Freshdesk vs. Zendesk: 2024 Teardown (+ Better Options)

Freshdesk Overview

Freshdesk, a flagship product of Freshworks Inc., is a cloud-based customer support solution designed to enable businesses of all sizes to deliver exceptional customer service.

It’s an all-in-one customer support solution that streamlines the process of managing customer queries and issues across various channels, including email, chat, phone, social media, and websites.

Amongst its numerous functionalities is an advanced ticketing system that turns all incoming customer communications into tickets, which can then be tracked, assigned, and resolved within the platform.

It also offers a self-service portal where businesses can create a knowledge base containing FAQs, articles, and how-to guides, empowering customers to find answers to their questions independently.

Zendesk Overview

Zendesk is a customer service software that offers a comprehensive set of features that helps businesses improve interactions and enhance overall customer satisfaction.

It does this by providing an integrated environment where support teams can efficiently handle customer inquiries, problems, and service requests.

Some of Zendesk’s key features include:

a dynamic ticketing system for tracking and prioritizing support requests,
a knowledge base for creating self-service content,
live chat and messaging capabilities for real-time communication,
and a call center solution.

Additionally, Zendesk offers advanced analytics and reporting tools that help businesses understand customer needs, monitor support team performance, and identify areas for improvement.

💡 Why Kustomer is a better alternative to Freshdesk and Zendesk

Kustomer is a more flexible, efficient, and cost-effective solution for businesses looking to scale their customer service operations beyond the capabilities of Zendesk and Freshdesk.
Kustomer’s self-service feature is designed to be seamlessly integrated within the customer’s conversation flow, ensuring that context is maintained across different channels.
Kustomer excels in advanced reporting by leveraging real-time customer data and insights, integrating these analytics directly within the support workflow.
Kustomer offers a seamless experience for support agents, eliminating the need to switch between multiple tabs or systems to manage customer conversations.
Kustomer offers a unified workspace that integrates support channels such as Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, and Twitter, allowing agents to handle inquiries from a single interface.
Unlike Freshdesk, Kustomer offers an Instagram support feature, covering @replies, direct messages, comments, and stories, ensuring your businesses can engage with their audience where they are most active.
Kustomer offers real-time, in depth reporting for CX managers to monitor agent and team performance, track SLAs and customer sentiment, and identify areas for improvement.
Kustomer enables CX managers to see agents’ status, duration, and current conversations in real time.
With Kustomer, CX managers can also create custom reports and track agent metrics down to the minute.

Comparison of Core Features & Functionality

Ticket Management
Dashboards & Reporting
Automation & Workflows
Omnichannel Support
Self-Service & Knowledge Base

Ticket Management

Freshdesk: Robust Ticketing System With Streamlined Ticket Workflows

Freshdesk offers an interesting feature that converts emails, social media messages, chat messages, and phone calls into tickets, ensuring all customer queries are noticed.

Now once these tickets are created, Freshdesk auto-assigns it to the appropriate agents based on their workload, expertise, or other predefined criteria — using the ‘Ticket Dispatch’ feature. This ensures that the most suitable agent handles customer queries.

Another noteworthy feature of Freshdesk is ‘Scenario Automation,’ which lets agents perform multiple actions on a ticket with a single click.

For instance, an agent can close a ticket, send a resolution email to the customer, and add tags to the ticket in one action, significantly reducing the time spent on repetitive tasks.

Zendesk: Efficient Support Tickets Management With Macros For Quick Responses

Zendesk’s ticketing system is highly customizable, allowing businesses to tailor the support process to their specific needs. Like Freshdesk, Zendesk can aggregate customer queries from multiple channels into a single, unified agent workspace, ensuring a unified approach to customer support.

A key feature that sets Zendesk apart is its use of ‘Macros,’ pre-defined responses to common customer questions. These Macros can be applied to tickets with a single click, enabling agents to respond quickly and consistently to frequent inquiries.

Zendesk also has the ability to manage complex ticket workflows through its ‘Triggers’ and ‘Automations’ features.

💡Triggers are business rules that automatically perform actions on tickets based on specific conditions, such as sending a notification when a ticket is updated.

💡Automations, however, are time-based actions, such as escalating a ticket if it remains unresolved for a certain period.

These features provide Zendesk users with a powerful toolkit to manage ticket lifecycles efficiently and maintain high levels of customer satisfaction.

💡 Why Kustomer is a better alternative for ticket management

Unlike traditional ticketing systems, Kustomer focuses on conversations rather than tickets. This means you’re getting a continuous and contextual dialogue with customers, integrating all interactions across channels into a unified conversation thread.

You check this out using the “Timeline” view option that presents the entire history of a customer’s interactions with your business

Plus, your agents also get to use Kustomer’s AI, KustomerIQ, which can automatically classify, prioritize, and even respond to customer inquiries based on learned patterns, significantly reducing manual ticket handling.

Dashboard & Reporting

Freshdesk: Real-Time Dashboards Reflecting The Team’s Performance And Customer Queries

These dashboards serve as a central hub and are designed to be intuitive and customizable, allowing support managers and agents to closely monitor critical metrics like ticket resolution times, customer satisfaction scores, and agent workload.

This real-time insight enables teams to adjust their strategies or workflows immediately, ensuring that customer needs are met efficiently.

Zendesk: Comprehensive Metrics And CSAT Measurements For In-Depth Insights

In contrast, Zendesk offers a more analytical approach to performance tracking, with a strong emphasis on comprehensive metrics and Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) scores.

Its dashboard and reporting tools are designed for depth and breadth, providing detailed insights into every aspect of the customer support process. Zendesk’s analytics help identify trends, benchmark performance, and uncover areas for improvement.

CSAT measurements are particularly noteworthy within Zendesk’s suite of metrics, offering a direct gauge of customer happiness and service quality.

💡 Why Kustomer is a better choice for an intuitive dashboard

Kustomer’s dashboards differentiate itself by focusing on the customer journey alongside key support metrics. This dual focus provides a better perspective of both operational performance and customer experience.
In addition, Kustomer offers real-time analytics that integrate customer feedback and sentiment analysis directly into the dashboard. This enables businesses to track support performance and also understand the impact on customer satisfaction and loyalty.

👉Do You Know The Critical Metrics To Measure Your Customer Experience? — Take The Quiz

Automation & Workflows

Freshdesk: AI-Powered Automation For Ticket Routing And Round-Robin Distribution

Freshdesk leverages AI solutions to streamline the ticket routing process, ensuring that customer inquiries are automatically directed to the most appropriate support agent or team.

It also employs a ‘round-robin’ distribution method, which systematically allocates tickets among available agents to balance their respective workloads

Zendesk: Pre-Built Automation Workflows To Improve Agent Productivity

Zendesk’s workflow features enabled automating repetitive tasks and processes, allowing agents to concentrate on more complex and valuable customer interactions.

The automation tools within Zendesk do this by triggering specific actions based on predefined conditions, such as sending follow-up emails, updating ticket statuses, or escalating unresolved issues according to the service level agreements (SLAs).

💡 Why Kustomer is better for automation & workflows

With Kustomer, you can customize your workflows to guide customer conversations, extensively to automate responses, route conversations intelligently, and trigger actions based on customer behavior.
For instance, if a customer’s actions on a website indicate potential confusion or a problem, Kustomer can trigger an automated message offering assistance, enhancing customer satisfaction and engagement.
Kustomer does this by analyzing incoming conversations, classifying and routing them to the appropriate team or individual based on the content of the message and the customer’s history.

Omnichannel Support

Freshdesk: Integration with Freshchat, Social Media, and WhatsApp

Integrating Freshchat allows businesses to manage customer conversations across various channels from a single interface, including web, mobile, and social media platforms (like Facebook Messenger) and messaging apps (like WhatsApp).

It also features AI-powered bots that can engage customers 24/7, providing instant responses to common queries, collecting customer information before routing to human agents, and even guiding users through predefined workflows for things like booking appointments or checking order statuses.

This ensures that customer support agents have access to the full context of each customer’s inquiry, enabling them to provide more personalized and efficient service.

Zendesk: Multiple Communication Channels, Including Chat Support, Zendesk Support, and Social Media Platforms

As a part of the broader Zendesk Suite, Zendesk Support focuses on streamlining the process of handling customer queries, ensuring that every request is tracked, managed, and resolved efficiently across multiple channels — including email, web, social media, phone, and chat — from a single, unified interface.

Another key feature is the unified agent workspace, consolidating customer interactions from various channels into a single view.

💡 Why Kustomer is a better choice for delivering omnichannel customer support

Kustomer unifies customer service experiences across all your channels. Agents manage every conversation directly in the customer platform — across email, live chat, SMS, WhatsApp, social media, and even via voice call.
But what’s different about Kustomer is that customers and agents can easily communicate with any channel and switch without disjointed communication.
For example, if a customer reached out via email, they can follow up via live chat and also several other channels without any fear of siloed conversation.

👉 Watch this video to learn more

Self-service & Knowledge Base

Freshdesk: User-friendly Knowledge Base and Self-service Options with a Customizable Widget

The platform allows businesses to create detailed FAQs, how-to guides, and articles designed to help customers solve problems on their own. This content can be easily organized into categories and subcategories, making it straightforward for customers to find the information they need.

Freshdesk’s self-service option also offers a customizable widget, which can be embedded into websites or apps. This widget provides immediate access to the knowledge base, live chat, and ticket submission directly from the user interface.

Plus, it also leverages the ‘Freddy AI’ to help customers get the best answer to their queries without needing to contact support — thereby reducing the number of support tickets and reducing the workload on customer support teams.

💡Pro Tip → Kustomer allows you to add an easy-to-navigate, searchable, and SEO-friendly help center to your app or website, reducing the contact rate at scale.

Zendesk: Community Forums, FAQs, and an Extensive Knowledge Base for Customer Self-service

Community forums are a significant part of Zendesk’s self-service offering, enabling customers to engage with each other, share solutions, and provide feedback.

These forums foster user collaboration, often leading to peer-to-peer support that can reduce the volume of direct inquiries to the support team. More particularly, its support for multiple languages makes it suitable for global businesses serving diverse customer bases.

In addition, FAQs also complement these resources by addressing the most common questions and issues, providing quick and accessible answers to users.

💡 Why Kustomer is better for self-service portal and knowledge base

Kustomer’s self-service and knowledge base features seamlessly integrate with other functionalities on the platform, offering a high level of customization.
For example, you can customize the look and feel to match your company’s branding, providing a consistent customer experience across all touchpoints.
With this you can create FAQs, troubleshooting guides, product manuals, documentation, and even community forums.
The feature is designed to be both an internal resource for agents and an external resource for customers.

With Kustomer, you can scale smarter and faster with seamless self-service at every customer touchpoint. Request Live Demo. 👈

Comparing Usability and Customization

User Interface

Freshdesk: Intuitive User Interface with a Focus on Ease of Use

Freshdesk’s UI is designed to be accessible for users of all skill levels — from beginners to advanced support agents. This is made possible via its informative yet uncluttered dashboard, providing a quick overview of ticket status, agent workload, and performance metrics at a glance.

💡Business Benefit: Freshdesk’s focus on user-friendliness can help reduce onboarding time for new agents, allowing them to start handling customer queries more efficiently.

Zendesk: Modern Agent Workspace, Promoting Team Collaboration and Efficient Handling of Customer Data

The agent workspace in Zendesk is highly customizable, allowing teams to tailor the environment to their specific workflows and preferences — all within a single ticket interface. Once activated, agents can easily switch between tickets, chats, and calls within the same interface, promoting a seamless omnichannel support experience.

You also get access to features like shared views, internal notes, and the ability to transfer tickets with context to other agents, making it faster to resolve customer queries.

💡 Why Kustomer’s user interface is the modern option your CX agents need

Kustomer’s agent interface features a unified customer view, displaying all relevant customer data, including past interactions, and any available personal information in a single, comprehensive profile.
Next is the conversation timeline, which organizes customer interactions across all channels (email, chat, social media, etc.). This allows agents to quickly understand the context of a customer’s issue, track the history of interactions, and respond appropriately within the same interface.
There’s also the ‘actionable workspace’ that allows agents to prioritize, sort, and manage customer conversations based on various criteria such as urgency, or query type.

Customization Options

Freshdesk: Numerous Customization Options, from Ticket Fields to Themes

Businesses can modify their tickets, workflow, and themes to reflect their brand identity. For instance, users can tailor their help desk portals to serve different customer segments or product lines, providing a personalized self-service experience. This level of personalization also extends to automation rules, SLA policies and the overall user interface.

Zendesk: Customizable Templates and Agent Workspaces to Tailor the Support Desk to Business Needs

Businesses looking to create a highly optimized work environment for their agents can modify the support desk environment, including the layout and functionality of the agent workspace.

The flexibility of Zendesk’s templates also deserves a mention, as they can be customized for various support scenarios regardless of the type of customer inquiry they are handling.

💡 Why Kustomer is a better alternative for customization

Beyond customizing logos and themes to match your brand, Kustomer’s options extend to allowing you to create a custom domain for your knowledge base.
There’s also a custom ‘Rules’ and ‘Triggers’ option for automations.
For example, sending follow-up messages, escalating issues, or tagging conversations for analysis — all of which can be useful in measuring agent performance, customer satisfaction scores, and response times.
Managers can also define custom roles and permissions for their team members, ensuring that each agent has access only to the features and data necessary for their specific responsibilities.

Mobile Access

Freshdesk: Mobile App for On-the-Go Ticket Management and Notifications

Users can download Freshdesk on their mobile devices via the Apple or Google Play Store and enjoy similar desktop features such as ticket management, knowledge base, and multi-channel communication with customers.

Similarly, agents can receive push notifications, view customer information, and update ticket statuses for new tickets. This ensures that customer support operations can continue seamlessly, even when agents are away from their desks.

Zendesk: Comprehensive Mobile App with Real-Time Alerts and Agent Workspace

The Zendesk mobile app allows agents to manage tickets, access customer history, and collaborate with teammates directly from their mobile devices. There are also real-time alerts and notifications that keep agents informed of new tickets, updates, and other critical events.

Comparing Integrations & Add-ons

Apps and Integrations

Freshdesk: Part of the Freshworks Suite with Native Integrations to CRM, Chatbot, and More

As part of the Freshworks ecosystem, Freshdesk benefits from seamless native integrations with other Freshworks products, including Freshsales (CRM), Freshchat (chatbot), and Freshcaller (cloud-based phone system). These integrations allow for a unified customer support experience, where data and workflows can easily flow between different functions, such as sales, marketing, and support.

In addition to its internal integrations, Freshdesk’s marketplace offers a variety of apps and integrations that extend its capabilities. This includes integration with popular tools such as Slack, WhatsApp, Salesforce, Mailchimp, Shopify, and several others.

Zendesk: Extensive API for Custom Integrations, from Salesforce to Slack and Beyond

Developers looking to build custom integrations for their support teams can take advantage of Zendesk’s API. Alternatively, you can explore the marketplace to enjoy pre-built integrations from CRM systems like Salesforce to productivity and collaboration tools like Slack and Trello.

💡Pro Tip → Kustomer lets you connect all your tools, processes and data with easy-to-install apps and turnkey integrations.

💡 Why Kustomer is a better choice for apps and integrations

Kustomer’s integration capabilities allow it to connect seamlessly with a wide range of third-party applications and services.

E-commerce Platforms: For example, Shopify or Magento to allow customer service agents to access order information, shipping details, and customer purchase history directly within the Kustomer interface.
Communication Tools: For example, Slack and email services, to facilitate internal collaboration and alerts.
Productivity and Collaboration Tools: For example, Jira and Zapier to enable teams to manage projects, automate workflows, and sync data across different platforms.
Robust APIs: Beyond these pre-built integrations, Kustomer offers robust APIs that allow businesses to develop custom integrations tailored to their specific needs.

Cloud & On-Premise

Freshdesk: Cloud-based Solution with Secure Customer Data Management

The cloud-first approach ensures that companies can get their customer support operations up and running quickly without needing significant upfront investment in hardware.

Plus, given its cloud-based nature, Freshdesk employs robust security measures to protect customer data, including clickjacking prevention, SHA 256 encoding, data encryption, cross-site scripting mitigation and compliance with international data protection regulations (HIPAA & GDPR).

Zendesk: Cloud and Enterprise Plan Options to Fit Various Business Sizes and Needs

On the other hand, Zendesk offers flexible deployment options, which are cloud-based or on-premise solutions — but for their enterprise clients. This can be particularly useful for clients with complex IT environments.

Zendesk’s on-premise solutions and enterprise plans offer the customization and control needed to align with internal policies and regulations for larger businesses or those with specific compliance, security, or data residency requirements.

💡 Why Kustomer is the ideal cloud based CX solution

The cloud-based nature of Kustomer offers great advantages — particularly accessibility, enabling customer service teams to access the platform from anywhere, at any time, as long as they have an internet connection.
This flexibility is crucial for supporting remote work environments and ensuring that customer service can continue uninterrupted, regardless of physical location.
Additionally, you get a scalable cloud infrastructure to accommodate your business growth or fluctuations in customer service demand. This way, you can quickly scale your usage up or down without the need for significant hardware investments or lengthy setup times.

Comparing Pricing Plans

Free Plan & Trial

Freshdesk: Offers A Free Plan for Small Business and Startups

Formerly called “Sprout”, Freshdesk offers a free plan for small businesses and startups looking for basic help desk functionality. This plan provides essential features such as email ticketing, a knowledge base, and ticket trend reports, enabling small teams to manage customer inquiries effectively without incurring costs.

Zendesk: Free Trial Available with Insights into Zendesk Pricing Plans

Zendesk offers a 14-day free trial period to provide potential users with a comprehensive understanding of Zendesk’s capabilities, including ticket management, omnichannel support, automation, and self-service options.

💡 Kustomer offers more transparent pricing than Zendesk

Zendesk doesn’t disclose its pricing for their enterprise plan, meanwhile Kustomer transparently starts at $89 per month per user for its enterprise package — all features included.

Enterprise & Premium Features

Freshdesk: Scaling Pricing Plans Offering Advanced Features

For growing businesses with complex support requirements, Freshdesk offers scalable pricing plans with more advanced features.

A common use case is businesses requiring SLA (Service Level Agreement) management capabilities to set, monitor, and meet specific service standards.

This is further supported by Freshdesk’s AI, ‘Freddy AI’, which can automate routine support tasks, assist with ticket triaging, and provide agents with predictive insights to resolve customer issues more effectively.

Zendesk: Enterprise Plans Tailored for Large Businesses

Zendesk’s enterprise plans offer advanced customization options for the support interface, workflows, and agent roles. They also come with access to premium support and consultation services from Zendesk.

💡 Kustomer offers the best enterprise value with its premium features and benefits

If you’re going enterprise and paying a premium, then you should get a value for your money. And that’s exactly what Kustomer offers.
Want more custom integrations? Kustomer gives you higher API rate limits to accommodate more intensive use cases, enabling larger volumes of data synchronization and integration activities.
But we won’t leave you to do it all alone — as an enterprise customer, you receive dedicated account management and guaranteed service level agreements (SLAs) for response times, ensuring high-priority support needs are met promptly.

Comparing Support & Onboarding

Customer Support Team

Freshdesk: Highly Responsive Customer Support Team with a Range of Communication Channels

Freshdesk prides itself on fast response times across all channels, including email, phone, live chat, and a comprehensive knowledge base, facilitating quick resolution of any issues or queries.

Zendesk: Renowned for Its Customer Support Team‘s Efficiency and Customer Satisfaction Metrics

Zendek measures its team’s effectiveness by how well they resolve issues, the speed of their responses, and the satisfaction of the customers they assist. It uses these metrics to continually refine and improve its support services, ensuring that businesses receive the top-notch assistance they deserve.

💡 Kustomer is the ideal choice for comprehensive customer support

Kustomer’s support team is designed to offer comprehensive assistance, ranging from technical support and troubleshooting to guidance on best practices and strategic advice for optimizing customer service workflows
It makes this work through a tiered support structure. This ranges from front-line customer service representatives who handle general inquiries and common issues, to higher-level technical support specialists and engineers who address more complex problems and technical challenges.
This structure allows for efficient handling of both common questions and more complex technical issues.

Onboarding Process

Freshdesk: Detailed Onboarding with Webinars, Training Materials, and Dedicated Support Agents

Freshdesk’s approach to onboarding is designed to provide a thorough understanding of the platform through a mix of:

Webinars — Offering interactive learning opportunities where users can see the platform in action and ask questions in real time.

Training materials — Including articles, videos, and tutorials, to allow users to learn at their own pace, diving deep into specific features or workflows as needed.

Also comes with dedicated support agents to provide personalized assistance, helping businesses set up their accounts, configure settings, and tailor the platform to their specific operational needs.

Zendesk: Comprehensive Onboarding with Tutorials, Guides, and Real-Time Support

Zendesk’s onboarding process is more about letting users become proficient in using the platform to manage their customer support operations.

Tutorials and guides cover a broad range of topics, from basic setup to advanced feature utilization, ensuring users have a solid foundation of the software.

Real-time support is available to address immediate questions or challenges, helping users overcome obstacles as they familiarize themselves with the platform.

💡 Why Kustomer offers the smoothest onboarding experience

Kustomer’s onboarding experience is a smooth sail. For new customers, the support team offers assistance with initial configuration, integration with other tools, and training to get started with the platform.
Beyond direct support, Kustomer’s team offers access to a range of educational resources, including how-to guides, FAQs, webinars, and training sessions.

Comparing Feedback and Reviews

User Feedback, Community and Reviews

Freshdesk: Praised for Its Ease of Use, Customizable Features, and Affordable Pricing

The customizable features of Freshdesk frequently receive positive feedback for its ease of use. For the most part, many users value its ability to tailor the platform to their specific operational needs, from custom ticket fields to automated workflows and personalized customer portals.

According to G2 Reviews:

In terms of community, the Freshdesk community forum acts as a collaborative space where customers can ask questions, share feedback, exchange ideas, and help each other with troubleshooting issues.

Zendesk: Noted for Its Rich Functionality, Omnichannel Support, and User-Friendly Interface

Zendesk’s user feedback often highlights the platform’s rich features designed to manage complex customer support scenarios. Some of these include advanced analytics, automation, and customization options, which allow for a high degree of control over the support process.

According to G2 Reviews:

For community forums —

Zendesk community forum is a comprehensive knowledge base where users can find solutions and improvements tailored to their specific needs. They include best practices, templates, and macros that users can adopt and adapt.

💡 Why Kustomer is a better alternative, according to G2 reviews:

Comparing Ideal Users & Businesses

Small Businesses

Freshdesk: Suitable for Startups and Small Businesses

If you’re a small business looking for a cost-effective solution, then Freshdesk might just be the right option for you without compromising on functionality.

Another upside is that it enables teams with limited IT support or technical expertise to set up and manage their customer support operations efficiently. The intuitive interface, straightforward setup process, and extensive knowledge base help businesses quickly adapt to using the platform.

Zendesk: Tailored Plans for Small Businesses

While Zendesk’s pricing doesn’t accommodate small businesses, it offers certain features to manage customer interactions, including ticketing, live chat, and knowledge base capabilities. For instance, Zendesk offers venture-backed startups a six-month free access to the ‘Zendesk Suite’ plan.

💡 Why Kustomer is a great choice for small businesses

Small businesses looking to grow and maintain a loyal customer base can significantly benefit from utilizing Kustomer software to enhance their customer service operations.
With Kustomer, your business can automate repetitive tasks such as sorting, tagging, and routing customer inquiries.
This way, freeing up valuable time for your team, allowing them to focus on more complex customer needs or other areas of the business.
A 360-degree view of the customer’s entire interactions with your business is also another core feature that can help you offer personalized support and build deeper customer relationships.

Enterprise & Large Corporations

Freshdesk: Scalable Solutions with Integrations Catering to Complex Workflows and Team Collaboration

Freshdesk has the ability to integrate with a wide range of business applications—including CRM systems, project management tools, and internal communication software—ensuring that customer support processes are seamlessly connected with other operational areas.

In addition, it offers collaboration features like shared ownership of tickets, agent collision detection, and internal team notes, allowing for efficient coordination among support agents and departments. This is important for large organizations where support queries often require input from multiple team members or departments to resolve.

Zendesk: Catering to Large Organizations with Extensive Agent Productivity Tools and CRM Integrations

Large organizations can capitalize on some of Zendesk’s advanced tools, including automated workflows, AI-powered suggestions for ticket responses, and detailed performance analytics that help managers identify areas for improvement.

This is further extended with Zendesk’s robust API and marketplace of integrations that allow customer support data to flow seamlessly into and out of the organization’s customer relationship management systems.

💡 Why Kustomer is a better option for Enterprise Businesses

For enterprise businesses, Kustomer provides a powerful, scalable, and flexible customer service platform that can meet the demands of large-scale operations.
For instance, if your business manages multiple lines or brands, you’d need a system that can handle a high volume of customer interactions while also maintaining a consistent customer experience.
Kustomer excels in this area by offering a centralized platform where all customer interactions, regardless of the channel or brand they originate from, are unified under a single customer view.

Kustomer — The Winning Choice (vs. Freshdesk and Zendesk)

If we’re having a popularity contest, then you might give that to Freshdesk or Zendesk. But in terms of a solution that offers comprehensive features and scalability, Kustomer is your go-to.

Overview of Kustomer

Kustomer is a cloud-based customer service CRM platform designed for businesses looking to streamline their customer support operations and deliver personalized customer experiences.

Unlike common customer support software (e.g., Freshdesk and Zendesk) that focuses solely on managing support tickets, Kustomer provides a centralized view of the customer by integrating data from various communication channels and customer interactions into a single, comprehensive customer profile.

It also supports omnichannel communication, allowing customers to connect with businesses through email, chat, SMS, social media, and phone calls, all managed within the Kustomer platform.

Kustomer’s key features include:

KustomerIQ. This is the platform’s AI engine that automates repetitive tasks, analyzes customer sentiment, and provides intelligent response suggestions. It enables predictive support actions, such as proactively addressing a customer’s issue before it escalates, based on their behavior and interaction history.

Omnichannel Support. Seamless integration of various communication channels into a single conversation thread for each customer, ensuring consistent and personalized communication regardless of the channel used.

Customizable Workflows. Businesses can create custom workflows to automate processes and ensure that every customer inquiry is handled according to predefined rules, ensuring a consistent and efficient resolution process.

Real-time Analytics and Reporting. Kustomer offers detailed analytics and reporting tools that provide insights into customer service performance, agent productivity, and customer satisfaction, helping businesses make data-driven decisions to improve their service.

Integration Capabilities. The platform can integrate with various third-party applications and systems, allowing businesses to leverage additional tools and data sources to enhance customer support and operations.

Why Choose Kustomer over Freshdesk and Zendesk?

Better AI Capabilities. Kustomer’s KustomerIQ offers capabilities designed to support and enhance the customer support process, focusing on predictive analytics and automation based on customer behavior and sentiment. This is more advanced than the typical automation features found in Freshdesk and Zendesk, which are primarily focused on streamlining ticket handling and workflows.

Advanced Personalization. Customer support goes beyond the typical ticket management you’d find in Freshdesk and Zendesk. With Kustomer, you get a unified view of the customer’s entire history and interaction — all in a single view. This single difference provides a more thorough understanding of the customer, enabling support teams to deliver more personalized and effective service.

A better everything — but don’t take it from us; take it from other businesses that have made the switch:

💡[Read Case Study] → How ThirdLove achieved a 96% CSAT after switching to Kustomer.

💡[Read Case Study] → How Glovo deflected 84% of conversations using Kustomer.

Still not convinced? See how we stack up:

👉 Kustomer vs. Freshdesk: Switch to the Customer Service CRM Built for Growth.

👉 Zendesk vs Kustomer: Save 25% More When You Switch.

Honorable Mentions

1. Zoho Desk

Zoho Desk is an online customer service help desk solution that helps businesses manage customer interaction and other support activities. As part of the Zoho ecosystem, Zoho Desk integrates seamlessly with other Zoho products, offering a unified platform for CRM, support, and more.

Key Features of Zoho Desk

Ticketing System. Zoho Desk’s ticketing system efficiently organizes customer inquiries from multiple channels into a centralized interface. This includes automatic ticket assignment, categorization, and prioritization.

Contextual AI – Zia. Zoho Desk features an AI assistant, Zia, which offers context-aware suggestions to agents, automates responses to common queries, and analyzes ticket sentiment.

Automation. Zoho Desk’s automation capabilities streamline repetitive tasks and processes, such as ticket routing, SLA management, and workflow customizations.

Self-service Options. The platform offers a customizable help center, knowledge base, and community forums that empower customers to find answers independently.

2. Salesforce Service Cloud

Salesforce Service Cloud is a comprehensive customer service and support platform developed by Salesforce to help businesses manage and resolve customer inquiries and issues.

It provides a 360-degree view of each customer by centralizing data from various communication channels and customer interactions. This unified view allows support agents to deliver personalized and efficient service.

Key Features of Salesforce Service Cloud

Automation with Einstein AI. Salesforce’s AI technology, Einstein, offers advanced automation and intelligence features within Service Cloud. Einstein can automate routine tasks, predict customer needs, and provide agents with recommendations and insights.

Case Management. Service Cloud’s case management system is highly customizable and scalable, capable of handling complex workflows and large volumes of cases. It provides features such as case routing, escalation, and SLA management to ensure timely and accurate resolution of customer issues.

Self-service Portals and Communities. The platform enables businesses to create branded self-service portals and customer communities where customers can find answers, log cases, and interact with one another. These portals are fully customizable and integrated with the CRM, providing a consistent user experience.

Field Service Lightning. For businesses that require field service management, Service Cloud offers Field Service Lightning, a feature that optimizes in-person support with tools for scheduling, dispatching, and tracking service appointments, all connected to the customer’s profile.

💡Pro Tip → Kustomer’s New AI — the KIQ Customer Assist— offers intent detection to help you streamline customer interactions by allowing the conversational assistant to identify keywords or phrases, guiding users to the right dialogue for accurate responses.

3. Help Scout

Help Scout is a customer support software designed for businesses of all sizes looking to provide excellent customer service in a more personalized and efficient way.

Unlike larger, more complex customer service platforms, Help Scout focuses on simplicity and ease of use, offering a straightforward yet powerful set of tools to manage customer interactions.

Help Scout’s approach is simply streamlining customer support through a shared inbox, knowledge base, and an intuitive interface that resembles an email client. This setup makes it easy for support teams to collaborate, manage, and respond to customer inquiries without the clutter and complexity of traditional ticketing systems.

Key Features of Help Scout

Shared Inbox. Help Scout’s shared inbox feature allows multiple team members to view and manage incoming customer emails simultaneously, ensuring no customer query is missed.

Knowledge Base. Known as Docs, Help Scout’’s knowledge base functionality lets businesses create helpful articles, tutorials, and FAQs. This self-service option empowers customers to find answers to their questions quickly and reduces the overall volume of support requests.

Beacon. Beacon is an embeddable widget businesses can place on their website to offer live chat support and access to knowledge base articles directly from any page.

4. Intercom

Intercom is a conversational relationship platform that helps businesses connect with customers through personalized, messenger-based experiences. It facilitates communication across the entire customer lifecycle, from acquisition to engagement and support.

Key Features of Intercom

Integrated Help Center. Like its competitors, Intercom provides self-service options, but its help center is uniquely integrated into the messenger, making it more accessible to customers in the context of their existing conversations.

Customizable Messenger. Intercom’s messenger can be customized to match a business’s branding and is designed to work seamlessly across devices. It supports rich media and can be embedded with apps that allow customers to schedule meetings, access content, or even make payments without leaving the chat.

Automated Customer Engagement. Intercom excels in automation with features like targeted messaging, behavior-triggered communication, and bots that qualify leads, route inquiries, and provide instant answers to common questions, enhancing the efficiency of customer interactions.

Live Chat. Intercom’s live chat feature allows businesses to communicate with customers on their website or app in real time.

Recommended → Kustomer vs. Intercom: See How We Stack Up.

Verdict

Choosing between Freshdesk and Zendesk boils down to specific business needs, desired integrations, and budget considerations.

Freshdesk shines for businesses seeking a user-friendly platform that doesn’t skimp on functionality. Its flexible pricing plans, including a free tier, make it an attractive option for startups and small businesses looking to scale their customer support efforts without heavy financial commitments.

Zendesk, on the other hand, appeals to large businesses with complex workflows or those that need to leverage data to drive customer satisfaction.

Kustomer — The Ideal Alternative to Freshdesk and Zendesk

For businesses whose needs extend beyond the conventional ticketing system or who prioritize a 360-degree view of the customer within their support strategy, Kustomer presents itself as a compelling alternative.

Kustomer differentiates itself by offering a platform that centers around the customer rather than individual support tickets. This approach ensures that every interaction is informed by a complete history of the customer’s relationship with your brand, enabling more personalized and effective support.

Kustomer — The Modern CX Platform for 2024

Where conversations, tickets, data, orders, and customer information are natively stored within the Kustomer platform, enabling elevated and accelerated service.
👉 Join Kustomer Today

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