Top 4 Zoho Desk Alternatives for Customer Service in 2023

Customer service software is the foundation of a lucrative customer experience in the era of digital transformation as 85% of US consumers recommend a business with excellent service to others.¹Zoho Desk is one of the most widely used customer service platforms, however, there might be other customer service software options on the market that are more suitable for your company’s particular requirements and unique use cases.

In this article, we explore top Zoho Desk alternatives that deliver exceptional customer service and outline the possible downsides of the product based on its reviews, ratings, pricing plans, and features.

Comparison of Zoho Desk and top 4 alternatives

Note: Salesforce Service Cloud,  is sponsored and placed at the top of the lists.

*Review counts are based on total number of reviews on peer review sites including G2, Capterra and TrustRadius as of 10/02/2023.

** (LCNC) stands for low-code & no-code

Zoho Desk

Zoho Desk is a cloud-based and contextual AI-equipped help desk platform that serves 50,000+ businesses worldwide. The platform offers key help desk services, including customer ticket management and contact management through multiple channels (phone, chat, email, social media, and self-service portal) in a unified workspace.

Pricing (per seat/month)

• Express: $7.00²
• Standard: $14.00³
• Professional: $23.00⁴
• Enterprise: $40.00⁵
• A 15-day free trial is available for up to 3 seats.

User Ratings

• G2: 4.4/5
• Capterra: 4.5/5
• Trustradius: 8.9/10

Cons

• Complex UI and ticketing system: Some users argue Zoho Desk’s user interface is not user-friendly and lacks practical design which makes it inconvenient to utilize the ticketing system and monitor the status of inquiries.⁶

• Hanging UI: Zoho Desk’s interface freezes at times, and its process or system ceases to respond to inputs quickly, which lowers its efficiency.⁷

• A steep learning curve: Some users have expressed concern about Zoho Desk’s steep learning curve.⁸

• Low customization options: When users are deploying the chat widget on their help center, they find that it lacks customization capabilities.⁹

• Insufficient software/app integrations: Zoho Desk’s third-party integrations are criticized for lacking some premium marketplace apps, users would like to have SAP integration to connect their operation and monitoring capabilities.¹⁰

• Inefficient workflow: Users think that the data migration process can be improved since there is no straight migration path for a business that is switching from emails to a dedicated ticketing system.¹¹

• No desktop application: Zoho Desk does not offer a desktop application.¹²

What to look for while choosing Zoho Desk alternatives?

While searching for the most appropriate alternative for your organization, it is critical to understand which features can meet the downsides of Zoho Desk. Concerning the given cons of Zoho Desk, here is a compiled list of features that you should pay attention to while looking for Zoho Desk alternatives.

• Simple and fast UI
• Robust ticketing system
• Easy-to-learn
• Customizable features
• Powerful software and app integrations
• Long free trial period

Salesforce Service Cloud 

Salesforce Service Cloud is an all-in-one completely customizable customer support and help desk platform that seamlessly integrates 2,500+ software or applications. Salesforce, founded in 1999, has around 70,000+ employees and 150,000 product users worldwide, assisting small, medium, and enterprise businesses during their digital transformation in customer relationship management through leveraging real-time analytics, automated workflows, and artificial intelligence (AI).¹³

Pricing (per seat/month)

• Starter: $25¹⁴
• Professional: $80¹⁵
• Enterprise: $165¹⁶
• Unlimited: $330¹⁷
• A 30-day free trial is available.

User Ratings

• G2: 4.3/5
• Capterra: 4.4/5
• Trustradius: 8.9/10

Pros

• Service Cloud is intuitive and customizable, and it integrates seamlessly with other Salesforce products.¹⁸

• It is simple to deploy and use. Users appreciate Service Cloud’s intuitive, user-friendly, well-organized, and quick interface, helping them to track the status of their inquiries.¹⁹

• Salesforce Service Cloud has a robust ticketing system with extensive dashboards, and time management capabilities, allowing users to monitor the time spent on each customer to efficiently allocate resources and accurately invoice customers.²⁰

• Users emphasized Service Cloud’s powerful integration capabilities, such as checking SLAs, setting up Escalation rules, or viewing real-time data, enabling them to optimize their workflow.²¹
• It has a longer (30 days) free trial period than other products.

Cons

• Users who moved to Service Cloud remarked on the high implementation, deployment, and licensing costs.²²
• The email functionality features can be enhanced, users would like Gmail account integration capabilities to merge duplicate emails.²³
• Users point out that customization can be more convenient with a service workbench.²⁴

Zendesk Support Suite 

Zendesk support suite is an AI/ML-powered software-as-a-service product from Zendesk, Inc., allowing businesses to provide customized client support across multiple channels, including emails, voice, messaging, and social media. 

User Ratings

• G2: 4.3/5
• Capterra: 4.4/5
• Trustradius: 7.9/10

Pricing (per seat/month, billed annually)

• Suite team: $55²⁵
• Suite growth: $89²⁶
• Suite professional: $115²⁷
• Suite enterprise: Contact with the vendor

Pros

• Zendesk Support Suite integrates seamlessly with a wide range of common order management platforms, websites, and logistics services, assisting users in managing complex operations.²⁸

• The platform’s powerful and efficient capabilities for providing comprehensive data-driven reports and insights enable organizations to monitor key customer service metrics.²⁹

• The API and app structures are quite useful while developing customized services for automation and integrating with third parties.³⁰

Cons

• Some users have faced lagged social media integrations (on Twitter or Meta), resulting in duplicate communications from different platforms.³¹

• Some users indicate that there are unprofessional employees in the customer support team.³²

• Zendesk Support Suite can be expensive for limited-budget or smaller-sized businesses.³³

Freshdesk 

Freshdesk is cloud-based help desk software from Freshworks which offers simplified customer service procedures to efficiently oversee your clients. Freshdesk can track and handle incoming tickets from various channels in one place, automate repetitive processes such as agent allocation based on workload, and use analytics to collect insights on customer experience.

Pricing (per seat/month)

• Growth: $15.00³⁴
• Omni-channel growth: $29.00³⁵
• Pro: $48.99³⁶
• Omni-channel pro: $59.00³⁷
• Enterprise: $69.00³⁸
• Omni-channel enterprise: $99.00³⁹

User Ratings

• G2: 4.4/5
• Capterra: 4.5/5
• Trustradius: 8.6/10

Pros

• Users appreciate the fact that Freshdesk offers a wide range of basic communication services, on a cloud-based and simple-to-use platform, leading to a streamlined customer experience for them.⁴⁰

• The reporting and analytics capabilities are said to be extensive by the users, letting them constantly track customer service trends.⁴¹
• Freshdesk is a robust ticket management system that is well appreciated by users, helping them to automate everyday tasks, and prioritize support requests.⁴²
• Users find it quite functional to automate routine tasks like ticket routing, canned responses, and follow-up messages, saving time for support agents.⁴³

Cons

• Freshdesk’s platform is considered complex by some early adopters.⁴⁴

• The platform is occasionally slow.⁴⁵
• Some Freshdesk features are less configurable to tailor to specific business needs.⁴⁶

Intercom 

Intercom is a software that combines an AI chatbot, help desk, and proactive support that specializes in end-to-end business messaging for businesses to fully interact with their customers through multiple communication channels. 

Pricing (per seat/month, billed annually)

• Starter: $74⁴⁷
• Pro: $153⁴⁸
• Premium: Custom pricing based on the number of users, people reached, and resolution.
• A 14-day free trial is available, then costs you $0.99 per resolution.⁴⁹

User Ratings

• G2: 4.5/5
• Capterra: 4.5/5
• Trustradius: 8.8/10

Pros

• Users think that the interface is straightforward, seamless, and fair.⁵⁰

• Users stated that they facilitated high-quality communication across multiple teams with high visibility, collaboration, and navigation.⁵¹

• Users believe add-on tools and capabilities, such as WhatsApp integration, were useful in allowing them to customize the platform according to their business needs.⁵²

Cons

• Intercom can be difficult to adapt, and the learning curve can be steep for some users.⁵³
• Intercom’s price plan is complex and can be expensive for small businesses.⁵⁴
• Users who had a high volume of conversations stated that they had lagging issues with the UI.⁵⁵

Top 8 help desk software vendor comparison criteria

1- Lowe code – no code development

Low-code can decrease application development time by up to 60%.⁵⁶Model-driven layout, visual programming, and automated code generation are the foundations of low-code development platforms (LCDPs) and no-code development platforms (NCDPs). This does not demand the employment of highly trained code-writing professionals and frequently includes waiting in a long line at the IT department. Regardless of coding background, these features are deliberately built to target employees who are familiar with their business workflows.

• Low-code: Low-code is a way of developing simple visual interfaces and embedded functionality to eliminate some of the need for traditional writing and coding.
• No-code: No-code is a similar technique that provides low-code features, enabling non-technical people to build applications without writing a single line of code.  

2- Self-service options

Self-service was favored by 67% of users over dealing with a support team representative⁵⁷Self-service options allow customers to do activities or tasks on their own rather than contacting an agent. 

• Knowledge base
• Community forums
• Chatbots 
• FAQs, help portals
• Guidelines, tutorials

3- Customer feedback capabilities

Customer feedback and survey tools assist organizations in their customer success journey by collecting and analyzing survey feedback data to give customer-centric insights.

Customer feedback and survey tools can help organizations to:

• Improve your products and services
• Identify and target their audience
• Enhance the customer experience
• Minimize churn and boost retention
• Increase the number of leads generated
• Analyze the bottlenecks in the customer journey

4- Real-time monitoring

Real-time monitoring is the availability of constantly updated data with near-zero latency, resulting in minimum delay between the data gathering and processing. It allows for the rapid identification of deviations, and performance concerns in the business workflow. Help desk agents can use real-time monitoring to handle issues actively, eliminating problems before people even notice them.

Organizations that leverage real-time monitoring can achieve:

• Real-time feedback 
• Boosted productivity
• Improved forensic analysis
• Automatic notifications and alerts  
• Real-Time performance monitoring

5-Visual remote assistance

Visual remote assistance helps remote salespeople, contact center employees, or field personnel to visually fix an issue for a client while leading them through the entire process and addressing a successful remedy on-screen. It improves service by allowing contact service, field technicians, or cloud experts 

Users can use visual remote assistance with real-time video from digital sources such as:

• Video stream
• Desktop sharing
• Auto recording
• Augmented reality
• Visual flows

6- Service cloud voice

Service cloud voice helps agents to respond to user questions and make calls, as well as address client concerns, directly from the service portal.

The following are some of the key advantages of Service Cloud Voice:

• Companies may provide their clients with more proactive and tailored service.
• Service employees can process calls more effectively, reducing average handling time and optimizing for demand surges.
• Managers may examine all of their service employees’ inbound and outbound calls and online records in real-time

7- Social media integrations

Social media in customer service is essential since it is an ‘always on’ medium where organizations manage customer communication through various platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Organizations that use social media integration in their help desk software can:

• Reach a broader audience
• Tap into new markets
• Provide timely responses in customer service
• Build convenience and accessibility of resolving customer queries in real-time
• Improve customer satisfaction and loyalty
• Collect customer data to examine the hidden patterns and gain market data insights
• Reduce call volumes and associated costs

Note: All vendors support Facebook social media integration.

8- Supported languages

Multilingual help desk software with extending language coverage can potentially increase the accessibility of information for a wider range of people which may lead to more favorable encounters between service teams and customers.

Help desk software with multilingual features can assist businesses with:

• Increasing positive feedback
• Increasing customer loyalty and retention 
• Facilitating customers communication

For more on customer service software

Check out our other articles on customer relationship management and help desk software to learn about other popular options like Salesforce Service Cloud, Zendesk,  Freshdesk, or Intercom.

Here is the complete data-driven software list of our CRM vendors.

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External links

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