Intercom vs Zoho Desk

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Our analysts compared Intercom vs Zoho Desk based on data from our 400+ point analysis of Help Desk Software, user reviews and our own crowdsourced data from our free software selection platform.

Product Basics

Intercom is a conversational platform that personalizes messaging throughout the customer journey using customer, company and behavioral data. It offers chatbots, marketing campaigns, self-service functions, proactive tours and more. Collaborative inboxes, reporting and automated workflows help users interact with customers across all channels.

It integrates with out-of-the-box modules to automate actions and sync data and allows users to build their setups based on business needs. Businesses can see who uses their products and communicate with customers via targeted, behavior-driven emails and in-app messages.
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Zoho Desk, a help desk software from Zoho Corporation, streamlines customer support operations for businesses of all sizes. It provides a comprehensive suite of features, including a multi-channel ticketing system, knowledge base management, and reporting and analytics. Zoho Desk is particularly well-suited for organizations seeking an affordable and user-friendly solution to manage customer inquiries and improve support efficiency.

Zoho Desk's key benefits include its intuitive interface, customizable workflows, and seamless integration with other Zoho applications. Its popular features include automated ticket routing, self-service portals, and social media monitoring. Users appreciate its ease of use, robust functionality, and affordable pricing.

Zoho Desk offers flexible pricing plans based on the number of agents and features required. Its price range starts from a few dollars per agent per month for basic plans and scales up for more advanced features and support levels.

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$39/Seat, Monthly
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$12/User, Monthly
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Windows
Mac
Linux
Android
Chromebook
Windows
Mac
Linux
Android
Chromebook
Cloud
On-Premise
Mobile
Cloud
On-Premise
Mobile

Product Assistance

Documentation
In Person
Live Online
Videos
Webinars
Documentation
In Person
Live Online
Videos
Webinars
Email
Phone
Chat
FAQ
Forum
Knowledge Base
24/7 Live Support
Email
Phone
Chat
FAQ
Forum
Knowledge Base
24/7 Live Support

Product Insights

  • Customize Bots: Build code-free bots that automatically triage conversations, initiate contact using advanced targeting and engage high-intent leads. 
  • Reply Faster: Apply macros or pre-written responses to maintain a consistent support experience even when live agents are unavailable. Automate repetitive actions, like tagging, assigning and updating tickets, across multiple conversations at once. 
  • Market Effectively: Engage potential leads with personalized messages to support the sales process and improve branding in real time. 
  • Enhance Support: Use the Conversational Support Starter Kit to learn how to combine proactive self-serve, AI-powered and human support to resolve customer issues at scale. 
  • Integrate Easily: Connect with tools like Marketo, Shopify and Stripe to enhance data interoperability and automate workflows. 
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  • Streamlined Customer Interactions: Zoho Desk's centralized platform seamlessly integrates all customer interactions across multiple channels, providing a comprehensive view of customer engagement history and preferences.
  • Improved Agent Productivity: Automated workflows, canned responses, and AI-powered tools empower agents to resolve issues swiftly and efficiently, maximizing their productivity and reducing resolution times.
  • Enhanced Customer Satisfaction: Zoho Desk's intuitive interface and personalized support experiences ensure a positive and frictionless customer journey, leading to increased satisfaction and loyalty.
  • Data-Driven Insights: Comprehensive analytics and reporting capabilities provide valuable insights into customer behavior, agent performance, and service level metrics, enabling data-driven decision-making and continuous improvement.
  • Collaboration and Knowledge Sharing: Built-in collaboration tools and a knowledge base facilitate seamless communication between agents, fostering a collaborative work environment and ensuring consistent and informed responses.
  • Omnichannel Support: Zoho Desk supports a wide range of communication channels, including email, phone, chat, social media, and self-service portals, ensuring customers can reach support conveniently and efficiently.
  • Customization and Flexibility: Zoho Desk offers extensive customization options, allowing businesses to tailor the software to their unique needs, processes, and workflows.
  • Affordability and Scalability: Zoho Desk's flexible pricing plans and scalable architecture accommodate businesses of all sizes, from startups to large enterprises.
  • Integration with Other Zoho Products: Zoho Desk seamlessly integrates with other Zoho products, such as CRM, email marketing, and project management tools, creating a cohesive and powerful business suite.
  • Continuous Innovation and Updates: Zoho Desk undergoes regular updates and enhancements, ensuring customers benefit from the latest features, security patches, and industry best practices.
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  • Mobile Carousels: Manage communication with a customizable, code-free interface on a single or multiple screens. Request device permissions, add deep links, send dynamic carousel messages, open URLs, start conversations in the messenger and give users the option to chat with support. 
  • Team Messaging: Organize and respond to conversations on web, mobile and email and social channels from a central location. Create separate inboxes for support and sales, set permissions and use notes to collaborate on difficult questions.  
  • Product Tours: Create customizable interactive guides to orient new customers and explain products.  
  • Series Visual Campaign Builder: Use a drag-and-drop visual campaign builder to create behavior-based customer messaging campaigns. Send in-app and in-product messages and make feature announcements. Adjust paths for wait time, message type and unique tags. 
  • Conversational Support: Manage, route and prioritize conversations. Automate answers to common questions with the Resolution Bot. Customize user experience with intelligent chatbots based on customer behavior. 
  • Customer Data: Track unique business and customer data, like business type, location, pricing plan, product type and spend. Integrate data from a tech stack to personalize interactions and keep information up to date.
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  • Ticket Management: Engage in communication with customers and manage tickets across multiple channels, departments, products and brands. Create separate departments within the help desk to ensure appropriate responses to customer queries without any delays or unnecessary actions. 
  • Zia: Boost team’s productivity with the product’s AI assistance for business. This contextual AI features tools such as Zia Voice, Ask Zia, Zia Notifications, Zia Dashboards, Zia Skill Builder, Reply Assistant and Sentiment Analysis that help deliver quick, instant and high-quality support to customers.  
  • Productivity: Access work modes to proactively organize open tickets to make sales reps more active. Send helpful and informative responses to tickets using response editor, FAQs and templates. Combine the main functionality with CRM capabilities for closing more tickets in less time. 
  • Extensibility: Extend help desk service capabilities by integrating help desk modules with other software and services as per the needs of the business. Update details in help desk and other platforms via custom codes. Embed interactive and coactive widgets into the help desk interface via extensions and build custom mobile apps through SDKs. 
  • Insights and Impact: Get insights into team performance via dashboards and reports. Explore the product’s unique tools such as Radar — a mobile app for a proactive, hands-on manager experience -and headquarters-a live dashboard displaying a big picture of the team’s progress and performance. 
  • Customization: Customize help desk workflow and match it with the brand’s personality with the help center theme gallery to create a long-lasting impression on customers and promote team productivity.  
  • Support: Get access to GDPR compliance and protect customer’s data from leaking by managing the organization’s hierarchy and controlling data access. 
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Product Ranking

#6

among all
Help Desk Software

#19

among all
Help Desk Software

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Analyst Rating Summary

83
87
58
83
76
61
100
93
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Dashboards and Reporting
Email Management
Integrations and Extensibility
Platform Capabilities
Email Management
Mobile Capabilities
Team Collaboration
Platform Capabilities
Dashboards and Reporting

Analyst Ratings for Functional Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

Intercom
Zoho Desk
+ Add Product + Add Product
Agent Productivity Call Center Management Dashboards And Reporting Email Management Live Chat Management Mobile Capabilities Platform Capabilities Team Collaboration Ticket Management 58 76 100 98 81 80 85 80 70 83 61 93 100 79 100 94 100 82 0 25 50 75 100
50%
0%
50%
83%
0%
17%
50%
0%
50%
8%
67%
25%
100%
0%
0%
83%
17%
0%
100%
0%
0%
100%
0%
0%
73%
0%
27%
64%
18%
18%
80%
0%
20%
100%
0%
0%
83%
0%
17%
92%
0%
8%
50%
17%
33%
100%
0%
0%
71%
0%
29%
82%
0%
18%

Analyst Ratings for Technical Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

89%
0%
11%
79%
0%
21%
78%
0%
22%
89%
0%
11%

User Sentiment Summary

Great User Sentiment 3224 reviews
Great User Sentiment 4810 reviews
89%
of users recommend this product

Intercom has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 89% when considering 3224 user reviews from 6 recognized software review sites.

89%
of users recommend this product

Zoho Desk has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 89% when considering 4810 user reviews from 5 recognized software review sites.

5.0 (19)
5.0 (16)
4.4 (1333)
4.4 (2784)
4.52 (859)
n/a
4.5 (754)
4.5 (1645)
4.4 (147)
4.6 (339)
4.2 (112)
4.2 (26)

Awards

SelectHub research analysts have evaluated Intercom and concluded it earns best-in-class honors for Dashboards and Reporting.

Dashboards and Reporting Award

SelectHub research analysts have evaluated Zoho Desk and concluded it earns best-in-class honors for Email Management, Mobile Capabilities and Team Collaboration.

Email Management Award
Mobile Capabilities Award
Team Collaboration Award

Synopsis of User Ratings and Reviews

Usability: The platform is easy to use, straightforward and intuitive, according to 94% of users who commented on this aspect.
Customer Support: According to 74% of users who mentioned this, support reps are knowledgeable and helpful.
Training: Of the total users who commented on this feature, 90% liked the onboarding resources, training guides and simplicity of navigation.
Communication: 90% of users who commented on this appreciated being able to answer a high volume of questions, customize bots, automate responses and organize conversations.
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Implementation: According to 100% of users, the software is extremely easy to set up and configure.
Ease of Use: Approximately 100% of users said that it has a helpful interface with an easy-to-use platform for small teams who wish to establish a helpdesk.
Features: According to 98% of customers, the product has tons of tightly integrated features in mail, CRM, bookings, messaging (Cliq) and conferencing (Meeting).
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Value for Money: The pricing is hard to understand and skews expensive, according to 100% of users who mentioned this.
Reporting: According to 67% of users who reviewed this feature, internal reports are limited and inaccurate.
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Integration: According to 45%of customers, the product is a little bit tricky to integrate with its own domain.
Pricing: The pricing structure is difficult according to 50% users.
Customization: Approximately 40% of users claimed that the tools aren't very customizable in terms of automation, workflow and user interface.
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Intercom offers a comprehensive platform to manage communications and increase engagement, via chatbots, product tours, email campaigns, automated answers and more. Based on user reviews, the product offers an intuitive interface, excellent customer support and useful onboarding resources. Users appreciated that they can customize automated tasks and in-app messages. Many reviewers also liked that they can assign conversations, use add-ons, send emails, send attachments and handle all customer outreach from a single platform. However, some users mentioned that the product is expensive and has limited reporting capabilities. All things considered, Intercom is a great solution for businesses in need of a complete communications platform.

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Zoho Desk is a help desk software that offers world-class customer experiences by prioritizing and managing customer interactions across multiple modules. Based on the reviews, the product is simple and intitutive. Users also said that they were able to implement it in no time and were able to figure out all the functions easily. With tons of features, it has won the hearts of many. However, some users said that customer support functions were lacking. Moreover, many customization options are only available for admins. Users also talked about the difficult pricing structure of the product. In all, it is a great product for all mid, small and big companies. But be sure to explore extensively before buying.

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Screenshots

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