Head-To-Head Freshdesk vs Zendesk Review for Business Support Needs

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Managing customer inquiries can be a challenging task. You may find yourself deluged with tickets after a product launch or service outage, and your team is scrambling to keep up while maintaining customer satisfaction. Help desk software can streamline support operations, but with so many options, how do you choose the best one for your business? In this blog, we'll compare Freshdesk and Zendesk, two of the most popular help desk tools, to help you choose the 24/7 Customer Support tool to streamline workflows, improve team efficiency, and deliver exceptional customer experiences. Freshdesk vs Zendesk.

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What is Freshdesk and Its Key Features

Freshdesk is a powerful customer service software that provides businesses with help desk and ticketing solutions. The company started in 2010 when Girish Mathrubootham and Shan Krishnasamy sought to help companies manage customer support better.

In 2017, Freshdesk became Freshworks and now offers a complete customer engagement platform.

What Does Freshdesk Do?

Freshdesk helps businesses offer adequate customer support by organizing incoming tickets from various channels and enabling teams to resolve issues faster. The software can manage customer inquiries and support tickets through:

Social media

Live chat

Phone

Other channels

Freshdesk also offers automation features to help reduce the repetitive tasks that bog down help desk agents. With Freshdesk, you can create a knowledge base to enable self-service support for your customers and generate reports to monitor team performance and customer satisfaction. The software even helps businesses manage service level agreements (SLAs) to ensure timely resolution of customer issues.

Why Choose Freshdesk Over Other Customer Support Solutions?

When choosing customer support software, it’s essential to pick a solution that fits your business’s needs. Freshdesk and Zendesk are two of the most popular options available today. While both have much to offer, Freshdesk has several advantages that make it particularly appealing for businesses looking for affordable, flexible, and easy-to-use support software.

AI Customer Experience

Omni Channel Customer Support

Help Desk Ticket Workflow

How to Scale Customer Support

What is a Support Ticket

What is a Help Desk

Help Desk Software Requirements

Helpdesk Best Practices

What is Zendesk & Its Key Features

Zendesk is a company that offers software to help businesses with customer service and support through a cloud-based platform. Founded the company in 2007 in Copenhagen, Denmark:

Mikkel Svane

Morten Primdahl

Alexander Aghassipour

The company quickly gained traction, attracting customers with its intuitive interface and robust features. In 2008, Zendesk relocated its headquarters to San Francisco, USA, and expanded its presence in the international market.

A Comprehensive Overview

Over the years, Zendesk has grown and diversified its offerings to cater to businesses of all sizes and industries. It now provides a suite of products under the Zendesk umbrella, including:

Zendesk Support (customer support)

Zendesk Chat (chat software)

Zendesk Talk (cloud-based phone system)

Zendesk Sell (formerly Base)

Zendesk Explore (reporting and analytics software)

What is Zendesk Used For?

Businesses use Zendesk to manage and improve their customer support and engagement processes. The most common use cases of Zendesk are:

Ticket Management: Zendesk helps businesses efficiently organize, track, and manage customer support queries and issues through a ticketing system.

Collaboration and Teamwork: Zendesk facilitates collaboration among support agents and teams, enabling them to resolve customer issues together.

Customer Feedback Management: Businesses can collect and analyze customer feedback through surveys and ratings to improve support services.

Integration with Other Tools: Zendesk integrates with various third-party apps and services, enhancing its capabilities and compatibility with other business tools.

Customer Self-Service: Zendesk empowers customers to solve their issues via self-service options, reducing the need for direct support interactions.

In-Depth Freshdesk vs Zendesk Review

Freshdesk and Zendesk are two of the leading help desk tools. They are widely recognized for their extensive capabilities and ability to support businesses of all shapes and sizes. Even though they share many similarities, they also have key differences that set them apart.

Freshdesk is known for its affordable pricing and straightforward interface, making it an excellent option for small- to medium-sized businesses.

On the other hand, Zendesk is the more advanced option, with powerful reporting, automation, and customization capabilities that appeal to larger organizations.

Difference Between Zendesk and Freshdesk

If you're looking for a tie-breaker between Freshdesk and Zendesk, skip past this section.

Knowledge Base and Self-Service

Both offer customizable internal and external knowledge bases so customers and employees can access the following:

Troubleshooting guides

FAQs

Other essential information they find useful

Reports and Data Analysis

Zendesk and Freshdesk come with pre-built dashboards and report templates, or you can create your own.

App Integrations

Both platforms have 1,000+ apps spanning a broad range of categories, integrating with Zapier.

Ticket Management: The Nitty-Gritty on Handling Support Requests

Freshdesk offers an exciting feature that converts:

Emails

Social media messages

Chat messages

Phone calls to tickets

This ensures all customer queries are noticed.

Once these tickets are created, Freshdesk auto-assigns them to the appropriate agents based on their:

Workload

Expertise

Other predefined criteria using the ‘Ticket Dispatch’ feature

This ensures that the most suitable agent handles customer queries.

Streamlining Workflows with Scenario Automation

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 needs. Like Freshdesk, Zendesk can aggregate customer queries from multiple channels into a single, unified agent workspace, ensuring a unified approach to customer support.

Macros

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.

Triggers

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

Automations

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

Pricing and Plans: A Cost Comparison

Freshdesk and Zendesk offer varying pricing structures and plans. One main difference is that Freshdesk offers bulk pricing, while Zendesk has a flat per-agent price structure.

Freshdesk offers four different plans for its support desk software: Free, Growth, Pro and Enterprise. The Free plan is zero cost for up to 10 agents and includes:

Ticketing from email and social media

A knowledge base

Dispatch rules and trend reports

The Enterprise plan includes advanced features like:

Skill-based routing

Audit logs

Bot sessions

Zendesk has three foundational Support plans, the Support Team, Support Professional and Support Enterprise. These tiers range from $19 per agent per month to $115 per agent per month, billed annually.

Zendesk's Tiered Pricing Plans

The least expensive plan includes email and social ticketing, prebuilt integrations, and built-in analytics. The next tier of plans is the Suite plans, which include the Suite Team, Suite Growth, and Suite Professional plans. The Growth and Professional plans both offer multiple help centers, advanced API limits, customizable tickets, and multilingual support.

Zendesk also offers two additional plans geared explicitly toward enterprise businesses. These offer the most customization and data sharing. While Zendesk does not offer a free plan, it offers 14-day free trials for every plan besides its highest-priced enterprise plan.

Best Value: Freshdesk offers more affordable pricing plans than Zendesk, making it a better option for small- to medium-sized businesses. So, if you want a simple solution, Freshdesk can save you money. If you need more support for a larger company, Zendesk may cost more, but it’s worth the bigger price tag.

Automation and Workflows: Streamlining Support Operations

Freshdesk

Freshdesk features a rule-based Dispatcher system that automates assigning, categorizing, and prioritizing tickets as they arrive.

This helps streamline ticket management and ensures each ticket is handled appropriately and efficiently. Similarly, Freshdesk’s Supervisor function, akin to Zendesk’s Automation, performs time-based actions on tickets. It can, for instance, send reminders or escalate tickets based on specific predefined conditions, ensuring timely responses and attention to critical issues.

Observer

Freshdesk includes an Observer feature, which enables real-time actions on tickets through triggers. With Observer, you can set up a rule to notify a manager immediately when a high-priority ticket is created, facilitating prompt and effective handling of urgent matters.

Zendesk

Zendesk’s triggers automate actions based on specific conditions. For instance, tickets can be automatically assigned to a particular agent or group when they meet predefined criteria, streamlining the ticket handling process.

Zendesk features automation, which consists of time-based actions scheduled after a set period. For example, an automation can escalate a ticket if it hasn’t been resolved within a designated timeframe, ensuring no ticket is overlooked.

Macros are another powerful tool in Zendesk; they are predefined responses or actions that can be applied to tickets with a single click. This functionality saves time for agents by automating repetitive tasks, allowing them to focus more on complex issues.

Best Value

Both platforms have user-friendly interfaces for setting up automation rules. Nevertheless, Zendesk’s automation setup might be more intuitive for users who prefer a straightforward, condition-action format.

Zendesk offers a high degree of flexibility in setting up complex automation rules, especially with its combination of:

Triggers

Automation

Macros

Comparing Automation Capabilities

Freshdesk’s Dispatch’r, Supervisor, and Observer also provide a comprehensive automation suite, but some users might find Zendesk’s approach more granular. Both platforms integrate well with other tools and systems, crucial for automation in a broader ecosystem. But this depends on your existing tech stack, the specific integrations available might influence your choice.

Self-Service Options: Getting Customers the Help They Need

Freshdesk

Freshdesk’s knowledge base is designed to be user-friendly, enabling businesses to create articles, guides, and FAQs that help customers resolve issues independently.

The platform also features an intelligent search engine, making it easy for customers to quickly find the information they need within the knowledge base. Freshdesk supports multiple languages, allowing businesses to serve a global audience and offer self-service options in various languages.

Customer-Centric Knowledge Base Improvement

There’s also a feedback system where customers can rate and provide feedback on knowledge base articles, which helps businesses identify the most helpful content and areas needing improvement.

Zendesk

Zendesk offers a customizable Help Center that equips businesses with the tools to create:

Robust knowledge base

FAQs

Community forums

AI-Powered Self-Service for Enhanced Customer Experience

This setup empowers customers to find answers to their questions without contacting support directly. To enhance user experience, Zendesk incorporates AI-powered search technology, improving the search functionality within the Help Center so customers can more easily find relevant articles and solutions.

The platform provides user-friendly content management tools, including rich text editing and version control, making creating and maintaining help-center content simpler. Zendesk also fosters community engagement through its community forums, where customers can:

Ask questions

Share tips

Interact with one another

This enhances peer-to-peer support and builds a sense of community.

Best Value

Zendesk and Freshdesk offer comprehensive self-service options, including knowledge bases and community forums. Zendesk’s AI-powered search and content management tools might be more advanced, making it easier for businesses to maintain and organize their help center content.

Freshdesk’s multilingual support and feedback system are valuable features for businesses with a diverse customer base and those looking to improve their self-service resources continuously.

Integrations: Connecting Your Support Software to Other Tools

Zendesk and Freshdesk work great independently, but they also integrate with various additional tools and systems to help you streamline your support operations. Some popular integrations include:

Trello

Salesforce

Shopify

Slack

Jira

Seamless Integrations for a Unified Customer View

With these integrations, you can sync with platforms you already use to create a complete view of customer data, sales information, and support tickets all in one place. This makes tracking and resolving customer inquiries easier and efficient, keeping other departments involved and looped into support conversations.

When comparing Zendesk versus Freshdesk, Zendesk Marketplace is home to over 1,200 apps and pre-built integrations, and Freshdesk offers more than 1,000 integrations. Both software platforms provide various integrations with other apps and platforms.

Freshdesk allows you to connect apps and tools you already use, such as:

Freshdesk Telephony Partner Extension

Salesforce

Mailchimp

You can also custom-build integrations with the Freshworks Neo platform. This allows you to create and customize according to your business needs efficiently.

Zendesk allows you to integrate with collaboration tools such as:

Zoom

Monday.com

Asana

Atlassian

It also has pre-built integrated apps such as:

Certainly

Shopify

If you don’t see what you need, you can also create pretty much anything using its API and apps framework.

Best Value: Zendesk offers more integrations than Freshdesk, but they both include robust app and integration options, providing similar benefits. The apps and integrations most applicable to your business may vary according to your needs and workflows.

Customization and Branding: Tailoring Your Support Software to Fit Your Needs

Zendesk provides many customization capabilities, but they’re constrained to specific tier plans. Some custom capabilities include:

User and organization fields

Group views

Agent statuses

Triggers and automations

Roles

Permissions

Views

Live-agent status drill-ins

Custom objects

Apps and integrations

Custom training and certifications

Balancing Customization and User Experience in Zendesk Enterprise

With the Zendesk Enterprise plan, you can obliterate the Zendesk branding from your support widgets and customize agent workspaces to maximize their productivity. Nevertheless, the drawback is that editing your company’s Zendesk appearance settings isn’t the most intuitive process. The dashboard and activity feed also lack customization capabilities, not allowing customization for each agent.

Freshdesk is fully customizable so that you can tailor the software. Some customization options include:

Custom fields

Roles

Apps

Ticket status

Workflows

Automation ticket assignments

Custom build reports

Freshdesk also allows you to set up multilingual and time zone support for your global team. You can also customize the branding of your Freshdesk portal to match your company’s colors and logo. This includes the ability to customize the following:

Header

Footer

Other elements of the portal

Please note that not all custom capabilities are included in the Freshdesk plans. Each plan allows for limited custom capabilities.

Best Value

Freshdesk may offer slightly more customization options than Zendesk, particularly regarding ticket forms and workflows. Zendesk, on the other hand, provides a powerful API tool that allows for even more customization options.

With the Zendesk API, you can:

Build custom integrations

Create tickets

Bulk-import resources

Create custom apps

Pull data from external sources

Overall, they both offer robust customization options, but the decision will depend on which features are most useful to your business.

Security: Safeguarding Customer Data

Freshdesk and Zendesk take security seriously and have implemented various security measures to protect customer data.

Freshdesk and Zendesk have strict access controls to ensure only authorized users can access customer data. They also regularly monitor their systems for unusual activity and include a full disaster recovery plan. Each platform offers a wide range of security measures, including:

Vulnerability scanning

Third-party security audits

Role-based access controls

Robust Security and Compliance for Your Business

Freshdesk is a globally secure platform that ensures every business has comprehensive privacy, security, and data protection across all operations. Freshdesk is GDPR, HIPAA, SOC 2, and ISO compliant. By default, all Freshdesk accounts come with a custom SSL certificate.

It uses AES 256-bit encryption to secure communication between your computer and its servers, ensuring all data is stored at rest and backed up.

Zendesk is also compliant with a range of industry standards and regulations, including:

SOC 2

Type II

FedRAMP LISaaS

Zendesk also uses AES-256 key encryption to protect customer data and ensures service data is encrypted at rest in AWS. Zendesk also provides all data between you and Zendesk, which is secure during transit, using industry-standard HTTP/TLS over public networks.

Best Value

Both Zendesk and Freshdesk have robust security measures to protect customer data. Although there may be minor differences in their security practices, both platforms are generally considered highly secure and reliable for managing customer support.

Data and Analytics: Assessing Reporting Features

Both Freshdesk and Zendesk offer reporting features, but they have some differences.

Zendesk reporting is more comprehensive and has a broader range of metrics and more customizable reports. It gives instant access to customer insights offering:

Omnichannel analytics

Analytics to lead CX teams

Real-time historical data

Pre-built dashboards for every channel

Customizable dashboards and charts

The ability to share and schedule dashboards and reports

This level of customization can be powerful, but it can also be more complex and time-consuming to set up and use.

Intuitive Reporting for Data-Driven Insights

Freshdesk reporting is more intuitive and user-friendly, making it easier for non-technical users to get started. It has a library of reports for quick insight, all with rich visualization capabilities and vibrant colors, making them easier to understand.

Freshdesk allows you to customize reports on the fly without coding, customize dashboards, and stay on top of updates with dynamic dashboards and KPI alerts. It offers more out-of-the-box reporting options, while Zendesk requires more customization.

Best Value

Freshdesk reporting is a more straightforward and user-friendly option, while Zendesk reporting provides additional advanced customization options for businesses that require more insights into their support operations.

Knowledge Bases: Comparing Self-Serve Support Options

Both Freshdesk and Zendesk allow businesses to create internal and external knowledge bases. An internal knowledge base is used by employees only, and an external or self-serve knowledge base is customer-facing.

This knowledge-based feature allows businesses to provide self-service customer support through all channels. The knowledge base can be customized with:

Articles

FAQs

Guides

Tutorials

Both platforms offer search functionality and analytics to help businesses understand how their knowledge base is used and where they need improvement.

Freshdesk’s knowledge base has a simple and intuitive interface, making creating and organizing knowledge articles easy. It also includes:

Customization options

Rich text formatting

And more

A Comprehensive Knowledge Base at Your Fingertips

Users can create and organize articles into categories, folders, and solution articles. Freshdesk also offers a powerful search feature and supports 42 languages. You can find answers on any topic while using the product or service with the help widget on the website or in the community forum.

Zendesk offers a robust library of self-serve resources to help you successfully set up and use Zendesk and find answers to common questions from its experts or the Zendesk community.

With Zendesk, you can:

Create custom templates for your knowledge articles

Configure the search bar to auto-suggest articles

Create multiple support request forms

Use advanced formatting options to create more complex articles

Much more

Zendesk also offers several integrations that allow businesses to embed knowledge-base articles into their websites and applications.

Best Value

The difference between the two is that Freshdesk lets you create both kinds of knowledge bases on any of its plans, including its free plan. Since Zendesk doesn’t offer a free plan, you’ll need to pay to access this feature, which is only provided on the Suite and enterprise plans.

Channels: Supporting Customers on Their Preferred Platforms

Zendesk and Freshdesk both provide multichannel support. This feature allows businesses to provide customer support across multiple channels, including:

Chat

Phone

Social media

With this tool, you can engage with customers and configure the channels, making it easier for customers to get the support they need.

Best Value

Zendesk offers support for more channels out of the box than Freshdesk. Freshdesk also does not provide multichannel support on its free plan, so you must upgrade to a paid plan for this feature.

Help Desk Benefits

Customer Experience Automation

SaaS Help Desk

Ticket Escalation

Self Service Customer Support

Service Desk Automation Ideas

Help Desk Benefits

Common Help Desk Problems and Solutions

Best Help Desk Software for Small Business

Generative Ai for Customer Support

Best Incident Management Software

Best Open Source Ticketing System

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