Switching from Zendesk to Intercom Help Center

Choose Zendesk for a scalable, team-size-based pricing model and Intercom for initial low-cost access with flexibility in adding advanced features. However, customers can purchase multiple Intercom plans to use together, or purchase add-ons to select just the features they want. Inside a ticket, the workspace center console displays the ticket’s conversation. The right side of the screen displays all customer contact information and company interaction history, and the agent can contact the customer via any channel with just a few clicks.

• You could technically consider Intercom a CRM, but it’s really more of a customer-focused communication product.
• Migrating your Zendesk help content to Intercom Articles is a simple and fast process that does not require any custom development.
• Intercom’s solution aims to streamline high-volume ticket influx and provide personalized, conversational support.
• The rate limits also depend on what type of licensing plan you have with Zendesk.

The setup is designed to seamlessly connect your customer support team with customers across all platforms. 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. But they also add features like automatic meeting booking (in the Convert package), and their custom inbox rules and workflows just feel a little more, well, custom. I’ll dive into their chatbots more later, but their bot automation features are also stronger.

Say what you will, but Intercom’s design and overall user experience leave all its competitors far behind. Besides, the prices differ depending on the company’s size and specific needs. We conducted a little study of our own and found that all Intercom users share different amounts of money they pay for the plans, which can reach over $1000/mo. The price levels can even be much higher if we’re talking of a larger company.

Moving Files from Zendesk to Intercom

Intercom, while differing from Zendesk, offers specialized features aimed at enhancing customer relationships. Founded as a business messenger, it now extends to enabling support, engagement, and conversion. As any free tool, the functionalities there are quite limited, but nevertheless. If you’re a really small business or a startup, you can benefit big time from such free tools. If you’re looking to retool Intercom for technical customer support, look no further than the Fullview integration for cobrowsing, session replays and console logs. All three features help you to demystify product and customer issues, gain much-needed context into support tickets and cut support time in half while keeping your CSAT scores high.

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. Intercom’s chatbot feels a little more robust than Zendesk’s (though it’s worth noting that some features are only available at the Engage and Convert tiers). You can set office hours, live chat with logged-in users via their user profiles, and set up a chatbot.

Be assured, your passwords and other private information will be safe and sound. While Zendesk features are plenty, someone using it for the first time can find it overwhelming. With only the Enterprise tier offering round-the-clock email, phone, and chat help, Zendesk support is sharply separated by tiers. 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.

Finally, you’ll have to choose your reporting preferences including details about what you’ll be tracking and how often you want to be reported of changes. You can decide which files you want to migrate and adjust them to be exported to the Intercom. You can follow the data migration process to be completed as you want it to.

Agents can use the desktop chatbox to respond to customers in any outbound channel. 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. And while many other chatbots take forever to set up, you can set up your first chatbot in under five minutes. Zendesk, on the other hand, has revamped its security since its security breach in 2016. Zendesk has over 150,000 customer accounts from 160 countries and territories. They have offices all around the world including countries such as Mexico City, Tokyo, New York, Paris, Singapore, São Paulo, London, and Dublin.

Join the Intercom Community 🎉

If a customer isn’t satisfied with Answer Bot’s response, Answer Bot quickly routes them to an agent best suited to help. The entire thread is saved within the ticket for future agents to reference. Agents can add each other to internal notes within a ticket, looping in team members to collaborate when necessary. Automation and AI save resources and time–every automated workflow and routing decision frees an agent to work on more complex issues.

But sooner or later, you’ll have to decide on the subscription plan, and here’s what you’ll have to pay. Well, I must admit, the tool is gradually transforming from a platform for communicating with users to a tool that helps you automate every aspect of your routine. Before you start, you’ll need to retrieve your Zendesk credentials and create a Zendesk API key.

Intercom is better for smaller companies that are looking for a simple and capable customer service platform. Instead, using it and setting it up is very easy, and very advanced chatbots and predictive tools are included to boost your customer service. With a multi-channel ticketing system, Zendesk Support helps you and your team to know exactly who you’re talking to and keep track of tickets throughout all channels without losing context.

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. You can also follow up with customers after they have left the chat and qualify them based on your answers. 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. With a very streamlined design, Intercom’s interface is far better than many alternatives, including Zendesk. It has a very intuitive design that goes far beyond its platform and into its articles, product guides, and even its illustrations. Then, you can begin filling in details such as your account’s name and icon and your agents’ profiles and security features.

• If you haven’t already, you’ll need to start a trial of Articles and turn your Help Center on or your articles won’t go live.
• Very rarely do they understand the issue (mostly with Explore) that I am trying to communicate to them.
• With chatbots, you can generate leads to hand over to your sales team and solve common customer queries without the need of a customer service representative behind a keyboard.
• This is because Zendesk has rate limits on how many records can be accessed or transferred per minute or hour.

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. You can create dozens of articles in a simple, intuitive WYSIWYG text editor, divide them by categories and sections, and customize with your custom themes. I also assist our executive team in developing our go-to-market strategy for our services team and solutions, developed in collaboration with our technology partners Appian, Twilio, Intercom, and AWS. Some objects are easier to transfer than others, depending on how similar they are between Zendesk and Intercom. For example, transferring companies is relatively easy, as both platforms have a similar concept of a company object with similar fields.

Once in Intercom, you’ll be able to use this content to power Intercom Support tools in the Messenger, Bots, Inbox, and Help Center for improved self-serve performance and team efficiency. 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. Intercom feels more wholesome and is more client-success-oriented, but it can be too costly for smaller companies. It will allow you to leverage some Intercom capabilities while keeping your account at the time-tested platform. In this paragraph, let’s explain some common issues that users usually ask about when choosing between Zendesk and Intercom platforms.

Zendesk wins the collaboration tools category because of its easy-to-use side conversations feature. Zendesk’s Admin Center provides tools that automate agent ticket workflows. Automatic assignment rules establish criteria that automatically route tickets to the right agent or team, based on message or user data. It’s known for its unified agent workspace which combines different communication methods like email, social media messaging, live chat, and SMS, all in one place. This makes it easier for support teams to handle customer interactions without switching between different systems.

But keep in mind that Zendesk is viewed more as a support and ticketing solution, while Intercom is CRM functionality-oriented. Which means it’s rather a customer relationship management platform than anything else. But it’s designed so well that you really enjoy staying in their inbox and communicating with clients.

The transition method you decide on is significant as it can influence the success of the transfer. You have to exploit the most trustworthy way, or you are in danger of losing data. Users can also access a resource library to stay updated on the latest trends, product announcements, and best practices. Intercom regularly hosts webinars that are recorded and stored for future reference.

SAP Concur vs Saasu: for streamlining business finances

Users like that the platform lets them have talks in real time, which makes it easier to answer customer questions quickly and correctly. People have also said nice things about Intercom’s proactive message features, which let businesses talk to users before they even complain, which improves the overall customer experience. The two essential things that Zendesk lacks in comparison to Intercom are in-app messages and email marketing tools. All interactions with customers, be it via phone, chat, email, social media, or any other channel, are landing in one dashboard, where your agents can solve them fast and efficiently. Zendesk is among the industry’s best ticketing and customer support software, and most of its additional functionality is icing on the proverbial cake.

Key offerings include automated support with help center articles, a messenger-first ticketing system, and a powerful inbox to centralize customer queries. This exploration aims to provide a detailed comparison, aiding businesses in making an informed decision that aligns with their customer service goals. Both Zendesk and Intercom offer robust solutions, but the choice ultimately depends on specific business needs.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that Zendesk chat is right for your business. Without further ado, let’s dive into the 14 best competitors to Zendesk’s popular help desk software. If the answer is “yes”, then that’s where I can vouch for Front, but again, you’re accepting support fragmentation, and good luck roping that back in in the future. Again, if you’re a small team, you should probably have a primary and centralized support channel, usually “” – that way you can better control routing and tracking feedback.

This unpredictability in pricing might lead to higher costs, especially for larger companies. While it offers a range of advanced features, the overall costs and potential inconsistencies in support could be a concern for some businesses​​​​. From the inbox, live agents and chatbots can refer to and link knowledge base articles, to elaborate on replies and help customers locate answers.

Agents can choose if the message is private or public, upon which a group thread is initiated in the ticket’s sidebar, where participants can chat and add files. In an omnichannel contact center, agents can manage customer interactions across channels, no matter which channel a customer uses to contact the company. Its $99 bracket includes advanced options, such as customer satisfaction prediction and multi-brand support, and in the $199 bracket, you also get advanced security and other very advanced features.

You can then create linked tickets for any bug reports or issues that require further troubleshooting by technical teams. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. With simple setup, and handy importers you’ll be up and running in no time, ready to unlock the Support Funnel and deliver fast and personal customer support. It enables them to engage with visitors who are genuinely interested in their services.

This serves the dual benefit of adding convenience to the customer experience and lightening agents’ workloads. Intercom’s integration capabilities are limited, and some apps don’t integrate well with third-party customer service technology. This can make it more difficult to import CRM data and obtain complete context from customer data. For example, Intercom’s Salesforce integration doesn’t create a view of cases in Salesforce.

After signing up and creating your account, you can start filling in your information, such as your company name and branding and your agents’ profiles and information. 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. Here is a Zendesk vs. Intercom based on the customer support offered by these brands. If there are any issues with importing your content, we’ll add a Review label to the article so you can correct it before setting it live. Just open the article you need to review and read the recommendation that we’ve added.

This article explains how concepts from Zendesk work in Intercom, how you can easily get started with imports, and what to set up first. Easily track your service team’s performance and unlock coaching opportunities with AI-powered insights. Our integration with Intercom enables bi-directional contact and case synchronization, so you can continue using Intercom as your front-end digital experience and use Zendesk for case management. Check out the research-backed comparison below to better understand how each solution can add value to your organization.

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. However, if you are looking for a robust messaging solution with customer support features, go for Intercom. Its intuitive messenger can help your business boost engagement and improve sales and marketing efforts.

Brian Kale, the head of customer success at Bank Novo, describes how Zendesk helped Bank Novo boost productivity and streamline service. Sendcloud adopted these solutions to replace siloed systems like Intercom and a local voice support provider in favor of unified, omnichannel support. Yes, both Intercom and Zendesk let you try out some of their tools for free before you decide to pay for the full version. In order to obtain an idea of the financial consequences that will be incurred by your team as well as the predicted number of clients, it is essential to compare their plans in a meticulous manner. All plans come with a 7-day free trial, and no credit card is required to sign up for the trial.

Pricing for both services varies based on the specific needs and scale of your business. When comparing the user interfaces (UI) of Zendesk and Intercom, both platforms exhibit distinct characteristics and strengths catering to different user preferences and needs. zendesk to intercom Administrator reports allow managers to observe real-time CSAT scores, conversation volume, first response time, and time to close. Survey composer allows you to create the question and answer format, also customizing color, rating scales, and greetings.

To sum things up, one can get really confused trying to make sense of the Zendesk suite pricing, let alone calculate costs. They’ve been marketing themselves as a messaging platform right from the beginning. If you see either of these warnings, wait 60 seconds for your Zendesk rate limit to be reset and try again.

Messagely’s chatbots are powerful tools for qualifying and converting leads while your team is otherwise occupied or away. With chatbots, you can generate leads to hand over to your sales team and solve common customer queries without the need of a customer service representative behind a keyboard. 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. First, you can only talk to the support team if you are a registered user.