Intercom vs Zendesk Chat: Which is Better? 2021

So, let’s discuss the live chat capabilities of both Zendesk and Kustomer. When we compare Desku to Kustomer, it features more customization options, affordability, and a slightly better user experience. In contrast, Kustomer provides multichannel support and more streamlined customer interactions.

However, some limitations of Zopim include limited integration options and higher pricing compared to some competitors. They can use live chat and chatbots to respond to customer inquiries and complaints quickly, which can help to improve customer satisfaction. Tidio also offers a variety of features that can be used to help website visitors and provide automated self-service tools around the clock. Intercom is no exception—it is not perfect for every single type of business.

Most businesses rely on a host of SaaS applications to keep their operations running—but those services often fail to work together smoothly. All Zendesk plans will include the Zopim Lite plan when the new integration is launched in May. Whether assisting with inbound inquiries or outbound marketing efforts, conversational AI is an efficient and cost-effective way to optimize and scale customer success initiatives. As AI technologies are exposed to more inputs and interactions, their capacity for recognizing patterns and making predictions increases.

In conclusion, Intercom and Zopim offer valuable live chat solutions for businesses, but they have different approaches and target different needs. On the other hand, if your primary focus is on having user-friendly live chat software that is easy to integrate and use, Zopim could be the right fit for your business. Carefully assess your requirements, consider your budget, and consider customer feedback before making a decision. On the contrary, Intercom is far less predictable when it comes to pricing and can cost hundreds/thousands of dollars per month. But this solution is great because it’s an all-in-one tool with a modern live chat widget, allowing you to easily improve your customer experiences. At the same time, Zendesk looks slightly outdated and can’t offer some features.

Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!

On top of that, users also say it can be difficult to reach customer service. These products are able to integrate with each other, which offers customers more personalized customer experiences. Zendesk also offers tons of APIs to customize the software to the users’ needs. It`s the Chat GPT solution for communication between your website`s support and customers through many different channels. There are four different subscription packages you can choose from, all of which also have Essential, Pro, and Premium options for businesses of different sizes.

This is one of the best marketing opportunities of Intercom, showing a tour of your product. Moreover, you can also get or send data from other systems by creating an API call and you can receive webhooks when an event is happening inside https://chat.openai.com/ Intercom. If that’s not enough, you can use Zapier or Make (formerly Integromat) to integrate with almost any software application on earth. What is so great about their App Store, is that every developer can contribute to it.

A Plethora of customer service tools are available to manage your customers. You can integrate different apps (like Google Meet or Stripe among others) with your messenger and make it a high end point for your customers. 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. A great customer support software doesn’t have to cost you a large amount of money.

After a strong 320+ hours of research, we’re now ready to help you uncover Ideal support software that caters to your needs – Zendesk or Kustomer. Olark chat software is the perfect solution for small teams who want to take their customer engagement and support efforts up a notch. It has all the features that make it one of our top Intercom Chat PG competitors for 2022, but without any extra bells or whistles. Zendesk Chat, also known as Zopim, allows customer service reps to quickly and easily provide support to customers. It includes features like chat transcripts, canned replies, and team collaboration.

Kustomer also allows users to keep track of messages sent and opened and their success rate. The Intercom versus Zendesk conundrum is probably the greatest problem in the customer service software world. They both offer some state-of-the-art core functionality and numerous unusual features. A Ticketing system keeps track of every interaction between a customer and its customers, making it a vital part of customer service tools.

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• Like Intercom, LiveAgent offers a ticketing system, chat engine, and customer profile features.
• That all costs us in total around 300$ a month, which is quite okay.

It can automatically suggest relevant articles for agents during business hours to share with clients, reducing your support agents’ workload. The Zendesk chat tool has most of the necessary features like shortcuts (saved responses), automated triggers, and live chat analytics. Intercom live chat is modern, smooth, and has many advanced features that other chat tools don’t. It’s highly customizable, too, so you can adjust it according to your website or product’s style. 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 in terms of innovative and out-of-the-box features.

Their agent was always trying to convert me into a lead along the way, but heck, that’s a side effect of our job. If you thought Zendesk’s pricing was confusing, let me introduce you to Intercom’s pricing. It’s virtually impossible to predict what you’re going to pay for Intercom at end of the day. ChatGPT and Google Bard provide similar services but work in different ways.

Never Leave Your Customer Without an Answer

Basic service`s feature is a huge number of out-of-the-box integrations. You can integrate Smooch profile with Zendesk, Viber, Slack, Telegram, email and many other services. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. Intercom lets businesses send their customers targeted in-app messages. 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.

With LiveChat as a Zendesk alternative, your customers can connect with you using their favorite messaging apps, and you can reply to all messages in one place. Live chat, mobile, and messaging apps are all connected and synchronized in one place, so your customers get a consistent experience no matter the channel they use. It also improves your support and help boost your sales by engaging with customers answering their queries or getting feedback all in real-time while you sit back. Additionally, Tidio is available on the go with Android and iOS features so you never miss anything related to your business. User.com provides a dedicated plugin for your platform to simply integrate without any hassles.

It offers live chat, email marketing, customer support, and more features. With Intercom, businesses can engage with users through targeted messages based on their behavior, segment users into different groups, and even automate responses. It also provides a CRM system that allows businesses to track customer interactions and manage their relationships effectively. Intercom’s user-friendly interface and robust analytics make it a popular choice for companies seeking a unified customer communication solution.

I am passionate about continuous learning and translating research into actionable strategies that create meaningful customer experiences. With my mantra “do whatever you can with whatever you have,” I solve complex challenges with creativity and an analytical mindset. Some features of LiveChat include advanced reporting and analytics, interactive pop-up chats zopim vs intercom that prompt user interactions, and conversation management features. If we consider all Intercom alternatives on our list, LiveChat is one of the best substitutes. Tawk.to has a very impressive user base and their live chat widget is available on almost 300,000 websites. They give you an advanced live chat for free and encourage you to hire live chat agents.

Though Intercom chat window says that their team typically replies in a few hours, I received the answer in a couple of minutes. Olark is a lightweight tool to chat with visitors to your website using your existing instant messaging client. Visitors to your website appear as buddies on your Buddy list, their messages to you appear as IMs. When you compare Drift with intercom or other live chat software then it doesn’t offer anything that justifies its price tag.

It also allows you to archive chat transcripts, so you can search through conversations on previous interactions with customers with ease. On the other hand, it provides call center functionalities, unlike Intercom. You need a complete customer service platform that’s seamlessly integrated and AI-enhanced. Analytics and reporting are often overlooked when selecting an ideal customer service tool first.

WhatsApp Business Chat and Facebook Live Chat Plugin are among the most frequently installed solutions for business massaging on a budget. The integration can be a little bit clunky, and some of the users were surprised by the lack of a free version of Intercom. Their chat widget looks and works great, and they invest a lot of effort to make it a modern, convenient customer communication tool. Zendesk also has an Answer Bot, which instantly takes your knowledge base game to the next level.

It works on the core concept of capturing leads across websites and engaging with them smartly. To facilitate contextual and smart conversations, Freshchat offers lots of features. Intercom alternatives like User are cleverly built to help digital marketers manage their customer communication and reach out the potential clients effortlessly. The solution to go for that integrates chat, email marketing, and marketing automation. User.com provides growth and customer satisfaction through the real-time chat feature.

On practice, I can’t promise you anything when it comes to Intercom. Moreover, these are new prices as they’re in the middle of changing their pricing policy right now (and they’re definitely not getting cheaper). G2 ranks Intercom higher than Zendesk for ease of setup, and support quality—so you can expect a smooth transition, effortless onboarding, and continuous success. For instance, in this blog you can read why the Outreach (a tool for active sales) IT juggernaut preferred Zendesk to Intercom and almost picked Desk.com.

If I had to describe Intercom’s helpdesk, I would say it’s rather a complementary tool to their chat tools. Struck not in a bad way, more like in a very neutral ‘huh, this may be interesting’ way. And there’s still no way to know how much you’ll pay for them since the prices are only revealed after you go through a few sale demos with the Intercom team. To sum things up, one can get really confused trying to make sense of the Zendesk suite pricing, let alone calculate costs.

We are using MailChimp for email marketing since over 4 years and it still covers all our needs. Then on payment side combination of Stripe and Octobat helps us to process all the payments and generate compliant invoices. That all costs us in total around 300$ a month, which is quite okay. If you’re looking for a customer support tool that focuses on sales then Drift is perfect for that purpose.

Whether you’re a B2B SaaS or an eCommerce, LiveChat will help you boost your support and sales across multiple communication channels.Copyright © 2024 Text, Inc. We’ll be sad to see you go, but if you decide it’s time to part ways, all you need to do is contact our support team via live chat. Sprout24 is a contextual data platform dedicated to provide comprehensive insights, expert-curated content, and in-depth analysis on SaaS products and software applications. Livechat is a great way to reply to queries related to your business, solve problems quickly and build strong relationships with your customers.

It is one of the more chatbot-oriented solutions in our ranking, just like Tidio and Drift. The company behind LiveChat provides a whole range of interconnected services such as ChatBot and HelpDesk. You can add unlimited agents and monitor their performance from the admin page. The dashboard provides an overview of website visitors and allows you to trigger engagements. Also, the conversation can be transcribed and sent to both the customer and admin email addresses.

LiveAgent is the top-rated help desk software for SMBs in 2020, offering great alternative to Zoho Desk. Zendesk chat provides a personal connection with customers who need support. Deliver fast, personalized, and secure support over your customers’ favorite channels with the best live chat software. Our Chief Product Officer Paul Adams talks about how AI has raised the bar for great customer service and what support teams can do to adapt to this new reality. Intercom had a unique solution for a short period of time, allowing them to charge high price points. Intercom is a popular product, looks nice, and happens to be one of the first live chat platforms to exist, but Intercom is far too expensive in 2023.

LiveAgent is the ultimate customer service solution with coverage of all relevant channels, reliable ticket system and a fair price tag. Intercom plays a very important role in the customer experience through messaging platforms, team collaboration products, and a valuable knowledge base solution. Fast-growing companies and established enterprises could pick Intercom or Zendesk, while small businesses would be better off with Chatra and JivoChat. 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.

The clothing rental company, Le Tote, uses an automated trigger feature to offer help when its customers are lingering at the checkout. LiveAgent is a robust customer support portal with real-time live chat, a built-in call center, and a universal inbox. It also comes with advanced automation features, rules and plenty of integrations making it an efficient customer service tool for businesses of all sizes. The best thing is you can try the free trial without entering credit card details.

I’m primarily web-oriented, and using React and Apollo together the past few years really opened my eyes to building rich apps. And I deeply apologize for using the phrase rich apps; I don’t think I’ve ever said such Enterprisey words before. Reach out for help at any time and there’ll always be an agent to talk to.

The app of Freshchat enables you to send push notifications to team members to respond even when one isn’t active inside the app. Why stop customer interaction when you can continue selling and supporting on-the-go. Chat is now considered as one of the many features of the broad help desk. Through this survey, I got to know that – more than half of US users prefer to resolve their issue through web-chat and self service instead of calling the customer care handle. We are going to start with a quick-fire round of differences between Zendesk and Kustomer. Let’s get a quick overview of both tools before we start so zopim vs intercom that you get to know whether you should use Kustomer or the more popular counterpart.

• It was soon followed by another acquisition of a social chat platform, Chatimity in October 2016.
• It also provides a CRM system that allows businesses to track customer interactions and manage their relationships effectively.
• Kustomer provides integration to major social media platforms like Facebook messenger, Twitter, SMS via Twilio, and Voice calls via Nexmo.
• Why don’t you try something equally powerful yet more affordable, like HelpCrunch?

Because this functionality is built into NLP, technology experts broadly consider it to be a subset of machine learning. Product Hunt, Hootsuite, and Buffer are some of the popular companies that use Intercom, whereas Olark is used by Groupon, Coinbase, and Disqus. Intercom has a broader approval, being mentioned in 1405 company stacks & 212 developers stacks; compared to Olark, which is listed in 342 company stacks and 11 developer stacks. At Chatbots.org, we’ve reviewed and ranked hundreds of chatbots and chat platforms. Additionally, the price tag should remove Intercom from the equation of chatbot solutions to consider implementing for your business in 2023. In addition to the nearly two-thousand dollars per month, now you need to purchase the tools you probably wanted in the first place.

The advanced search function in Kustomer allows customers and service agents to find relevant articles and answers more quickly and efficiently. The difference between the two is that the Professional subscription lacks some things like chat widget unbranding, custom agent roles, multiple help centers, etc. 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.

If you’re looking to get started with Marketing Automation only; then the plan starts at $1,000 per month. It’s expensive when compared to Intercom but you need to hear me out. ‘Sprout’ is a free tier plan for up to 10 active team members and unlimited contacts. The paid plans start at $19 per active team member per month and go up to $49 per team member per month. The Freshchat bot isn’t just functional in giving out intelligent replies to your leads. It auto-uploads leads directly into your CRM so that your sales team never miss an opportunity.

Tidio also tags customers and records all chat conversations, so businesses can refer back to them if needed. Intercom and Zopim Chat can be used for different purposes and are well-suited for teams with specific needs. Compare Intercom and Zopim Chat during demo to decide which one is best for your business. And we had one goal in mind—finding the best alternative to Intercom.

Freshchat is the sixth software product from Freshworks one of the popular Intercom alternatives, a cloud-based chatsoftware. It’s a modern messaging platform designed to revamp the conversational marketing and messaging experience for all businesses. The launch of Freshchat trades back to the acquisition of Konotor in December 2015. LiveAgent is praised by users for its effective communication with customers, improving customer service and satisfaction, and increasing sales conversion rates.

Take a look at independent reviews to see what users have to say about LiveChat and Zendesk. Intercom provides lots of tutorials explaining their platform and they have a huge documentation. Lastly, you can add Proactive Supports option, such as Product Tours, Surveys and Series for $99/month. Also, for each resolution of the FIN AI Agent you have to pya $0.99. Besides that, there are also additional charges for SMS, WhatsApp and Email campaigns. In my opinion, there is no better way of onboarding new customers than just showing them how to do it, step-by-step.

The best chat that you should choose for your business should be based on your personal needs and budget. Intercom and User are pretty good options to improve your customer support. Today’s small and medium enterprises want top-notch customer desk support and chat features and hence the service providers up the ante through their competitive edge. The real-time dashboard that tracks your team’s performance and speed of response offers an overview of how things are proceeding. The customer ratings help to evaluate each team member’s performance. Get unlimited chat and conversation history which means, if you want to cross-check something from last year’s chat history, then you can easily browse through chat functionality.

They bought out the Zopim live chat solution and integrated it with their toolset. Freshdesk is also more affordable than Intercom, although both products offer a similar range of features. It also offers automated bots that can help you with various tasks, such as answering questions or providing customer support. You can integrate Drift with your website and other apps in order to offer personalized customer service and improve conversions. It is a powerful set of tools that can be real life-savers for online businesses.

Using the Reports in Intercom, you can easily improve your chatbot flows and support team’s effectiveness. This live chat is a shared inbox, where all of your live chat and conversations are handled in one overview. Lastly, if you’re looking just for Live chat real-time support – then the perfect fit platform is Olark. Integration with Facebook messenger app is definitely very helpful as you can send out information on the same platform as your customer. Freshchat offers a robust integration list, bringing the best of all communications together.

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 go puff. Setting up and configuring automated responses in Kustomer or Zendesk is a piece of cake. With its unique combination of features, Desku handles the needs of modern enterprises very well. For example, there is a third-party service called Zopim, which has a built-in chatbot integration with Zendesk.

Freshchat also has bots for intelligent lead capturing even when your team is offline. You can customize the tone of your bot according to your brand proposition, set expectations, and unburden your team from being around 24/7 to exchange pleasantries. You can record events like page visits, report downloads, and such to understand the what, where and how of your visitors. This setting also gives you direct information of user properties (like geography, etc). Once you have information about user properties, you can segment and group your leads. Web chat is becoming a new wave of customer relationship and management adoption tool.

And if you’re running a small business, then you know that every penny counts. Propel your customer service to the next level with Tidio’s free courses. Boost your lead gen and sales funnels with Flows – no-code automation paths that trigger at crucial moments in the customer journey. It allows you to chat with visitors on your website and convert them into customers. It allows you to anticipate customers questions and offer help when and where they need it. Both Zendesk Chat and Intercom have a free trial available and a freemium model to test out which chat service will work best for your company.

Comparing the customer bases of Zendesk Chat (Formerly Zopim)

After finishing this integration, you can actively segment your customers into trial, lapsed, active etc. etc. That’s the Zendesk alternative we’re talking about.You can install LiveChat on your own — it’ll only take a few minutes.And if anything goes wrong, just give our agents a shout. Unfortunately, you cannot use any optimization in your chatbot flows, such as A/B Testing. Intercom’s Essentials plan ($39/seat/month) gives you access to the shared inbox, Fin AI Agent, basic automations, the website channel and Banners and Tooltips. Intercom’s pricing starts at $39/seat/month up to $139/seat/per month. Overall, the marketing possibilities of Intercom are great for websites.

Unfortunately, Intercom doesn’t provide any marketing possibilities on other channels, such as Facebook and Instagram. This is great, because then you can serve your customers over multiple channels with one tool. With Intercom, you can handle conversations on your website, WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, SMS and within your apps. No, Intercom doesn’t integrate directly with Whatsapp but you can use third-party apps to get this integration work. It feels more authentic as compared to using automated messages that have no human touch.

It’s time to upgrade your customer service platform

Like Intercom, LiveAgent offers a ticketing system, chat engine, and customer profile features. It also integrates with a number of external applications, including Zendesk and Salesforce. As a live chat app messaging solution, is Freshdesk a good alternative to Intercom? It is designed for small businesses, while Intercom and HubSpot are more suited for larger companies. It focuses primarily on providing businesses with an easy-to-use chat widget that can be integrated into their websites.

As it turns, it’s quite difficult to compare Zendesk against Intercom as they serve different purposes and will fit different businesses. In terms of pricing, Intercom is considered one of the most expensive tools on the market. It can even sort articles Chronologically so the newest articles appear first. While these could work as a good temporary solution, it is better to consider an independent platform. Out of the more advanced ones—with CRM and bot automation features—Tidio is the most popular option for small businesses and online stores.

This comprises prepared answers to standard queries, complaints, as well as other issues a customer can possibly have regarding products/services. Kustomer also offers multichannel support for services like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Twitter, SMS, Calls, and email to provide complete support from one place. Interestingly enough, many small businesses prefer instant messaging tools powered by Facebook.

Therefore, if you happen to have Zoho CRM and want to integrate your chat feature with it, you should go with Zendesk. Therefore, Intercom may be a better fit for larger businesses with multiple agents helping people. When a customer works with two agents and receives two different answers, they’re going to be very frustrated and won’t value the experience. It will also depend on the size of your business, how many features you’ll need to use, your budget, and how much support you need.

You can also create a sequence of messages, by using Series, which we will cover later (in the Marketing section). Additionally, you can create your own user segments by filtering on specific custom fields and tags. The platform empower decision-makers across various industries by delivering unparalleled key data points and resources to help them excel in their respective fields. Some good Intercom alternatives to try are ZenDesk, Drift, FreshChat and Zoho. After acquiring Nudgespot, they have a good competitive advantage over Intercom and are now providing chat solutions similar to Intercom.