AI-powered live chat alternatives to Intercom, Drift, Zendesk

You can also add apps to your Intercom Messenger home to help users and visitors get what they need, without having to start a conversation. Zendesk started in 2007 as a web-based SaaS product for managing incoming customer support requests. Since then, it has evolved into a full-fledged CRM that offers a suite of software applications to its over 160,000 customers like Uber, Siemens, and Tesco. Chatbots are automated customer support tools that can assist with low-level ticket triage and ticket routing in real-time. 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. Businesses of all sizes can rely on the Zendesk customer service platform and benefit from workflow management, powerful AI tools, robust insights, and more.

Moreover, Intercom bots can converse naturally with customers by using conversation starters, and respond with self-help, and knowledge base articles. In navigating this conundrum, several digital tools can come in handy, and two of the most popular options are Intercom and Zendesk. As both platforms have their pros and cons, it can be difficult to decide which one is right for your business. To guide your decision-making, we explain the key features and qualities of each, and the role that a omnichannel conversational AI platform (Netomi!) can play, for the ultimate CX strategy.

Intercom

Below, we’ve compared the usability of Zendesk’s and Intercom’s agent dashboards and administrator controls. Zendesk Sales Engagement Tools (Reach) uses a credit system to help you find new leads or add information to existing leads. Create entry rules that trigger when the messaging campaign begins, choosing the target audiences and when follow-up messages generate. Create code-free screencast tours of products, websites, webpages, and applications within your website.

• Gathering website data of brands or competitors can be a challenge, especially when done it manually.
• The admin and manager dashboard provides a zoomed-out view of all activity taking place in each inbox, for whole departments and individual agents.
• Its live chat tool has a lot to offer as well, from automation and canned responses to chat transfers and personalization.
• For example, you can read in many Zendesk Sell reviews how adding sales tools benefits Zendesk Support users.
• They offer an advanced feature for customer data management that goes beyond basic CRM stuff.
• Make your data flow seamlessly between multiple environments in a few clicks.

Most of these tools are free for small teams, so you can get a lot of work done in one place; Zendesk. To be eligible for this program, you must be a new Zendesk customer; this must be your company’s first time using Zendesk. This program is free for the first six months, and you have access to an AI chatbot that allows you to respond to support issues even when you are not online. ProProfs Help Desk is known in the market for its honest, and simple pricing.

Intercom Agent Dashboard

Zendesk and Intercom also both offer analytics and reporting capabilities that allow businesses to analyze and monitor customer agents’ productivity. As a result, companies can identify trends and areas for improvement, allowing them to continuously improve their support processes and provide better service to their customers. This feature ensures that each customer request is handled by the best-suited agent, improving the overall efficiency of the support team. We have already mentioned several times above how chat tools are one of the main ways that customers can reach out to a help desk or support team, but let us delve deeper into advanced chat widget features.

Intercom has a very robust advanced chatbot set of tools for your business needs. There is a conversation routing bot, an operator bot, a lead qualification bot, and an article-suggesting bot, among others. It is also not too difficult to program your own bot rules using Intercon’s system.

Zendesk vs. Freshdesk: A Comparative Review of User Experiences

Zendesk Chat allows you to reach out to your customers in real-time. Rather than waiting for a customer to start a conversation with you, you can initiate it if you think the customer needs some help. For example, you can have Zendesk Chat analyze how long someone is on your checkout page, and once it hits a certain limit, metadialog.com start a conversation with them to see if they need assistance. With Front, you won’t have to choose between efficiency and building strong customer relationships. Zendesk chat provides a personal connection with customers who need support. If you’re looking for a dedicated support tool, Crisp may not be your best option.

• Zendesk Sales Engagement Tools (Reach) uses a credit system to help you find new leads or add information to existing leads.
• However, if you wish to get all professional B2B essentials then it will wound up costing around $64/agent/mo which is quite a sum.
• Before you jump to any conclusions, we suggest you take a free trial to get a better look and feel of the product.
• In the category of customer support, Zendesk appears to be just slightly better than Intercom based on the availability of regular service and response times.
• It’s where customers ask the questions that may result in the largest sales in your company’s history.
• If you’d want to test Zendesk and Intercom before deciding on a tool for good, they both provide free trials.

So with that, you’re in good company, and if you’ve used any of the above services and have reached out to their support team, I’m sure you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. They “integrate” with almost everything (what that even means is many things… does that mean it’ll do what you want it to do? questionable), they have help docs, an included community platform even. This is because it comes with a free option, which is ideal for startups on a limited budget. Plus, it’s easy to upgrade to a larger package when your business grows. Finally, if you want even more advanced features, you can upgrade to their Premium package. However, do take note that this comes with custom pricing, so you will need to contact them to learn more.

Which Does Your Small Business Need: Zendesk or Intercom?

Zoho can pull in all your customer interactions across multiple channels for you to send a response to. While Zoho Desk does offer a basic free plan, the suite as a whole is ideal for larger companies with bigger budgets. ClickDesk’s support features are unique in this list, as they offer voice and video support in addition to live chat. This can help support agents to help customers through complex issues that simply don’t translate well via live chat.

However, Hubspot does not provide a proper ticketing interface, instead, it is a very good live chat provider. Ss if you are looking for a proper ticketing experience in your platform you should go with other alternatives here. Founded in 2007, Zendesk started off as a ticketing tool for customer support teams. It was later when they started adding all kinds of other tools like when they bought out Zopim live chat and just integrated it with their toolset. Like when they bought out the Zopim live chat and integrated it with their toolset. Gist is a powerful customer engagement platform that helps you engage with customers in meaningful ways.

Intercom Inbox Features

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. Intercom also does mobile carousels to help please the eye with fresh designs. Zendesk has many amazing team collaboration and communication features, like whisper mode, which lets multiple agents chime in to help each other without the customer knowing. There is also something called warm transfers, which let one rep add contextual notes to a ticket before transferring it to another rep. You also get a side conversation tool. A customer service department is only as good as its support team members, and these highly-prized employees need to rely on one another.

You can use its editor to effortlessly add images, videos, and call-to-action-buttons, wherever necessary. Intercom’s design and overall user-interface feel modern, intuitive, and quite easy on the eyes. Their custom-made illustrations are beautifully crafted and their attention-to-detail is evident in almost every aspect of the tool. Let us kickstart the comparison with our first parameter- types of users.

Zendesk vs. Intercom: A brief overview

But because of its live chat and custom chatbot tools, we wanted to include them on this list as an alternative your business may want to consider. In addition, LiveAgent offers a number of communication channels for customer support and a variety of different integrations. Another great add-on that ClickDesk offers is the ability to integrate your social media tools with live chat, helping to increase followers and engagement from your website.

Then, it’s simply a case of testing different options and seeing what works for your team. These 13 Intercom alternatives provide great options for sales, marketing, and support help for your business. According to its website, Drift’s main goal is revenue acceleration. With Drift, your live chat isn’t limited to support, making this your tool of choice if flexibility is something you’re looking for. Access a shared workspace, a shared inbox that can track SMS, calls and email, knowledge base management, automation, reporting, and more with Zendesk.

Alternatives to Zendesk (For Every Usecase)

Zendesk’s customer support is also very fast, though their live chat is only available for registered users. If someone has a question, they wanna talk to someone on the sales team, and then their messages. So when someone becomes a customer or once you have their email address or something else, then you be able to send messages across different channels. They added some support recently, but these two seem to be the major use cases and really what we see them be used for the most. The forever free plan comes with basic features such as a single inbox, file attachments, and can be used to handle upto 100 tickets/month. However, if you look at Zendesk’s high pricing and complicated features, the tool doesn’t work well for small businesses that have limited needs.

This allows using import to perform mass update operations or mass deleting data, matching some condition. Your account settings can be accessed from the top right of you screen. If you’re looking to customize the interface to match your brand, go with Zendesk. Get to a resolution faster by switching to voice calls and share your screen – without switching to another platform. If you can afford it, Intercom is the first thing you should try out. It’s very unlikely that this sophisticated tool will disappoint you.

ProProfs Help Desk is a decade-old SaaS company that offers an array of customer service and learning tools for businesses across the globe. Right from managing your support tickets to training your employees, you can take your support operations to the next level. Its familiar, collaborative interface powers support teams of all sizes to treat customers like humans, not tickets. Drift’s live chat tool allows businesses to set appointments, answer questions, share help center articles and videos, send pricing information, and more. If your team has fallen behind on its customer support goals, a quickstart tool like Tidio can be a great solution.

• Though each platform is unique, basic features are similar, and the main difference is pricing and the seamless user experience Customerly offers.
• Agents can use the app to support customers who need help, even while they are away from their desk or working remotely.
• Agents can participate in forums and turn forum posts into tickets; they also can turn community-post replies into articles for future customers.
• Intercom’s app store has popular integrations for things like WhatsApp, Stripe, Instagram, and Slack.
• With Intercom, you can send targeted email, push, and in-app messages which can be based on relevant time or behavior triggers.
• Similar to Intercom, Zendesk offers many customer service tools, including a help desk, chat, and marketing tools.