Also, their in-app messenger 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 the most relevant time or behavior triggers.

However, you’ll likely end up paying more for Zendesk, and in-app messenger and other advanced customer communication tools will not be included. Zendesk pricing is divided between a customer support product called “Zendesk for support”, and a fully-fledged CRM called “Zendesk for sales”. Depending on your needs, you can set up Intercom on your website or mobile app and add your automations. Setting up Intercom help centers is also very easy and intuitive, with no previous knowledge required. Hit the ground running – Master Tidio quickly with our extensive resource library.

Qualtrics XM is a tool designed to optimize customer interactions by combining surveys, feedback and data into one platform, giving businesses a clear view of customer experiences. From tracking brand performance to diving deep into user experience, Qualtrics XM helps you respond swiftly to market shifts and fine-tune your strategy with actionable insights. Zendesk also offers various integrations with third-party tools, including CRMs, marketing automation platforms, and analytics tools.

Its Gainsight CS tool provides a comprehensive view of your customers, making it easier to boost product adoption, reduce churn and build customer communities. Top companies widely use it for its ability to deliver real-time insights into customer behaviors and https://chat.openai.com/ sentiments. Intercom and Zendesk offer a range of features to help businesses manage their customer interactions. While Intercom focuses more on customer messaging and personalization, Zendesk focuses more on traditional customer support ticket management.

Zendesk has sales forecasting features that leverage previous sales data to help predict future outcomes, including revenue growth, cash flow, and the likelihood of winning a deal. This data can help eliminate unwanted surprises and give your sales team valuable insights to improve their strategy. Pipedrive uses historical data to help predict cash flow and provide performance metrics for your sales team.

To sum it all up, you need to consider various aspects of your business before choosing CRM software. While deciding between Zendesk and Intercom, you should ensure the customization, AI automation, and functionalities align with your business goals. Intecom’s pricing strategies are not as transparent as Zendesk’s pricing. While Zendesk features are plenty, someone using it for the first time can find it overwhelming.

If you want both customer support and CRM, you can choose between paying $79 or $125 per month per user, depending on how many advanced features you require. Intercom offers fewer integrations, supporting just over 450 third-party apps. This makes it challenging to customize the software as your business grows. Furthermore, data on customer reviews, installation numbers, and ecommerce integrations is not readily available. Conversely, Intercom has a shared inbox tool that routes conversations from every channel, including live chat, email, SMS, and more, into one place. However, it offers a limited channel scope compared to Zendesk, and users will have to get paid add-ons for channels like WhatsApp.

On the other hand, Intercom’s AI-powered chatbots and messaging are designed to enhance your marketing and sales efforts, giving you an edge in the competitive market. Experience the comprehensive power of Intercom for effective customer communication, automation, support tools, integrations, and analytics. As your business grows, so does the volume of customer inquiries and support tickets. Managing everything manually is becoming increasingly difficult, and you need a robust customer support platform to streamline your operations.

You can publish your knowledge base articles and divide them by categories and also integrate them with your messenger to accelerate the whole chat experience. Basically, you can create new articles, divide them by categories and sections — make it a high end destination for customers when they have questions or issues. On one hand, Zendesk offers a great many features, way more than Intercom, but it lacks in-app messenger and email marketing tools. On the other hand, Intercom has all its (fewer) tools and features integrated with each other way better, which makes your experience with the tool as smooth as silk. Both Zendesk and Intercom provide omnichannel messaging dashboards, which allow companies to communicate with customers through various channels in a seamless manner.

Intercom’s Integration

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. Intercom, on the other hand, was built for business messaging, so communication is one of their strong suits. Combine that with their prowess in automation and sales solutions, and you’ve got a really strong product that can handle myriad customer relationship needs.

Intercom’s clean and minimalistic design focuses on white space and easy-to-read fonts. The user interface is also highly responsive, making it easy to use on mobile devices. Zendesk also offers a straightforward interface to operators that helps them identify the entire interaction pathway with the customers. Compared to being detailed, Zendesk gives a tough competition to Intercom. Operators can easily switch from one conversation to another, therefore helping operators manage more interactions simultaneously. Zendesk has also introduced its chatbot to help its clients send automated answers to some frequently asked questions to stay ahead in the competitive marketplace.

Zendesk also packs some pretty potent tools into their platform, so you can empower your agents to do what they do with less repetition. I tested both options (using Zendesk’s Suite Professional trial and Intercom’s Support trial) and found clearly defined differences between the two. Here’s what you need to know about Zendesk vs. Intercom as customer support and relationship management tools. Intercom live chat is modern, smooth, and has many advanced features that other chat tools lack.

Zendesk is quite famous for designing its platform to be intuitive and its tools to be quite simple to learn. This is aided by the fact that the look and feel of Zendesk’s user interface are neat and minimal, with few cluttering features. 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. Intercom has limited scalability compared to Zendesk, which is unsuitable for large-scale enterprises.

With Zendesk, you can use lead tracking features to filter and segment your leads in real time. 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. Whether you’re looking for a CRM for small businesses or an enterprise, the Zendesk sales CRM has the flexibility to grow with you, supporting up to 2 million deals across all of our plans. On the other hand, entry-level Pipedrive users are limited to only 3,000 open deals per company, making it an insufficient CRM for enterprises and growing companies. The goal of CX software is to optimize these interactions to increase customer loyalty and retention by making the experience smoother and more responsive.

Other customer service add-ons with Zendesk include custom training and professional services. Agents can quickly grasp the context of customer interaction through these support tickets and sentiment analysis that AI facilitates. Intercom is also a customer service software that integrates entirely with third-party vendors, especially those offering messaging services.

Pricing Structure

However, the latter is more of a support and ticketing solution, while Intercom is CRM functionality-oriented. This means it’s a customer relationship management platform rather than anything else. If you thought Zendesk prices were confusing, let me introduce you to Intercom prices.

To that end, you can import themes or apply your own custom themes to brand your help center the way you want it. From there, you can include FAQs, announcements, and article guides and then save them into pre-set lists for your customers to explore. 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.

The dashboard provides an overview of ticket volume, agent performance, and other key metrics. The ticket view often includes detailed information about the customer, history of interactions, and other details. Core features include automated support powered by a knowledge base, a streamlined ticketing system built around messaging, and a powerful inbox to centralize all customer queries. Intercom’s chatbots not only provide automated customer support but also come with advanced features and customizability without sacrificing simplicity.

It is crucial to note that software or platforms may evolve over time and the company may address some of these concerns in newer updates or versions. Redefine customer service zendesk vs intercom with an AI-powered platform that unifies voice, digital and social channels. Power channel-less interactions and seamless resolution no matter the channel of contact.

Use HubSpot Service Hub to provide seamless, fast, and delightful customer service. Chat agents also get a comprehensive look at their entire customer’s journey, so they will have a better idea of what your customers need, without needing to ask many questions. Both Zendesk and Intercom have their own “app stores” where users can find all of the integrations for each platform.

Zendesk offers a free 30-day trial, after which customers will need to upgrade to one of their paid plans. The last thing you want is your sales data or the contact information of potential customers to end up in the wrong hands. Because of this, you’ll want to make sure Chat GPT you’re selecting a cloud-based CRM, like Zendesk, with strong security features. Zendesk meets global security and privacy compliance standards and includes features like single sign-on (SSO) to help provide protection against cyberattacks and keep your data safe.

Even reviewers who hadn’t used the platform highlight how beautifully designed it is and how simple it is to interact with for both users and clients alike. Although Zendesk isn’t hard to use, it’s not a perfectly smooth experience either. Users report feeling as though the interface is outdated and cluttered and complain about how long it takes to set up new features and customize existing ones. After this, you’ll have to set up your workflows, personalizing your tickets and storing them by topic. You can then add automations and triggers, such as automatically closing a ticket or sending a message to a user.

Intercom feels modern and is more client-success-oriented, but it can be too costly for smaller companies. What can be really inconvenient about Zendesk is how its tools integrate with each other when you need to use them simultaneously. Zendesk is designed with the agent in mind, delivering a modern, intuitive experience. The customizable Zendesk Agent Workspace enables reps to work within a single browser tab with one-click navigation across any channel. Intercom, on the other hand, can be a complicated system, creating a steep learning curve for new users.

Automation Tools

After an in-depth analysis such as this, it can be pretty challenging for your business to settle with either option. That’s why it would be better to review where both the options would be ideal to use. Now that we know a little about both tools, it is time to make an in-depth analysis and identify which one of these will be perfect for your business.

In this article, we comprehensively do a comparison of Zendesk vs Intercom, examining their key features, benefits, and industry use cases. By exploring their distinct offerings, we aim to assist businesses in making informed decisions when selecting a customer service platform. 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.

• This structure may appeal to businesses with specific needs but could be less predictable for budget-conscious organizations.
• Its tiered plans offer everything from basic contact management to advanced features and automation, making it a solid choice for diverse business needs.
• Broken down into custom, resolution, and task bots, these can go a long way in taking repetitive tasks off agents’ plates.
• Its proactive support features, unified inbox, and customizable bots are highly beneficial for businesses looking to engage customers dynamically and manage conversations effortlessly.

Zendesk also allows Advanced AI and Advanced data privacy and protection plans, which cost $50 per month for each Advanced add-on. The best thing about this plan is that it is eligible for an advanced AI add-on, has integrated community forums, side conversations, skill-based routing, and is HIPAA-enabled. Let us dive deeper into the offerings of Zendesk and Intercom to make a comparison at a glance.

One of Zendesk’s standout features that we need to shine a spotlight on is its extensive marketplace of third-party integrations and extensions. Imagine having the power to connect your helpdesk solution with a wide range of tools and applications that your team already uses. Whether it’s syncing data with your CRM, enhancing communication via messaging platforms, or automating tasks with productivity apps, Zendesk makes it possible. This makes it an ideal choice for businesses looking to engage customers directly within their product, app or website. It also supports email and other channels – like Whatsapp, SMS, social media channels and more, through integrations. But its core strength lies in providing a seamless, conversational experience for customers.

It’s great, it’s convenient, it’s not nearly as advanced as the one by Zendesk. Just as Zendesk, Intercom also offers its own Operator bot which will automatically suggest relevant articles to customers who ask for help. Zendesk also provides automation features, but they aren’t as extensive as Intercom’s.

Configure Settings

Zendesk lacks in-app messages and email marketing tools, which are essential for big companies with heavy client support loads. Conversely, Intercom lacks ticketing functionality, which can also be essential for big companies. You can create dozens of articles in a simple, intuitive WYSIWYG text editor, divide them by categories and sections, and customize them with your custom themes. If you create a new chat with the team, land on a page with no widget, and go back to the browser for some reason, your chat will puff. Given that we’re neither Intercom nor Zendesk, we ourselves were curious to see how these two titans of customer service differ. Learn how top CX leaders are scaling personalized customer service at their companies.

• Intercom generally receives positive feedback for its customer support, with users appreciating the comprehensive features and team-oriented tools.
• When comparing Zendesk and Intercom, evaluating their core features and functionalities is essential to determine which platform best suits your organization’s customer support needs.
• You’d need to chat with Intercom sales team for get the costs for the Premium subscription, though.

Ultimately, the choice between these two platforms will depend on the specific needs of the business and the type of customer interactions they are looking to manage. Intercom’s CRM can work as a standalone CRM and requires no additional service to operate robustly. It offers comprehensive customer data management and lead-tracking features. Some businesses may require supplemental products to meet specific needs. Intercom’s CRM utility is a solid foundation for managing customer relationships and sales in one platform. Intercom offers advanced customer service through its automated functions and is suitable for businesses looking for a sophisticated customer support solution.

With Pipedrive, users have access to visual reporting dashboards, but adding custom fields is limited to their Professional, Power, and Enterprise plans. Intercom’s live chat reports aren’t just offering what your customers are doing or whether they are satisfied with your services. They offer more detailed insights like lead generation sources, a complete message report to track customer engagement, and detailed information on the support team’s performance.

Both Zendesk and Intercom have integration libraries, and you can also use a connecting tool like Zapier for added integrations and add-ons. Zendesk’s mobile app is also good for ticketing, helping you create new support tickets with macros and updates. It’s also good for sending and receiving notifications, as well as for quick filtering through the queue of open tickets. There are pre-built workflows to help with things like ticket sharing, as well as conversation routing based on metrics like agent skill set or availability. There are even automations to help with things like SLAs, or service level agreements, to do things like send out notifications when headlights are due.

Its suite of tools goes beyond traditional ticketing and focuses on customer engagement and messaging automation. From in-app chat to personalized autoresponders, Intercom provides a unified experience across multiple channels, creating a support ecosystem that nurtures and converts leads. Intercom, while it doesn’t offer an omnichannel dashboard, is still robust in its ticketing capabilities. Intercom offers extensive automation features for ticket management, enabling businesses to streamline and speed up their customer service. When it comes to utility, Zendesk’s utility may not be as robust as a pure CRM solution. However, customers do have the option to go to Zendesk Sell for a more robust experience.

You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. Intercom has more customization features for features like bots, themes, triggers, and funnels. 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 is a customer support messenger, bot, and live chat service provider that empowers its clients to provide instant support in real-time. This SaaS leader entered into the competition in 2011, intending to help its clients reach their target audiences and engage them in a conversation right away. When making your decision, consider factors such as your budget, the scale of your business, and your specific growth plans. Explore alternative options like ThriveDesk if you’re looking for a more budget-conscious solution that aligns with your customer support needs. Both Zendesk and Intercom have AI capabilities that deserve special mention. Zendesk’s AI (Fin) helps with automated responses, ensuring your customers get quick answers.

If you’re still on the fence about which platform to choose, consider exploring Tidio as a strong alternative. Tidio stands out with its advanced AI-powered chatbots and seamless automated workflows, making customer interactions efficient and personalized. 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. Both Zendesk and Intercom are customer support management solutions that offer features like ticket management, live chat and messaging, automation workflows, knowledge centers, and analytics.

Using this, agents can chat across teams within a ticket via email, Slack, or Zendesk’s ticketing system. This packs all resolution information into a single ticket, so there’s no extra searching or backtracking needed to bring a ticket through to resolution, even if it involves multiple agents. Zendesk also has an Answer Bot, instantly taking your knowledge base game to the next level. It can automatically suggest relevant articles for agents to share during business hours with clients, reducing your support agents’ workload.

This helps companies resolve common customer queries without any human intervention. Zendesk’s customer support is also very fast, though their live chat is only available for registered users. Intercom can function as a standalone CRM, allowing businesses to track and manage customer interactions efficiently. However, larger businesses might need to supplement it with additional services for a more comprehensive solution. The platform’s omnichannel dashboard provides a seamless experience for agents, enabling streamlined resolution processes. Zendesk’s ticketing system allows for support tickets to be generated, tracked effectively, and routed to the most appropriate support team agent.

What’s more, it helps its clients build an integrated community forum and help center to improve the support experience in real-time. ProProfs Live Chat Editorial Team is a diverse group of professionals passionate about customer support and engagement. We update you on the latest trends, dive into technical topics, and offer insights to elevate your business.

Once you add them all to the picture, their existing plans can turn out to be quite expensive. Seamlessly integrate Intercom with popular third-party tools and platforms, centralizing customer data and improving workflow efficiency. Experience targeted communication with Intercom’s automation and segmentation features. Create personalized messages for specific customer segments, driving engagement and satisfaction. The platform also allows teams to track queries, enabling supervisors to monitor progress and ensure timely responses. If you prioritize detailed support performance metrics and the ability to create custom reports, Zendesk’s reporting capabilities are likely to be more appealing.

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. The highlight of Zendesk is its help desk ticketing system, which brings several customer communication channels to one location. The software allows agents to switch between tickets seamlessly, leading to better customer satisfaction. Whether an agent wants to transition from live chat to phone or email with a customer, it’s all possible on the same ticketing page.

Zendesk vs Intercom: Which is better?

Initially, the platform was designed to help businesses communicate with their customers through targeted messaging. However, over the years, Intercom has evolved into a complete customer communication platform with features like live chat, email marketing, and customer support. Zendesk’s ‘Explore’ feature offers robust reporting capabilities, providing insights into various aspects Chat GPT of customer service operations. This allows businesses to identify trends, monitor agent performance, and make data-driven decisions. It can also handle complex interactions and provide real-time insight to customer support agents. Overall, Intercom is a better option if personalized and robust chatbots are something you are looking for when managing customer support strategy.

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. Both Zendesk and Intercom offer a range of channels for businesses to interact with their customers. Essentially, Fin AI Copilot acts as a personal assistant for every support staff, helping them resolve customer issues faster and more efficiently. Whereas, Fin AI Agent is an actual chatbot that responds on its own to customers’ questions. Intercom, on the other hand, focuses on automating tasks that help improve customer engagement.

Guru GPT integrates your company’s internal knowledge with ChatGPT, making it easy to access and use information from Guru and connected apps. 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. Honestly, when it comes to Zendesk, it is not the most modern tool out there.

If ticket management and workflow optimization are your primary concerns, Zendesk’s automation capabilities might be a better fit. However, if you’re looking to improve your customer’s user journey with personalized conversations, Intercom’s automation features and AI assistant are likely to be beneficial. Since Intercom’s focus is on driving customer engagement, the interface prominently displays important features like in-app messaging and chatbots. The dashboard also provides insights into user behavior and engagement metrics. I tested both of their live chats and their support agents were answering in very quickly and right to the point. Zendesk team can be just a little bit faster depending on the time of the day.

So if an agent needs to switch from chat to phone to email (or vice versa) with a customer, it’s all on the same ticketing page. There’s even on-the-spot translation built right in, which is extremely helpful. All customer questions, whether via phone, chat, email, social media, or any other channel, are landed in one dashboard, where your agents can solve them quickly and efficiently. This guarantees continuous omnichannel support that meets customer expectations.

Customer support and data security

Zendesk offers robust reporting capabilities, providing businesses with detailed insights into consumer interactions, ticketing systems, agent performance, and more. Zendesk excels with its powerful ticketing and customer support capabilities, making it ideal for streamlining service operations. Unlike Intercom, Zendesk is scalable, intuitively designed for CX, and offers a low total cost of ownership. You can also use Intercom as a customer service platform, but given its broad focus, you may not get the same level of specialized expertise. 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. Additionally, Zendesk offers a wide range of customization options, allowing users to tailor the user interface to their needs.

The features in Zendesk can scale with growing companies, so Startups can easily customize their plan to changing needs. The Essential customer support plan for individuals, startups, and businsses costs $39. This plan includes a shared inbox, unlimited articles, proactive support, and basic automation. These pricing structures are flexible enough to cater to all business sizes and types. Moreover, the pricing model ensures customer transparency and reveals the costs that businesses will incur.

It can filter engageable from non-engageable messages, deflect them to your agents and even alert them in case of potential PR crises, keeping your brand perception positive and proactive. A CX tool is equipped with conversational AI that can resolve a good chunk of your queries on its own. The AI acts like a smart filter, triaging through incoming issues to find and bring urgent ones, such as service disruptions, to the forefront. When an agent takes on one of these critical cases, they aren’t starting cold — they already see case histories and details such as recent service changes or recurring issues on their dashboard. This proactive information delivery cuts down on the typical hunt-and-peck for details, enabling agents to address the problem directly. Zendesk also offers a community forum where users can ask questions and get help from others.

And according to research, brands adopting omnichannel customer service software experience a decline in cost per contact by 7.5% every year, so having this feature is definitely a plus. The company’s products include a ticketing system, live chat software, knowledge base software, and a customer satisfaction survey tool. Zendesk also offers a number of integrations with third-party applications. Additionally, the Zendesk sales CRM seamlessly integrates with the Zendesk Support Suite, allowing your customer service and sales teams to share information in a centralized place.

Some of the popular integrations include Salesforce, HubSpot, Marketo, and Google Analytics. Zendesk’s integration with these tools allows businesses to track customer interactions, personalize messaging, and automate workflows. Intercom offers a wide range of integrations with various third-party tools, including CRMs, marketing automation platforms, and analytics tools. Intercom’s integration with these tools allows businesses to track customer interactions, personalize messaging, and automate workflows.

When he isn’t writing content, poetry, or creative nonfiction, he enjoys traveling, baking, playing music, reliving his barista days in his own kitchen, camping, and being bad at carpentry. Intercom does have a ticketing dashboard that has omnichannel functionality, much like Zendesk. Keeping this general theme in mind, I’ll dive deeper into how each software’s features compare, so you can decide which use case might best fit your needs. If you want to test Intercom vs Zendesk before deciding on a tool for good, they both provide free 14-day trials.

Connecting Zendesk Support and Zendesk Sell allows its customer service and sales-oriented wholesale team to work together effortlessly. 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. Intercom’s user interface is known for being modern, intuitive, and user-friendly. The dashboard is customizable, allowing users to efficiently access the features they use most frequently.

Zendesk boasts incredibly robust sales capabilities and security features. Intercom offers reporting and analytics tools with limited capabilities for custom reporting, user behavior metrics, and advanced visualization. It also lacks advanced features like collaboration reporting, custom metrics, metric correlation, and drill-in attribution.

Just keep in mind that, while Intercom’s upfront pricing may seem cheaper, there are additional costs to factor in. When factoring in AI-first tools for all agents, multi-channel campaigns, and proactive support, it could easily cost significantly more than Zendesk. Similar to Zendesk, Intercom’s pricing reserves its most powerful automations for higher-paying customers, the good news is that Fin AI comes with all plans.

For basic chat and messaging, Intercom charges a flat fee of $39 per month for its basic plan with one user and $99 per month for its team plan with up to 5 users. If you want automated options, Intercom starts at either $499 or $999 per month for up to ten users, depending on the level of automation you’re looking for. On the other hand, Zendesk’s customer support includes a knowledge base that’s very intuitive and easy to navigate. It divides all articles into a few main topics so you can quickly find the one you’re looking for. It also includes a list of common questions you can browse through at the bottom of the knowledge base home page so you can find answers to common issues. This structure may appeal to businesses with specific needs but could be less predictable for budget-conscious organizations.

The integration of apps plays a significant role in creating a seamless experience or a 360-degree view of customers across the company. Zendesk allows the integration of 1300 apps ranging from billing apps, marketing tools, and other software, adding overall to the value of the business. It also excels in the silo approach in a company and allows easy access to information to anyone in the company through this integration. Zendesk’s automation features are limited to offering basic automation to streamline repetitive tasks. While Zeendesk provides automation services for ticket support systems, notifications, chatbots, etc., it may not be an extensive feature compared to Intercom. Considering that Zendesk and Intercom are leading the market for customer service software, it becomes difficult for businesses to choose the right tool.

Intercom offers a simplistic dashboard with a detailed view of all customer details in one place. Operators will find its dashboard quite beneficial as it will take them seconds to find necessary features during an ongoing chat with the customers. Admins will also like the fact that they can see the progress of all their teams and who all are actively answering a customer’s query in real-time.

Zendesk’s chatbots are simple to deploy and are highly effective in providing automated customer support. They can handle simple queries, freeing up your support agents to deal with more complex issues. 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.

It’s also highly customizable, so you can adjust it according to the style of your website or product. Whether you’ve just started searching for a customer support tool or have been using one for a while, chances are you know about Zendesk and Intercom. The former is one of the oldest and most reliable solutions on the market, while the latter sets the bar high regarding innovative and out-of-the-box features. Use ticketing systems to efficiently manage high ticket volume, deliver timely customer support, and boost agent productivity. Zendesk AI is the intelligence layer that infuses CX intelligence into every step of the customer journey. In addition to being pre-trained on billions of real support interactions, our AI powers bots, agent and admin assist, and intelligent workflows that lead to 83 percent lower administrative costs.

Messaging Platform

This makes it a strong choice for businesses prioritizing customer engagement. Choosing the right customer service platform is critical for any business. It enables you to streamline all incoming customer queries, and ensure your support team is equipped to provide prompt, efficient solutions. Intercom also offers reporting features, but they aren’t as extensive as Zendesk’s.

However, for more advanced CRM needs like lead management and sales forecasting, Intercom may not make the cut, unfortunately. What’s even cooler is its ability to use AI to forecast customer behavior. Agents can use this to anticipate and proactively address issues before the escalate, or even arise in the first place.

This gets you unlimited email addresses and email templates in both text form and HTML. The final prices are revealed after engaging in sales demos and are not revealed upfront. 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.

Both Zendesk and Intercom have knowledge bases to help customers get the most out of their platforms. Although it can be pricey, Zendesk’s platform is a very robust one, with powerful reporting and insight tools, a large number of integrations, and excellent scalability features. You need a complete customer service platform that’s seamlessly integrated and AI-enhanced. Yes, you can continue using Intercom as the consumer-facing CRM experience, but integrate with Zendesk for customer service in the back end for more customer support functionality. These include chatbot automation features, customer segmentation, and targeted SMS messaging to reach the right audience efficiently. Customerly’s Helpdesk is designed to boost efficiency and collaboration with the help of AI.

• This allows businesses to identify trends, monitor agent performance, and make data-driven decisions.
• The company was founded in 2007 and today serves over 170,000 customers worldwide.
• Some of the popular integrations include Salesforce, HubSpot, Marketo, and Google Analytics.
• Zendesk’s automation features are limited to offering basic automation to streamline repetitive tasks.

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. The platform converts all customer queries into “tickets” that agents can handle with ease and track till the point of resolution. To sum things up, Zendesk is a great customer support oriented tool which will be a great choice for big teams with various departments. Intercom feels more wholesome and is more customer success oriented, but can be too costly for smaller companies.

Popular Features

Sometimes, businesses do not even realize the importance of various aspects you must consider while making this choice. Intercom is ideal for personalized messaging, while Zendesk offers robust ticket management and self-service options. Zendesk has a help center that is open to all to find out answers to common questions. Apart from this feature, the customer support options at Zendesk are quite limited.

On the other hand, Zendesk is a more comprehensive customer support tool that offers a broader range of features, including ticket management, knowledge base creation, and reporting and analytics. Its robust ticketing system and automation capabilities make it an excellent option for businesses with high-volume customer support needs. Additionally, Zendesk’s customizable dashboards and reporting features provide valuable insights into customer support performance. Intercom’s customer service software offers a range of features designed to enhance the customer experience. It lets businesses set up multilingual help centers, so customers from different regions can self-serve. With tools for managing workloads and assigning tasks, it ensures that issues reach the right agents efficiently.

Analytics and reporting

Intercom’s app store has popular integrations for things like WhatsApp, Stripe, Instagram, and Slack. There is a really useful one for Shopify to provide customer support for e-commerce operations. HubSpot and Salesforce are also available when support needs to work with marketing and sales teams. Chatbots are automated customer support tools that can assist with low-level ticket triage and ticket routing in real-time. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. How easy it is to program a chatbot and how effective a chatbot is at assisting human reps is an important factor for this category.

Their help desk software has a single inbox to handle customer inquiries. Your customer service agents can leave private notes for each other and enjoy automatic ticket assignments to the right specialists. It’s designed so well that you really enjoy staying in their inbox and communicating with clients. Intercom also has a mobile app available for both Android and iOS, which makes it easy to stay connected with customers even when away from the computer. The app includes features like automated messages and conversation routing — so businesses can manage customer conversations more efficiently.

Simply because of just how easily one puts your customer engagement on auto-pilot so you can intervene when you absolutely need to. A good customer experience platform should be powered with state-of-the-art AI to help you with the following use cases. Still, they are independent picks by Sprinklr’s editorial team based on our research and publicly available information on the review sites.

Intercom has a community forum where users can engage with each other and gain insights from their experiences. Before you make your choice, check out Messagely’s features and compare them to discover which platform is best for you. While both Zendesk and Intercom are great and robust platforms, none of them are able to provide you with the same value Messagely gives you at such an  affordable price. Messagely also provides you with a shared inbox so anyone from your team can follow up with your users, regardless of who the user was in contact with first.

Today, Zendesk is used by over 200,000 businesses worldwide, including Airbnb, Uber, and Slack. The platform is known for its ease of use, customizable workflows, and extensive integrations with other business tools. Again, Zendesk has surpassed the number of reviewers when compared to Intercom.

Intercom isn’t as great with sales, but it allows for better communication. With Intercom, you can keep track of your customers and what they do on your website in real time. Like Zendesk, Intercom allows you to chat with online visitors and assist with their issues.

Another advantage of using Intercom is that it not only enhances customer engagement but is also a great way to increase customer support teams’ productivity. It allows businesses to organize and share helpful documentation or answer customers’ common questions. Self-service resources always relieve the burden on customer support teams, and both of our subjects have this tool in their packages.

In this section, we will take a closer look at the integration capabilities of both platforms. Intercom is used by over 30,000 businesses worldwide, including Shopify, Atlassian, and New Relic. The platform is known for its user-friendly interface, powerful automation capabilities, and robust analytics tools. When deciding between Intercom and Zendesk, businesses should consider their specific needs and goals.

At first glance, they seem like simple three packages for small, medium, and big businesses. But it’s virtually impossible to predict what you’ll pay for Intercom at the end of the day. They charge not only for customer service representative seats but also for feature usage and offer tons of features as custom add-ons at additional cost. So when it comes to chatting features, the choice is not really Intercom vs Zendesk. The latter offers a chat widget that is simple, outdated, and limited in customization options, while the former puts all of its resources into its messenger.

Its ability to scale with the businesses makes it an attractive option for growing companies. Its customizable options enable businesses to quickly gain value from its features by enhancing agility. Zendesk is an all-in-one omnichannel platform offering various channel integrations in one place.

However, we will say that Intercom just edges past Zendesk when it comes to self-service resources. For large-scale businesses, the budget for such investments is usually higher than for startups, but they need to analyze if the investment is worth it. They need to comprehensively analyze if they are getting the value of the invested money. With only the Enterprise tier offering round-the-clock email, phone, and chat help, Zendesk support is sharply separated by tiers. This way, your clients will never have to repeat themselves or get frustrated because their new representative doesn’t know their background.

Zendesk is among the industry’s best ticketing and customer support software, and most of its additional functionality is icing on the proverbial cake. Intercom, on the other hand, is designed to be more of a complete solution for sales, marketing, and customer relationship nurturing. Intercom also uses AI and features a chatbot called Fin, but negative reviews note basic reporting and a lack of customization. Fin is priced at $0.99 per resolution, so companies handling large volumes of queries might find it costly. In comparison, Zendesk customers pay a fixed price of $50 per agent—and only Zendesk AI is modeled on the world’s largest CX-specific dataset.

The top-tier plan includes SSO and identity management integrations for secure data access. Both software solutions offer core customer service features like live chat for sales, help desk management capabilities, and customer self-service options like a knowledge base. They’re also known for their user-friendly interfaces and reliable support team. Zendesk and Intercom are both incredibly powerful customer support tools, and they have their own strengths and weaknesses.

This is especially helpful for smaller businesses that may not need a lot of features. 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, zendesk vs intercom 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.

The Zendesk Help Center allows for the easy creation and grouping of resources, offering customizability to match your brand. It’s a comprehensive knowledge base where customers can find answers to common questions, reducing the need for direct customer support. A customer service department is only as good as its support team members, and these highly-prized employees need to rely on one another. Tools that allow support agents to communicate and collaborate are important aspect of customer service software. Intercom’s AI has the transformative power to enhance customer service by offering multilingual support and contextual responses. Fin uses seamless communication across customer bases, breaking language barriers and catering to global audiences.

Intercom actively enhances its analytics capabilities by leveraging AI to forecast customer behavior. This feature helps businesses anticipate and address potential issues before they escalate. Intercom’s analytics focuses more on user behavior and engagement metrics, with insights into customer interactions, and important retention metrics. Although quite functional, Zendesk’s interface can sometimes feel a bit dated compared to other helpdesks.

Plus, Aura AI’s global, multilingual support breaks down language barriers, making it an ideal solution for businesses with an international customer base. Unlike Zendesk, which requires more initial setup for advanced automation, Customerly’s out-of-the-box automation features are designed to be user-friendly and easily customizable. Not to brag 😏, but we specifically developed our platform to address the shortcomings in the current market. By going with Customerly for your customer service needs, you can get the best of both worlds (Zendesk and Intercom), plus some extra features and benefits you haven’t even thought of, yet. You can then add features like advanced AI agents, workforce management, and QA. Zendesk offers a slightly broader selection of plans, with an enterprise solution for customers with bespoke needs.

Let’s look at how help desk features are represented in our examinees’ solutions. The Intercom versus Zendesk conundrum is probably the greatest problem in customer service software. They both offer some state-of-the-art core functionality and numerous unusual features. Basically, if you have a complicated support process, go with Zendesk for its help desk functionality. If you’re a sales-oriented corporation, use Intercom for its automation options.

Intercom is an excellent option for businesses prioritizing personalized communication and customer engagement. Its live chat feature and ability to send targeted messages and notifications make it a powerful tool for customer https://chat.openai.com/ engagement. Intercom’s user-friendly interface and easy integration with other tools make it a popular choice for many businesses. One of the standout features of Zendesk’s customer support is its ticketing system.

Customerly allows you to rate prospects, either manually or automatically, so you can prioritize the most valuable leads. Our platform also supports dynamic list building, enabling you to run targeted surveys, send newsletters, and automate marketing actions, all from one place. 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?

So when I realized lots of companies actually prefer Zendesk over Intercom, I was surprised. Let’s delve deeper into their features to see how they fare in various categories. Our mission is to break apart what CRM is and means.Here we discuss anything that helps create more meaningful lasting work relationships.

Plus, our transparent pricing doesn’t have hidden fees or endless add-ons, so customers know exactly what they’re paying for and can calculate the total cost of ownership ahead of time. In comparison, Intercom’s confusing pricing structure that features multiple add-ons may be unsuitable for small businesses. Zendesk’s user face is quite intuitive and easy to use, allowing customers to quickly find what they are looking for. Additionally, the platform allows users to customize their experience by setting up automation workflows, creating ticket rules, and utilizing analytics. One of the things that sets Zendesk apart from other customer service software providers is its focus on design. The company’s products are built with an emphasis on simplicity and usability.

But sooner or later, you’ll have to decide on the subscription plan, and here’s what you’ll have to pay. If you’re already using Intercom and want to continue using it as the front-end CRM experience, integrating with Zendesk can improve it. The bank seizes this opportunity to reach out with a well-informed proposal.

Zendesk vs Intercom: An Honest Comparison in 2024

While no area of concern really stands out, there are some complaints about the company’s billing practices. 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 can test any of HelpCrunch’s pricing plans for free for 14 days and see our tools in action immediately. To sum up this Intercom vs Zendesk battle, the latter is a great support-oriented tool that will be a good choice for big teams with various departments.

It suggests potential investment options like a low-risk investment fund or a term deposit, tailored to their unique cases. For example, imagine Ally, a makeup enthusiast, visits an offline beauty store to check out the newly launched lip kit line. You’re choosing that brand because of what it stands for — maybe it’s sustainability, quality, or community. But if the CX feels, that’s supposed to be holistic, feels broken, at every twist and turn during your journey with the brand, you might feel let down.

Intercom also offers an API enabling businesses to build custom integrations with their tools. The API is well-documented and easy to use, making it a popular choice for companies zendesk vs intercom that want to create their integrations. Intercom and Zendesk offer integration capabilities to help businesses streamline their workflow and improve customer support.

Features:

Pipedrive also has security measures baked into its solution, offering SSO for its users. Whether it’s the platform’s security or response needed in times of crisis, Sprinklr’s Trust Center ensures you’re ever ready to combat any mishaps with stealth and precision. With ThriveDesk, you can supercharge your website’s growth and streamline customer interactions like never before. 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.

• However, the right fit for your business will depend on your particular needs and budget.
• So, bringing CX into the fold with your brand’s core promise is downright essential, not just nice-to-have.
• Zendesk Sunshine is a separate feature set that focuses on unified customer views.
• Customer experience will be no exception, and AI models that are purpose-built for CX lead to better results at scale.
• Conversely, Intercom has a shared inbox tool that routes conversations from every channel, including live chat, email, SMS, and more, into one place.
• Intercom actively enhances its analytics capabilities by leveraging AI to forecast customer behavior.

Some of the highly-rated features include ticket creation user experience, email to case, and live chat reporting. When you see pricing plans starting for $79/month, you should get a clear understanding of how expensive other plans can become for your business. What’s worse, Intercom doesn’t offer a free trial to its prospect to help them test the product before onboarding with their services. Instead, they offer a product demo when prospects reach out to learn more about their pricing structure. It enables them to engage with visitors who are genuinely interested in their services.

Can I use both Zendesk and Intercom?

For example, you can set a sales trigger to automatically change the owner of a deal based on the specific conditions you select. That way, your sales team won’t have to worry about manually updating these changes as they work through a deal. Many businesses turn to customer relationship management (CRM) software to help improve customer relations and assist in sales. Freshdesk, by Freshworks Inc. gathers requests from email, web, phone, chat, messaging and social media into a unified ticketing system, making it easy to manage interactions across channels.

If agents want to offer their customers a great experience, they can spend an additional $50 to have the AI add-on. These weaknesses are not as significant as the features and functionalities Zendesk offers its users. Zendesk and Intercom offer a free trial of 14 days, but you will eventually have to choose once the trial ends. The pricing strategies are covered below so you can analyze the pricing structure and select your customer service software. Zendesk TCO is lower than Intercom due to its ability to scale, which does not require additional cost to update the software for a growing business. It also has a transparent pricing model so businesses know the price they will incur.

At the same time, the vendor offers powerful reporting capabilities to help you grow and improve your business. Zendesk boasts robust reporting and analytics tools, plus a dedicated workforce management system. With custom correlation and attribution, you can dive deep into the root cause behind your metrics. We also provide real-time and historical reporting dashboards so you can take action at the moment and learn from past trends. Meanwhile, our WFM software enables businesses to analyze employee metrics and performance, helping them identify improvements, implement strategies, and set long-term goals. Ultimately, it’s important to consider what features each platform offers before making a decision, as well as their pricing options and customer support policies.

While its integrations are not as far-reaching as Zendesk’s, it seamlessly works with modern communication and business tools, like WhatsApp and the most prominent CRMS. Not to mention marketing and sales tools, like Salesforce, Hubspot, and Google Analytics. 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.

Lastly, the tool is easy to set up and implement, meaning no additional knowledge or expertise makes the businesses incur additional costs. The help center in Intercom is also user-friendly, enabling agents to access content creation easily. It does help you organize and create content using efficient tools, but Zendesk is more suitable if you want a fully branded customer-centric experience.

With Zendesk, you get next-level AI-powered support software that’s intuitively designed, scalable, and cost-effective. Compare Zendesk vs. Intercom and future-proof your business with reliable, easy-to-use software. 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. With more folks working from their couches, remote support is stepping up.

After this live chat software comparison, you’ll get a better picture of what’s better for your business. Customer support and security are vital aspects to consider when evaluating helpdesk solutions like Zendesk and Intercom. Let’s examine and compare how each platform addresses these crucial areas to ensure effective support operations and data protection.

Chat features are integral to modern business communication, enabling real-time customer interaction and team collaboration. 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. Intercom is an all-in-one solution, and compared to Zendesk, Intercom has a less intuitive design and can be complicated for new users to learn. It also offers a confusing pricing structure and fewer integrations, making it less scalable and cost-effective. Customer expectations are already high, but with the rise of AI, customers are expecting even more.

It is quite the all-rounder as it even has a help center and ticketing system that completes its omnichannel support cycle. When choosing between Zendesk and Intercom for your customer support needs, it’s essential to consider various factors that align with your business goals, operational requirements, and budget. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. Both platforms offer distinct strengths, catering to customer support and engagement aspects. Zendesk receives positive feedback for its intuitive interface, wide range of integrations, and robust reporting tools. However, some users find customization challenging, and the platform is considered expensive, requiring careful cost evaluation.

The software is known for its agile APIs and proven custom integration references. This helps the service teams connect to applications like Shopify, Jira, Salesforce, Microsoft Teams, Slack, etc., all through Zendesk’s service platform. It also provides seamless navigation between a unified inbox, teams, and customer interactions, while putting all the most important information right at your fingertips. This makes it easy for teams to prioritize tasks, stay aligned, and deliver superior service. Aura AI transcends the limits of traditional chatbots that typically struggle with anything but the simplest user queries. Instead, Aura AI continuously learns from your knowledge base and canned responses, growing and learning — just like a real-life agent.

What is automated customer service? A guide to success

You can configure it to assign tickets using various methods, such as skills, load balancing, and round-robin to ensure efficient handling. In the process, it streamlines collaboration between team members as well as a unified interface to manage all help resources. Currently based in Albuquerque, NM, Bryce Emley holds an MFA in Creative Writing from NC State and nearly a decade of writing and editing experience.

Zendesk Sunshine is a separate feature set that focuses on unified customer views. Your typical Zendesk review will often praise the platform’s simplicity and affordability, as well as its constant updates and rolling out of new features, like Zendesk Sunshine. For example, you can read in many Zendesk Sell reviews how adding sales tools benefits Zendesk Support users.

You can contact the sales team if you’re just looking around, but you will not receive decent customer support unless you buy their service. Overall, Zendesk empowers businesses to deliver exceptional customer support experiences across channels, making it a popular choice for enhancing support operations. Its sales CRM software starts at $19 per month per user, but you’ll have to pay $49 to get Zapier integrations and $99 for Hubspot integrations. Finally, you can pay $199 per month per user for unlimited sales pipelines and advanced reporting along with other features. The Zendesk marketplace hosts over 1,500 third-party apps and integrations.

Zendesk has a low TCO because it has no hidden costs and can be easily set up without needing developers or third-party help, saving you time and money. Alternatively, Pipedrive users should prepare to pay more for even simple CRM features like email tracking, whereas email tracking is available for all Zendesk Sell plans. Finding the right customer experience software is nothing short of hitting the jackpot.

Discover customer and product issues with instant replays, in-app cobrowsing, and console logs. Now that we’ve covered a bit of background on both Zendesk and Intercom, let’s dive into the features each platform offers. At the end of the day, the best sales CRM delivers on the features that matter most to you and your business. To determine which one takes the cake, let’s dive into a feature comparison of Pipedrive vs. Zendesk.

Luca Micheli is a serial tech entrepreneur with one exited company and a passion for bootstrap digital projects. He’s passionate about helping companies to succeed with marketing and business development tips. It goes without saying that you can generate custom reports to hone in on particular areas of interest. Whether you’re into traditional bar charts, pie charts, treemaps, word clouds, or any other type of visualization, Zendesk is a data “nerd’s” dream. It makes sure that you don’t miss a single inquiry by queuing tickets for agent handling.

Rest assured, ThriveDesk’s lightweight design and speed won’t impact the performance of your Wix-powered eCommerce website. The optimized agent interface ensures rapid responses for maximum efficiency, all while keeping your website running smoothly. In terms of G2 ratings, Zendesk and Intercom are both well-rated platforms. It can team up with tools like Salesforce and Slack, so everything runs smoothly. Starting at just $19/user/month, Hiver is a more affordable solution that doesn’t compromise on essential helpdesk functionalities.

Feature Comparison

Intercom, on the other hand, offers more advanced automation features than Zendesk. Its automation tools help companies see automated responses and triggers based on the customer journey and response time. Intercom’s automation features enable businesses to deliver a personalized experience to customers and scale their customer support function effectively.

Intercom on the other hand lacks many ticketing functionality that can be essential for big companies with a huge customer support load. Zendesk also has the Answer Bot, which can take your knowledge base game to the next level instantly. It can automatically suggest your customer relevant articles reducing the workload for your support agents. As mentioned before, the bot builder is a visual drag-and-drop system that requires no coding knowledge; this is also how other basic workflows are designed. The more expensive Intercom plans offer AI-powered content cues, triage, and conversation insights.

Customers want speed, anticipation, and a hyper-personalized experience conveniently on their channel of choice. Intelligence has become key to delivering the kinds of experiences customers expect at a lower operational cost. As more organizations adopt AI, it will be critical to choose a data model that aligns with how your business operates. Customer experience will be no exception, and AI models that are purpose-built for CX lead to better results at scale. Zendesk provides its partners with quality support and educational resources, including online training and certification programs, helping turn any salesperson into a Zendesk expert.

Intercom’s messaging system enables real-time interactions through various channels, including chat, email, and in-app messages. Connect with customers wherever they are for timely assistance and personalized experiences. Ultimately, the choice between Zendesk and Intercom depends on your business needs. If you need a solution that can rapidly scale and offer strong self-service features, Zendesk may be the best fit. However, if your focus is on creating a seamless, automated customer service experience with proactive engagement, Intercom could be the ideal choice. It’s characterized by a clear, organized layout with a strong focus on ticket management.

Let’s evaluate the user experience and interface of both Zendesk and Intercom, considering factors such as ease of navigation, customization options, and overall intuitiveness. We will also consider customer feedback and reviews to provide insights into the usability of each platform. Intercom has a different approach, one that’s all about sales, marketing, and personalized messaging. Intercom has your back if you’re looking to supercharge your sales efforts. It’s like having a toolkit for lead generation, customer segmentation, and crafting highly personalized messages. This makes it an excellent choice if you want to engage with support and potential and existing customers in real time.

Integrating AI in the help center helps agents find answers to customer inquiries, providing a seamless customer experience. Zendesk’s AI offers automated responses to customer inquiries, increasing the team’s productivity, as they can spend time on the most crucial things. Zendesk allows businesses to group their resources in the help center, providing customers with self-service personalized support. The platform has various customization options, allowing businesses personalized experiences according to their branding. Help Center in Zendesk also will enable businesses to organize their tutorials, articles, and FAQs, making it convenient for customer to find solutions to their queries. To select the ideal fit for your business, it is crucial to compare these industry giants and assess which aligns best with your specific requirements.

You can design them once and seamlessly scale across different communities and languages. Plus, you never have to start from scratch — just tweak existing workflows to suit new needs or languages, saving time and effort. When it comes to choosing a help desk software, security is a top priority. Intercom and Zendesk have implemented various security measures to protect their clients’ data. If that’s not detailed enough, then surely their visitor browsing details will leave you surprised. This enables your operators to understand visitor intent faster and provide them with a personalized experience.

Before choosing the customer support software, it is crucial to consider the size of the business. Some software only works best for startups, while others have offerings only for large enterprises. Let us look at the type and size of business for which Zednesk and Intercom are suitable. HubSpot helps seamlessly integrate customer service tools that you and your team already leverage. Messagely’s pricing starts at just $29 per month, which includes live chat, targeted messages, shared inbox, mobile apps, and over 750 powerful integrations.

It has a more sophisticated user interface and a wide range of features, such as an in-app messenger, an email marketing tool, and an AI-powered chatbot. At the same time, Zendesk looks slightly outdated and can’t offer some features. Zendesk is an AI-powered platform designed to optimize customer experience across all touchpoints. It enables rapid setup and seamless scaling, making it adaptable to evolving needs. Zendesk’s AI enhances customer interactions by providing real-time insights and automating workflows.

On the other hand, Pipedrive doesn’t offer a customer service solution, limiting users to third-party integrations. Customer experience software is a suite of tools designed to manage and improve how customers interact https://chat.openai.com/ with a company throughout their entire journey. This software captures interactions across multiple channels — whether it’s via email, phone, web, or in-person — to provide a unified view of the customer.

Although Intercom offers an omnichannel messaging dashboard, it has slightly less functionality than Zendesk. Tracking the ticket progress enables businesses to track what part of the resolution customer complaint has reached. On the other hand, Intercom catches up with Zendesk on ticket handling capabilities but stands out due to its automation features. Some aspects give an edge or create differentiation in the operations of both software, which users may oversee while making a choice. 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.

One of the standout features of Intercom’s user interface is the ability to view customer conversations in a single thread, regardless of the channel they were initiated on. This makes it easy to see the full context of a customer’s interactions with a business, which can lead to more personalized and practical support. This live chat software provider also enables your business to send proactive chat messages to customers and engage effectively in real-time. This is one of the best ways to qualify high-quality leads for your business and improve your chances of closing a sale faster. Zendesk is another popular customer service, support, and sales platform that enables clients to connect and engage with their customers in seconds. Just like Intercom, Zendesk can also integrate with multiple messaging platforms and ensure that your business never misses out on a support opportunity.

CX tools now help you set up your cloud contact center so your intelligent virtual agents and live agents can work in tandem to engage with and help users remotely via text, audio, or video. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central brings customer experience to the forefront for small to medium-sized businesses. It integrates customer interactions across finance, sales, service and operations into one easy-to-use platform, making it simpler to deliver great service and make precise, data-driven decisions. 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.

When it’s intelligent and accessible, reporting can provide deep insights into your customer interactions, agent efficiency, and service quality at a glance. Zendesk’s reporting tools are arguably more advanced while Intercom is designed for simplicity and ease of use. Zendesk also prioritizes operational metrics, while Intercom focuses on behavior and engagement. Today, amid the rise of omnichannel customer service, it offers a centralized location to manage interactions via email, live chat, social media, or voice calls. 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 is a customer relationship management (CRM) software company that provides a suite of tools for managing customer interactions. The company was founded in 2011 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California. Intercom’s products are used by over 25,000 customers, from small tech startups to large enterprises. The Zendesk sales CRM offers tiered pricing plans designed to support businesses of all sizes, from startups to enterprises. The Professional and Enterprise plans offer advanced features that build on those in the Team and Growth plans, including lead scoring, call scripts, and unlimited email sequences. On top of that, you can use drag-and-drop widgets to create custom CRM reports with the data most important to your goals.

Let’s see how conversational AI in telecom helps make agents more productive. In conclusion, Intercom and Zendesk have implemented robust security measures to protect their clients’ data. Customers can feel confident that their data is secure when using either platform. We hope that this Intercom VS Zendesk comparison helps you choose one that matches your support, marketing, and sales needs. But in case you are in search of something beyond these two, then ProProfs Chat can be an option.

It also offers a Proactive Support Plus as an Add-on with push notifications, a series campaign builder, news items, and more. What better way to start a Zendesk vs. Intercom than to compare their features? As expected, the right choice between Zendesk and Intercom will depend on your budget, your company, and your needs. There are many powerful integrations included, such as Salesforce, HubSpot, Mailchimp, Slack, and Zapier.

This has helped to make Zendesk one of the most popular customer service software platforms on the market. A sales CRM should also provide you with the benefits of pipeline management software. Pipedrive has workflow automation features, like setting triggers and desired actions, scheduling customer interactions, and automating lead assignment. However, one user noted that important features like automation are often down for an extensive amount of time. Zendesk offers so much more than you can get from free CRMs or less robust options, including sales triggers to automate workflows.

Gain valuable insights with Intercom’s analytics and reporting capabilities. Track key metrics, measure campaign success, and optimize customer engagement strategies. Designed for all kinds of businesses, from small startups to giant enterprises, it’s the secret weapon that keeps customers happy. So, get ready for an insightful journey through the landscapes of Zendesk and Intercom, where support excellence converges with AI innovation.

Later, they started adding all kinds of other features, like live chat for customer conversations. Why don’t you try something equally powerful yet more affordable, Chat GPT like HelpCrunch? As a result, customers can implement the help desk software quickly—without the need for developers—and see a faster return on investment.

Intercom and Zendesk offer robust customer support options, including email, phone, and live chat support, comprehensive knowledge bases, and community forums. Intercom’s chatbot functionality is a standout feature, while Zendesk’s ticketing system can help resolve support issues on time. Intercom offers a range of customer support options, including email, phone, and live chat support. In addition, they provide a comprehensive knowledge base that includes articles, videos, and tutorials to help users get the most out of the platform. Intercom also offers scalability within its pricing plans, enabling businesses to upgrade to higher tiers as their support needs grow.

They are, however, adequate for most users, providing essential insights into customer service operations. For smaller teams that have to handle multiple tasks, do not forget to check JustReply.ai, which is a user-friendly customer support tool. It will seamlessly integrate with Slack and offers everything you need for your favorite communication platform. Intercom’s AI capabilities extend beyond the traditional chatbots; Fin is renowned for solving complex problems and providing safer, accurate answers. Fin’s advanced algorithm and machine learning enable the precision handling of queries.

Your agents will love the seamless assistance Aura AI provides throughout the entire customer interaction. From handling multiple questions to avoiding dreaded customer-stuck loops, Aura AI is the Swiss Army Knife of customer service chatbots. Furthermore, Intercom offers advanced automation features such as custom inbox rules, targeted messaging, and dynamic triggers based on customer segments.

CoinJar is one of the longest-running cryptocurrency exchanges in the world. To help keep up with its growing customer base, CoinJar turned to Zendesk for a user-friendly and easily scalable solution after testing other CRMs, including Pipedrive and HubSpot. Leveraging the sequencing and bulk email features of the Zendesk sales CRM, CoinJar increased its visibility and productivity at scale. Zendesk supports sales team productivity by syncing with your email to provide valuable data, like when your prospect opens, clicks, or replies to your email. You can also use Zendesk to automatically track and record sales calls, allowing you to focus your full attention on your customer rather than taking notes. When selecting a sales CRM, you’ll want to consider its total cost of ownership (TCO).

Instead, using it and setting it up is very easy, and very advanced chatbots and predictive tools are included to boost your customer service. The Suite Team plan, priced at $69 per agent, adds features like live chat and messaging, while the Suite Growth plan at $115 per agent introduces automation and advanced analytics. When comparing Zendesk and Intercom, it’s essential to understand their core features and their differences to choose the right solution for your customer support needs. These include ticketing, chatbots, and automation capabilities, to name just a few.Here’s a side-by-side comparison to help you identify the strengths and weaknesses of each platform.

But I don’t want to sell their chat tool short as it still has most of necessary features like shortcuts (saved responses), automated triggers and live chat analytics. If you’re a huge corporation with a complicated customer support process, go Zendesk for its help desk functionality. If you’re smaller more sales oriented startup with enough money, go Intercom. Intercom’s help center, while not as customizable, still provides a user-friendly platform for content creation, helping customers self-serve their queries effectively. Zendesk’s dashboard is responsive and has a sleek interface, which facilitates smoother interactions.

When you onboard a customer support platform, it’s important to consider the level of support the vendor offers. That’s because if there’s a glitch or a system outage, you want an immediate fix or clarity on the resolution. It offers a feature called “Mobile Push”  which are essentially push notifications that allow businesses to reach customers on their mobile apps. This feature enables timely alerts and updates to customers, even when they are on the go.

Zendesk vs Intercom A Detailed Comparison

Overall, I actually liked Zendesk’s user experience better than Intercom’s in terms of its messaging dashboard. Intercom has a dark mode that I think many people will appreciate, and I wouldn’t say it’s lacking in any way. But I like that Zendesk just feels slightly cleaner, has easy online/away toggling, more visual customer journey notes, and a handy widget for exploring the knowledge base on the fly. The highlight of Zendesk’s ticketing software is its omnichannel-ality (omnichannality?). Whether agents are facing customers via chat, email, social media, or good old-fashioned phone, they can keep it all confined to a single, easy-to-navigate dashboard. 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.

Ultimately, your choice should reflect whether your priority is comprehensive customer support (Zendesk) or a blend of CRM and sales support (Intercom). You could technically consider Intercom a CRM, but it’s really more of a customer-focused communication product. It isn’t as adept at purer sales tasks like lead management, list engagement, advanced reporting, forecasting, and workflow management as you’d expect a more complete CRM to be. However, the right fit for your business will depend on your particular needs and budget. If you’re looking for a comprehensive solution with lots of features and integrations, then Zendesk would be a good choice. On the other hand, if you need something that is more tailored to your customer base and is less expensive, then Intercom might be a better fit.

A collection of these reports can enable your business to identify the right resources responsible for bringing engagement to your business. 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 vs. Zendesk: the final verdict

You can either track your performance on a pre-built dashboard or customize and build one for yourself. This customized dashboard will help you see metrics that you’d like to focus on regularly. Both Zendesk and Intercom offer varying flavors when it comes to curating the whole customer support experience. 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. The AI Copilot is limited to assisting ten conversations per support agent and for anything more, it costs $35 per month per agent.

The dashboard of Zendesk is sleek, simple, and highly responsive, offering a seamless experience for managing customer interactions. Zendesk chat allows you to talk with your visitors in real time through a small chat bar at the bottom of your site. When visitors click on it, they’ll be directed to one of your customer service teammates.

You can use the dashboards to understand customer journeys in-depth and identify areas of improvement. While it helps track some basic support metrics, Intercom’s strength lies in helping companies understand user behavior, product usage, and friction points along the journey. It offers robust features for automating routine tasks such as ticket routing, creating queues, creating ticket statuses and more.

Overall, Intercom and Zendesk offer intuitive and user-friendly user interfaces, prioritizing ease of use and customization. The choice between the two may be personal preference or specific feature requirements. Zendesk also offers detailed reports that can be shared with others and enable team members to collaborate on them simultaneously.

Zendesk vs Intercom: Which one should you choose?

For instance, Zendesk’s automation rules can help support teams automatically assign tickets based on specific criteria – like subject line or specific keywords. Intercom also offers extensive integrations with over 350 tools that include Salesforce, HubSpot, Google Analytics, Amplitude, Zoho, JIRA, and more. The platform is recognized for its ability to resolve a significant portion of customer questions automatically, ensuring faster response times. So yeah, two essential things that Zendesk lacks in comparison to Intercom are in-app messages and email marketing tools.

Over the years, Zendesk has expanded its offerings to include features such as live chat, knowledge base, and customer feedback. Intercom is an all-in-one business communications tool that offers support, marketing, and sales features. It is known for its automation options and customizable capabilities, making it a popular choice for small-to-medium businesses. On the other hand, Zendesk is primarily a customer service platform that now offers a sales module. It is designed for larger enterprises and offers more comprehensive features than Intercom.

Zendesk vs Intercom: Which is Better for Customer Care

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. Zendesk excels in its ticketing system, offering users an intuitive platform for collaboration among support agents. Its robust workflows streamline the ticket resolution system and efficiently handle all customer complaints. It also enables agents to perform customized workflow management, assign tickets to the right agent for request handling, and track the ticket’s progress. There are many features to help bigger customer service teams collaborate more effectively, such as private notes or a real-time view of who’s handling a given ticket at the moment.

Fin enables businesses to set new standards for offering customer service. It allows businesses to automate repetitive tasks, such as ticket routing and in-built responses, freeing up time for support agents to deal with more crucial cases requiring more agent attention. This automation enhances support teams’ productivity as they do not have to spend too much responding to similar complaints they have already dealt with.

This can be a valuable resource for users looking for solutions to specific problems or wanting to learn more about the platform. Intercom also offers a community forum where users can ask questions and get help from other users. While they like the ease of use this product offers its users, they’ve indeed rated them low in terms of services.

When it comes to Sprinklr, you can rest easy knowing no piece of consumer intelligence slips through the cracks. To ensure every interaction racks in minimal customer effort scores, you need all your internal tools (like CRM, marketing automation and research tools) to talk to each other. Sprinklr dissolves point-solution chaos to help you deliver consistent omnichannel customer experiences to all your customers at every single touchpoint, without fail, each time.

Many use cases call for different approaches, and Zendesk and Intercom are but two software solutions for each case. Visit either of their app marketplaces zendesk vs intercom and look up the Intercom Zendesk integration. Like with many other apps, Zapier seems to be the best and most simple way to connect Intercom to Zendesk.

Startups & Small Businesses

Zendesk’s mission is to build software designed to improve customer relationships. According to the Zendesk Customer Experience Trends Report 2023, 78 percent of business leaders want to combine their customer service and sales data. The Zendesk sales CRM integrates seamlessly with the Zendesk Suite, our top-of-the-line customer service software. Unlike Zendesk, Pipedrive is limited to third-party integrations and doesn’t connect with native customer support software. Podium simplifies customer interactions with tools for text marketing, payment handling, review collection, live chat and an integrated agent inbox. With AI-driven responses available around the clock, Podium boosts lead conversion and revenue.

Intercom’s pricing isn’t very transparent, with the starter pack costing $74 per month for two seats. The lack of transparency can make it harder for businesses to determine the actual costs and compare different plans. However, this is somewhat subjective, and depending on your business needs and favorite tools, you may argue we got it all mixed up, and Intercom is truly superior. Some startups and small businesses may prefer one app, while large companies and enterprise operations will have their own requirements. There is a simple email integration tool for whatever email provider you regularly use.

Sales

Zendesk has traditionally been more focused on customer support management, while Intercom has been more focused on live support solutions like its chat solution. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. When deciding on choosing between Zendesk or Pipedrive for your business, there is a lot to keep in mind. With Zendesk, you can connect your sales and support teams, empowering them with the information they need to deliver better customer experiences.

Zendesk would be a perfect option for businesses that are searching for a well-integrated support system. It offers a suite that compiles help desk, live chat, and knowledge base to their Chat GPT user base. This enables them to speed up the support process and build experiences that customers like. This live chat service provider offers 200+ integrations to its user base.

To enhance customer satisfaction, businesses must equip their teams with customer support solutions and customer service software. Zendesk is a great option for large companies or companies that are looking for a very strong sales and customer service platform. It offers more support features and includes more advanced analytics and reports. These products range from customer communication tools to a fully-fledged CRM.

Eliminate guesswork & resolve customer issues at ⚡️ speed

This is where software platforms such as Zendesk and Intercom come into play, offering customer-centric tools like ticketing, issue resolution, automation, and messaging. But with each software boasting its unique strengths, which one should you choose? Let’s dive in and dissect the two, based on an in-depth trial experience. This method helps offer https://chat.openai.com/ more personalized support as well as get faster response and resolution times. It also provides mid-sized businesses with comprehensive customer relationship management software, as they require more advanced features to handle customer support. Similarly, the ability of Zendesk to scale also makes it the best fit for enterprise-level organizations.

• What’s more, we support live video support for moments when your customers need in-depth guidance.
• From there, you can include FAQs, announcements, and article guides and then save them into pre-set lists for your customers to explore.
• One of Zendesk’s other key strengths has also been its massive library of integrations.
• The former is one of the oldest and most reliable solutions on the market, while the latter sets the bar high regarding innovative and out-of-the-box features.
• The Zendesk chat tool has most of the necessary features, like shortcuts (saved responses), automated triggers, and live chat analytics.

And while many other chatbots take forever to set up, you can set up your first chatbot in under five minutes. 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. Since Intercom is so intuitive, the time you’ll need to spend training new users on how to interact with the platform is greatly reduced.

• Agents can easily view ongoing interactions, and take over from Aura AI at any moment if they feel intervention is needed.
• One stand out automation feature is its co-pilot, also known as Fin AI Copilot.
• Powered by Explore, Zendesk’s reporting capabilities are pretty impressive.
• Over the years, Zendesk has expanded its offerings to include features such as live chat, knowledge base, and customer feedback.

Zendesk may be unable to give the agents more advanced features or customization options for chatbots. Zendesk and Intercom offer help desk management solutions to their users. While the company is smaller than Zendesk, Intercom has earned a reputation for building high-quality customer service software. The company’s products include a messaging platform, knowledge base tools, and an analytics dashboard. Many businesses choose to work with Intercom because of its focus on personalization and flexibility, allowing companies to completely customize their customer service experience. Gainsight offers a solid platform tailored to improve customer experience management.

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.

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 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. I just found Zendesk’s help center to be slightly better integrated into their workflows and more customizable. What’s really nice about this is that even within a ticket, you can switch between communication modes without changing views.

Its tiered plans offer everything from basic contact management to advanced features and automation, making it a solid choice for diverse business needs. Zendesk was founded in 2007 by Mikkel Svane, Morten Primdahl, and Alexander Aghassipour. The platform was created to provide a simple and effective way for businesses to manage customer support tickets.

The setup can be so complex that there are tutorials by third parties to teach new users how to do it right. Intercom works with any website or web-based product and aims to be your one-way stop for all of your customer communication needs. Zendesk has excellent reporting and analytics tools that allow you to decipher the underlying issues behind your help desk metrics. Discover how to awe shoppers with stellar customer service during peak season. They fall within roughly the same price range, that most SMEs and larger enterprises should find within their budget. Both also use a two-pronged pricing system, based on the number of agents/seats and the level of features needed.

ProProfs Live Chat Editorial Team is a passionate group of customer service experts dedicated to empowering your live chat experiences with top-notch content. We stay ahead of the curve on trends, tackle technical hurdles, and provide practical tips to boost your business. With our commitment to quality and integrity, you can be confident you’re getting the most reliable resources to enhance your customer support initiatives. If you are looking for more integration options and budget is not an issue, Intercom can be the perfect live chat solution for your business.

Both platforms offer a range of features that enable businesses to communicate with their customers seamlessly. In this section, we will briefly overview Intercom and Zendesk, including their history and key features. ThriveDesk empowers small businesses to manage real-time customer communications. Intercom’s ticketing system and help desk SaaS is also pretty great, just not as amazing as Zendesk’s. Their customer service management tools have a shared inbox for support teams.