What could be greater than having a showdown between two enormous customer support platforms – Desku and Intercom?
In terms of customer engagement : Desku vs Intercom stand as excellent resources for any business, showcasing their effectiveness in this critical area.
Their features do not measure the greatness of both platforms but instead their capability of connecting, communicating, and resonating with the customers. Both the help desk solutions know how to enhance customer relations through communication.
That’s why today, you will get to see where Desku and Intercom are shining and where they are falling apart. Through this blog, you will also get to know how both platforms are achieving phenomenal customer engagement through their amazing features and user experience.
Key Takeaway :
In the showdown between Desku and Intercom for customer engagement, both platforms offer unique strengths. Desku excels in real-time engagement through its user-friendly interface, live chat, and automated chatbots, making it ideal for businesses seeking instant customer conversations. On the other hand, Intercom stands out for its integration capabilities, seamlessly integrating with various third-party applications to enhance the customer engagement process. Both platforms provide valuable solutions, with Desku focusing on user-friendly real-time engagement and Intercom emphasizing comprehensive integration prowess.
Introduction to Customer Engagement Tools
Today, the success of any business is solely measured through customer satisfaction. This is the only reason businesses are emphasizing customer engagement tools more.
With the help of these tools, you can connect with your customers, have in-depth knowledge about their issues, and will be able to find them a satisfactory solution on the go. This, in turn, would help you build strong bonds with your customers, which would become beneficial in the long run for your company.
Today’s corporate world is highly competitive. If your customers are not going to get full satisfaction from your company, they will move on with others. That’s why conducting a satisfactory customer support process has become a necessity for all companies. Of course, efficiency also matters a lot, as you are not going to have one customer query at a time.
You have to be quick and efficient. This cannot be done better than with customer engagement tools. These tools become valuable for your company through their amazing problem-solving skills.
Besides having personalized client communication, these tools also help you have insights into your customer support to find loopholes and solve them accordingly.
Of course, you would find countless customer engagement tools in this modern world, of which Desku and Intercom are prominent names.
User-Friendliness: Navigating Desku and Intercom
The work of customer engagement tools is not only to manage the customer support processes of any business. They also play a pivotal role in driving user-friendly experiences for their customers. In the case of Desku and Intercom, their user-friendly infrastructure allows customers to engage with them easily. Let’s get to know more about customer experience:
Desku (Top Intercom alternative)
When you visit the Desku dashboard, you will get to see how user-friendly its infrastructure is. It is very easy to access and navigate. Moreover, you will get to see its navigational menu, which is highly organized.
You would have your path clear and concise as to where you would reach. Due to the simplicity of its dashboard, Desku’s learning curve is smooth (smoother than Zendesk and FreshDesk, too!). It would not take much time to understand Desku.
Overall, it proves to be an efficient help desk solution for businesses that cannot afford to invest much time in learning the application.
Intercom
Intercom, on the other hand, also offers a smooth user experience. Its infrastructure is so simple that even beginner-level users would also be able to use it with ease. Its features are located perfectly, quickly catching the visitor’s attention.
Thus, the users would not have any difficulty navigating through different Intercom functionalities. Moreover, Intercom’s infrastructure is quick in responding, which would eliminate all the chances of buffering at any stage.
Honest word
User-friendliness does not merely mean how well the application’s features are working. It is more than that. It also means how well the application is adapting to the changes, its integration level, and much more. Both the applications, Desku and Intercom, excel in terms of adaptation and responsiveness.
Both customer support solutions, Desku and Intercom, know how important it is to serve user-friendliness in order to enhance customer engagement. That’s why not one out of the two is falling back in terms of providing a user-friendly environment to its users.
Feature Showdown: Desku’s Strengths
Desku can be considered to be an enormous giant with a huge list of outstanding features. All of its features have been solely designed to help your business excel in terms of building strong customer relations through good experience.
Aligning Multi-Channel Communication:
The first and foremost feature where Desku is excelling is its multi-channel communication support. The sole reason for this is today, due to the availability of various communication platforms, it has become a necessity for businesses to operate on all communication platforms.
Whether it’s a matter of communicating via email or phone call, Desku will ensure you conduct seamless interaction with your customers.
Self-Service Knowledge Base Portal:
Many times, customers have queries related to features, products, steps, payments, checkouts, etc. To overcome this challenge, Desku has integrated a knowledge base corner within it. Businesses can develop their knowledge base from where customers can find answers to their common queries by themselves. This would help them resolve their issues quickly.
Automated ChatBots:
Through its automated chatbot functionality, Desku helps enhance your workforce’s overall efficiency. These chatbots efficiently automate common tasks like regular customer queries and provide guidance to new customers. They are available 24/7, thus assuring your customers to help them out anytime. This would allow you to focus on more important tasks with a sigh of relief.
Third-Party Integration Tools:
Businesses are going to need different applications to conduct smooth operations efficiently. For this, they will need to integrate third-party applications. Knowing this, Desku becomes highly flexible in terms of third-party integrations. It becomes compatible with any third-party application on the go, thus allowing a unified workflow. You can also cherish our detailed guide on Desku vs. Intercom integrations to know more.
HelpDesk Support Ticketing System:
The help desk ticketing system by Desku has become a great way of increasing the overall efficiency of your customer support process. It follows a systematic approach to ticket handling where you can categorize the issues into different tickets, prioritize the issues, and resolve them accordingly.
Customer Management for Saving:
Desku not only helps you resolve customer queries efficiently, but it also provides a strategic way to manage your customer data. Through its customer management feature, Desku allows you to create a centralized repository where you can maintain all your customer data, such as their issues and needs. This way will allow you to have a deeper understanding of your customer’s issue and will give ideas for solving it.
Feature Showdown: Intercom’s Unique Offerings
When it comes to features, Intercom has been ruling all of its competitors by achieving high advancements. This is the only reason large-size businesses always prefer Intercom over other customer engagement solutions in the market.
Now, it’s time to have a look at some of its amazing features:
Live Chat
Although email and phone calls are considered effective communication channels, live chat is considered the superior among all. You can conduct live conversations with your customers through the intercom’s live chatting functionality. This really helps you out in finding immediate customer solutions, which would, in turn, boost customer engagement levels on the go.
Customer Data
Customer’s stored data helps you understand your customer’s issue in detail. Such in-depth analysis becomes a good resource for finding the best solutions to your customer’s issues.
Through Intercom’s customer data feature, you can store all of your customer data, segmentize it, and share it whenever needed. Although Intercom is becoming unique through this feature, its complexity level might make it difficult for users to operate it smoothly.
Chatbots
Chatbots have become a good helping medium for answering common questions and conversing with your customers. Intercom basically provides three types of chatbots: Custom chatbots, task chatbots, and resolution chatbots.
Through Intercom’s task bots, you can create automation for simple tasks like providing suggestions to help guides and requesting your customers to rate their conversations. Such chatbots become very effective for conducting automation for targeted messages. You will be able to find task bots in every Intercom pricing plan.
The other two chatbot types of Intercom, custom, and resolution, have advanced functionalities. These chatbots will first store the customer data within it and converse with them accordingly. Moreover, Intercom allows you to create your custom chatbots as per your requirements through its built-in bot templates. Setting these custom chatbots is not at all difficult.
Reports
Intercom’s reports feature lets you get insights into every conducted live chat and customer support process. This feature advances as per the pricing plan. The advanced plan will provide an effective report through which you get to know the efficiency of all your customer agents.
Moreover, these reports get updated quickly as soon as the live chat takes place. However, it might not be able to cover some metrics like the graphs shared during the live chat.
Do you want to learn more? Check out our detailed guide on Desku vs Intercom features.
The Battle of Integrations
Desku’s Integration Capabilities:
Regarding integration capabilities, Desku moves forward with its head held high as it provides open channels for third-party integrations. The integration capabilities of Desku allow you to integrate with any third-party application seamlessly without conducting any sort of fragmentation process.
Desku opens gates for integrations with diverse CRM systems. This would allow you to store your customer data at a unified location, which would enhance your decision-making power. Besides this, Desku also opens integration gates for the different e-commerce applications so you can watch every e-commerce process.
Desku provides API flexibility through which you can customize your customer support application anytime according to your requirements. This shows how Desku can easily fit into any operational framework.
Understanding the need for multiple communication channels for businesses, Desku allows integrations with different communication applications.
Desku’s integration with analytics and reporting tools will extract insights from customer interactions, measure their effectiveness level, and suggest solutions based on the data.
Through its integration with social media platforms, Desku will allow you to connect with your customers on social platforms and interact with them to enhance your customer engagement process in all forms.
Intercom’s Seamless Connections:
Through its smooth integration with third-party applications, Intercom increases the overall efficiency of business operations and eliminates the need to have unwanted silos in your workflows. Due to its high compatibility with different applications, Intercom gives an open invite to an ocean of third-party applications.
Understanding the need for personalized communications for seamless customer engagement, Intercom opens integration opportunities for CRM systems. Such integration will allow you to have a centralized repository for storing your customer data. This data will become extremely helpful for you to add a personalization touch to your interactions with customers.
Moreover, Intercom also opens doors for integrations with various e-commerce platforms. This integration will not only play a role in resolving customer queries but will also conduct every single step, from product selection to after-sales support, with ease.
Additionally, it integrates analytics and reporting tool sets that support informed intelligence. This facilitates the adaptation of customer engagement management strategies in organizations by paying attention to performance parameters.
To note, Intercom acknowledges that social media drives modern-day consumer interaction. As such, it offers an integration with different social platforms for more effective ways to communicate with clients from disparate communication avenues and provides an overall strategy for client communication.
Are you interested in learning more about Intercom’s capabilities? Cherish our Intercom review, where we’ve explained in-depth about Intercom’s every essential functionality.
Decision Making: Desku vs Intercom Customer Engagement
Tailored Solutions for Varied Needs:
Both Desku and Intercom excel in terms of providing great customer engagement solutions, and better ROI. With its user-friendly infrastructure and multi-channel communication support, Desku becomes perfect for businesses that are searching for an intuitive customer support platform.
Intercom, through its high integration capabilities, becomes a Hubspot for easily integrating with third-party applications to enhance the customer engagement process of the business.
Ease of Use vs. Integration Prowess:
Their ease of use and integration prowess make Desku and Intercom stand apart from each other. Desku provides an easy-to-access user interface through which navigating through different tools becomes easy. Due to this, Desku’s learning curve is low. At the same time, Intercom excels in integrations. Due to its highly compatible nature, Intercom flawlessly integrates with different third-party applications.
Real-time Engagement vs. Comprehensive Connectivity:
Both platforms have different strengths. Desku’s strength lies in providing real-time engagement through its two features: live chat and automated chatbots. Through these two features, Desku becomes helpful for businesses that are searching for ways to start instant conversations with their customers.
On the contrary, Intercom has become a prominent customer engagement tool through its integration capabilities. Whether it’s integrating with CRMs or e-commerce platforms, Intercom becomes compatible with all applications.
Unified Data vs. Dynamic Flexibility:
Through features such as customer management, the Desku customer service platform strives for harmonized multi-channel communication and one unified data strategy. This makes it possible to store all customer information in one place, thus allowing for easy retrieval by businesses. Additionally, the intercom, with its open API, provides flexibility with CRM incorporation and enables the incorporation of the platform within a business’s operating practices.
Are you curious to know about the downsides of Intercom as well? You can read our comprehensive guide about Intercom pros and cons, where we’ve exposed both the negatives and biggest advantages of integrating Intercom.
Price Structures and Value Proposition:
Pricing plans and the perceived value that each model contributes as part of the company’s decision-making process should also be taken into account. Desku might interest organizations looking for simple alternatives based on this focused array of functions. However, Intercom needs bigger investments by companies that need a highly integrated and specialized solution in a customer engagement ecosystem. Also, you can read an in-depth guide about Desku vs Intercom pricing if you wish to compare the pricing segment more between these two platforms.
Conclusion
Now, your mind might be struggling between Desku and Intercom. Both platforms excel in different functionalities. Desku has become a star as a customer engagement solution through its user-friendly infrastructure and real-time engagement solutions. Intercom is becoming the best platform by having high-end integration capabilities. You get a free trial with either customer support software.
Desku helps businesses improve customer support like no other all-in-one customer support tool in 2023, and that makes it the best Intercom alternative. You can automate your customer answers, and because of its very easy-to-use interface, your customer support team will always find it easy to elevate your customer support in terms of productivity and customer satisfaction.
So, choose the best customer service software for customer success – try Desku today!
FAQs
How does Intercom’s integration capability enhance customer engagement?
Intercom excels in integrating with third-party applications, including CRM systems, e-commerce platforms, and analytics tools. This allows businesses to streamline workflows, centralize customer data, and maintain a cohesive customer engagement strategy.
Which platform is better for real-time customer interaction, Desku or Intercom?
Desku is better suited for real-time customer interaction, thanks to its live chat and chatbot features. These tools ensure instant responses, improving customer satisfaction and engagement on the spot.
Are there significant differences in the learning curve for Desku and Intercom?
Yes, Desku has a smoother learning curve due to its intuitive dashboard and simple navigation. Intercom, while user-friendly, might pose challenges for some users because of the complexity of its advanced features.
Can both Desku and Intercom be integrated with other tools, and how do they compare?
Both platforms support third-party integrations, but Intercom offers more comprehensive options, making it ideal for businesses requiring advanced connectivity. Desku also supports integrations but focuses more on ease of use and functionality.