Helpdesk tools are known to play a significant role in brands keeping all their issues on the tab. With growing digitization, several helpdesk software are coming into the limelight to handle different customer services requirements for a company.
While there is an abundance of helpdesk tools available out there, only a few form the cream when it comes to being true value for money. So, what features and factors make a helpdesk tool great? In this article, two of the best helpdesk tools in the market, Zendesk, and Freshdesk have been compared for you to zero in on one. Enjoy this Zendesk vs Freshdesk comparison and go through different parameters to find out which of the two would suit your requirements best.
Table of Contents
Introduction to Zendesk
Zendesk, started in 2007, is a popular Customer Service Software with a number of extensive features for a robust help desk service. Zendesk builds business software for customer engagement. It is a service-first company with mechanisms built to cater to all kinds of customer relationships in an effective manner. Well known for its flexibility and organization, it is adept to accommodate all requirements of scaling businesses in concern with their customer base. It employs a support ticketing system to be able to check, prioritize and cater to your customer support interactions. A variety of other features for personalization and support are inclusive, as you will see further in the article.
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Zendesk Support, at its core, is a help desk system that takes questions from your customers, from any channel, and puts them all into one place. Having everything in one place helps you organize and manage the queries, and ultimately solve them. Zendesk Support is easy-to-use and there’s no such learning curve required to get started. On the other hand, it also contains hundreds of advanced features that you can put to use.
Zendesk Support is easy to use but quite powerful. It can scale with your business as you grow, making it suitable for businesses of all sizes. From replacing a shared email account to alleviating problems with complexity, and siloed communications, Zendesk does it all. With features like Ticket Forms to collect information upfront, and the ability to see which articles your customer search for, before and after, submitting a ticket, Zendesk provides seamless, and personalized support.
With Zendesk, you’ll know who your customers are and what they need. You basically have an omnichannel solution that offers better integrated customer service more efficiently without compromise.
Introduction to Freshdesk
Freshdesk is a robust cloud-based customer software with some credible helpdesk features as well as handy automation for the purpose of faster customer support. It is known to effectively simplify the functionality of customer support for your team and brand, enabling them to provide an optimized customer service experience. You can schedule automation on workflow while also being able to track routine tasks for increased productivity. Freshdesk’s chatbot is especially popular that you can easily integrate with your self-service portal, making it easier to reach out to customers. It includes other beneficial features that are discussed further on along with a structured knowledge base and customizable features.
Freshdesk – Scheduling and other features
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Coming to the support, the Chatbots are powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and can answer questions, make small talk, and even get tasks done. Despite offering multiple support channels, the workload of your team will only decrease, and that’s because the Chatbots, the self service support portal, and the embedded FAQs handle the bulk of the straightforward issues you typically receive.
So, in simple words, you can conveniently help customers across channels from one single place with Freshdesk. You can make calls, chat, Email, and respond to queries on Social Media or any other support channel. Every issue is automatically assigned to the right person in your support team, and you have full visibility of who is working on what ensuring no customer is left unattended.
These software are deemed significant as customers are truly the makers or breakers of a business. Multifaceted customer support options are increasingly being adopted by several brands with the objective of efficient customer management and communication. While there are several features and merits common to both Zendesk and Freshdesk, some contrasting features do set them apart for different use cases.
Now that you have a basic understanding of both the platforms, let’s dive straight into Zendesk vs Freshdesk comparison.
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Zendesk vs Freshdesk
Zendesk and Freshdesk are similar in many ways, they share many similar features, benefits, and challenges. From ticket management to a wide range of reporting and analytics, we’ve got all the corners covered in the Zendesk vs Freshdesk showdown. We have compared some significant features for you to prioritize what you would prefer and more importantly what your brand needs in terms of customer support. Let’s deep dive into each of them and figure out which is better suited for your needs.
Zendesk vs Freshdesk: Pricing
The first part of Zendesk vs Freshdesk is pricing. Pricing is an important factor and decision for several businesses, especially small-scale that have budgets set aside for each avenue. In simple words, Zendesk stands to be pricier than Freshdesk with the difference of some additional business-level features.
While Zendesk is priced at $149 per agent per month, Freshdesk can be availed at $89 per agent per month. Thus, while you can save your pocket significantly by opting for Freshdesk, if you have those extra bucks to shed Zendesk does deliver value for money!
It is important to invest as per your needs. If your brand is not in the need of the additional proprietary features offered by Zendesk, then perhaps Freshdesk will do your job equally well. With the above-mentioned pricing range, pick what suits you and only what you need!
Zendesk vs Freshdesk: Features
The features are probably the most important to talk about in this bet, and this will help you a big deal to choose between Zendesk vs Freshdesk. While there are several savvy idiosyncrasies to both, here, we will look into some fundamental features and their comparisons.
a) Dashboard
Being a CRM software, the dashboard interface is extremely crucial. Whether it is to keep a tab on tasks or perhaps prioritize and communicate with the team, dashboards can make an impactful difference.
The dashboard laid out for Freshdesk is relatively simple. With tickets being sorted on the factors of priority, date, and importance you can easily organize your requirements. However, a higher level of personalization can be achieved with Zendesk. Zendesk offers finer details such as organization on the basis of views, and other custom conditions. Thus, filtering tickets and regrouping them can be a charm with Zendesk. All Zendesk Explore editions come with Pre-Built Dashboards that present your Zendesk business data in an easy-to-understand format, check out all the different types of dashboards offered.
On the other hand, Freshdesk takes the prize for easy ticket management and collaborations. Freshdesk offers a Discuss tab that makes the fast exchange of updates much easier.
Dashboard view – Zendesk
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Dashboard view- Freshdesk
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b) Live Chat
While both software integrate a feature for Live Chats, it is fair to say that Zendesk’s chat interface is more sophisticated and easier to navigate. Freshdesk’s Chat Service, called FreshChat, allows chats to be rerouted into tickets. Despite that, some data issues have been faced with the path and other variables involved.
c) Integrations
Zendesk, again takes away the tag for the best automation and integrations, offering over 700 native integrations which are far more than what Freshdesk offers. It also renders a bot that self-improves and fetches information from a knowledge base for the best customer responses. If automation is your prime concern Zendesk offers the best set of features. It also provides better security.
As discussed, both Zendesk and Freshdesk allow integrations with various third-party apps and services. You can connect Zendesk and Freshdesk to hundreds of apps via a no-code automated tool like Hevo Data, and keep your most up-to-date customer data flowing two ways.
d) Reporting
It is to be duly noted that when it comes to data reporting, ticket customization and branding, and the most robust self-service solutions, Freshdesk’s interface comes out a winner. Zendesk Reporting also ensures that your customers are being responded to on time effectively and efficiently. But the reporting features of Zendesk typically render a brief overview and random inclusions, Freshdesk on the other hand follows a more beat representation of factors you can correlate with the main dashboard. The reporting process, here, can also be automated and compartmentalized, which isn’t seen in the case of Zendesk. But worry no more, we are here to simplify Zendesk Reporting for you, check out our detailed guide on Zendesk Reporting.
Zendesk Reporting Features
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Freshdesk Reporting Features
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e) Ticket Management
Both, Zendesk and Freshdesk excel at basic functions like assigning tickets and tagging other reps. But Freshdesk goes one step further and offers instant messaging service. With its Discuss feature, customers can send messages instantly to team members directly within the ticket center. Open the Discuss tab to privately chat with supervisors, and further ensure that your customers are getting the right information in a given ticket. Freshdesk also gives you the ability to pre-record the template reponses and recommended solutions.
With Zendesk, you’ll have to switch tabs between Slack and your ticket to get the same results. Zendesk also gives you the ability to pre-record responses and solution with Macros, but it requires an extra download and install from the app store. The Macros are just stored in an alphabetical list, making it difficult to fetch the right one. The garbled set of Macros lack sorting, and in the end, the solution isn’t as seamless as Freshdesk’s.
Zendesk, however, makes it easy to add a new assignee and CCing other support staff. You can see a preview on the left side of the screen with names and profile images, where you can even sort the assignee dropdown menu for quick and accurate selections. On the other hand, Freshdesk’s assigning and CC functionality is quite limited and is similar to that of a standard Email interface.
So overall, Freshdesk has the upper hand here, and it streamlines the process of ticket management for easy collaboration and quick problem-solving.
Zendesk vs Freshdesk: Customer Support
Both Zendesk and Freshdesk are known to provide decent customer support being leading CRM software themselves. However, the Zendesk interface stands to be slightly more prompt. Any queries asked on the live chat at Zendesk customer support are responded to with an instant reply. While Freshdesk also offers a time frame to when these queries will be cleared, it could take a few hours, in contrast to Zendesk’s instant help. Thus, Zendesk takes the win for the customer support section of Zendesk vs Freshdesk.
Zendesk vs Freshdesk: Knowledge Base and Self-Service
Freshdesk meets there requirements of both client and agent with a dedicated private and public knowledge bases, These knowledge bases have agent training docs and public tutorials. An additional cost is paid to use private resources in Zendesk.
In Freshdesk, you have an option to create a new knowledge base article with its inbuilt editor. This inbuilt editor has some exciting features like Search Engine Optimization(SEO) to make the content top in the Google search results. You can also draft all your knowledge base articles into a dedicated folder which will be visible when your agent fills out tickets. Freshdesk also provides you with an option to tag and tie each article to an agent and reward those agents for their new self-service posts.
Zendesk provides you with a knowledge base that needs to be purchased again from support ticket software. There is a lack of integration in Zendesk which will not provide any suggestions from the knowledge base when solving tickets. Zendesk has a reasonably robust organizational structure and non-specific tags. Because of this structure, the task of finding the article required from the knowledge base looks like a hectic one.
Zendesk vs Freshdesk: Drawbacks
After comparing the features of Zendesk vs. Freshdesk, it’s time to get a bit critical. It is now clear enough that both the customer service tools are great, but each tool has its own set of flaws that you might want to consider before making the big purchase. Let’s discuss some of the important drawbacks in this showdown of Zendesk vs Freshdesk.
| Zendesk | Freshdesk |
| A little bit pricy option and might require you to shed some extra bucks to deliver value for money. | Lacks integration with Social Media giants like LinkedIn & Instagram. |
| No provision of editing or deleting sent messages. | Ticket merging can be faulty and time-consuming. |
| With a steep learning curve, it might take a while before you get comfortable with the advanced functionalities. | Some features are a bit complex and difficult to access, for instance, the reporting module and the login system. |
| The “Mention” system isn’t fully seamless and needs some refinement. | No Project Management Board. |
Zendesk vs Freshdesk: DrawbacksConnect Zendesk and Freshdesk to your other apps
Since Zendesk and Freshdesk can be integrated with PieSync, they can be connected with a lot of Apps and be up to date.
Most popular Zendesk integrations
- Zendesk HubSpot Integration: Integrating Zendesk and HubSpot let you see your Zendesk ticket information in the timeline section of a customer’s profile page in HubSpot.
- Zendesk Linkedin Integration: You can move your LinkedIn Ads data into Zendesk.
Most popular Freshdesk integrations
When to choose Zendesk vs Freshdesk
When to choose Zendesk
In the discussion on Zendesk vs Freshdesk, here are a few suggestions on when to choose Zendesk:
- Choose Zendesk when you want a unified view of customer experience.
- When you need top-class support prefer this one.
- When you have a budget constraint, prefer Zendesk.
- If you are a minimalist and simplicity matters to you, then go for Zendesk.
When to choose Freshdesk
In the discussion on Zendesk vs Freshdesk, here are a few suggestions on when to choose Freshdesk:
- You can choose Freshdesk when you need a robust enterprise feature list.
- When solid automation functionality is your requirement, choose Freshdesk.
- If you prefer more native integrations, then choose Freshdesk.
- In case you are in need to perform complex reporting and analytics tasks, choose Freshdesk.
This brings us to the end of the Zendesk vs Freshdesk Showdown.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it is fair to say that Zendesk vs Freshdesk offer some pretty amazing features for their pricing in the market. While some features are very similar others are contrasting to specific benefits. This is why it really depends on your use case for these platforms.
If you are looking to explore a better display organization, lesser cost, effective reporting, easy ticket management, and discussions, then, Freshdesk can serve you really well. If you are more inclined towards implementing better automation with a prompt live chat, robust dashboard accommodations, and finer features for customization, then, Zendesk is your bet. Pick out what suits you best and get started on your journey to be tight with your customers!
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