Zendesk Review 2023: Features, Pricing, Support, Pros & Cons

It's the 21st century, and in this century, customers expect excellent service across all channels.

Long gone are the days when people had the patience to wait on hold for hours just to speak to a live agent. Now they require a seamless experience and a quick resolution to their problems. 

As a result, the omnichannel help desk software industry is booming. 

And one of the most popular tools is Zendesk or Zendesk for Service, to be precise.

This is the tool that promises to increase agent productivity and customer satisfaction. 

In this Zendesk review, we’ll see what the software is good for, dive deeper into its best features, and look at what real customers are saying about using the product. 

Let’s begin!

Zendesk review 2023: Is Zendesk any good?

Writing this Zendesk review required detailed research and analysis. We looked at what customers are saying about the software and did our own testing, and we can safely conclude that Zendesk is the perfect tool for running your customer support organization. Customers of today expect fast and simple service, and Zendesk helps you meet customers' needs.

The platform supports omnichannel customer service, which is crucial for customer satisfaction and loyalty. Overall, Zendesk ensures the entire experience—from submitting a request to resolving the customer issue—is fast, stress-free, and successful. You can rest assured that nothing will fall between the cracks, and the customer will enjoy the best possible experience. 

At the same time, the software sets support teams up for success with features like one unified workspace, automation, and self-service options. Moreover, the Zendesk MonkeyLearn integration makes this software even more versatile and effective for sales teams. Also, customer support teams undoubtedly started benefitting after Zendesk acquired Base.

Whether you're a small business or an enterprise, there's a pricing plan for every company size. The pricing works on a per agent per month basis, and you have eight separate monthly plans at your disposal. The user interface is intuitive, even for beginners. This ease of use means onboarding your team shouldn't take more than a few hours or days, depending on their experience.

Functionality is also exceptional, especially in terms of ticket management. Ticket management is where Zendesk shines by making it simple to track, prioritize, and solve customer support tickets seamlessly and speedily. You can use automation like AI Bots so that customers receive instant assistance, freeing your agents to focus on more important tasks and saving your business time and money. 

We even voted Zendesk as the best help desk software out of 20 similar platforms like Freshdesk, Zoho Desk, and Salesforce Service Cloud. Make sure you read this post to see how Zendesk compares against similar solutions. 

Zendesk pricing plans

First of all, how much does Zendesk cost? Let’s first review Zendesk prices:

How much does Zendesk cost for nonprofits?

Although Zendesk doesn’t offer discounts for nonprofit organizations, it has a wide range of monthly plans that can be adaptable to organizational size and needs. 

Are there any Zendesk coupon codes or promo discount vouchers?

We did the research, and it seems there are no Zendesk coupon codes or discount vouchers at this time.

Zendesk free vs paid: what’s the difference?

Unfortunately, Zendesk doesn't offer a free plan. The good news is that there's a wide choice of monthly plans, each one with a free trial. 

In terms of pricing plans, there are two packages: Zendesk Support and Zendesk Suite. The former comes with more lightweight features and is geared toward smaller companies that don’t need a ton of features. Plans start at $19 per agent per month and go up to $99 per agent per month. 

Zendesk Suite is more robust and enables you to deliver personalized customer support across all of your business channels like email, voice, chat, and more. The suite is available in five pricing levels to suit your business needs. Plans start at $49 per agent per month and go up to $215 per agent per month for the Enterprise Plus plan. All Zendesk Suite plans include fundamental features like a ticketing system, multichannel messaging, live chat, a unified agent workspace, reporting and analytics, and integrations via the Zendesk Marketplace.

Zendesk has a startups program that gives early-stage startups access to Zendesk free of charge for six months. During the program, startups will have unlimited access to Zendesk products and training.

Zendesk overview: what is Zendesk & what is Zendesk used for?

Zendesk is an omnichannel help desk software that comes with all the key features a business needs to offer an exceptional customer experience and create stronger customer relationships. Founded in Copenhagen, Denmark, with headquarters in San Francisco, Zendesk has been in the game of online helpdesk solutions since 2007.

The core functionality of Zendesk is to assist customer service, IT, and HR teams manage, organize, and prioritize support requests from one central place. The software lets you serve customers over their preferred channels, whether that is email, live chat, phone, or messaging platforms. You can also set up AI bots to interact with customers and offer quick answers to simpler questions.

With triggers, you can create automated workflows like assigning tickets to the right rep, escalating urgent tickets, notifying customers when you're out of the office, and more. Zendesk's customizable self-service software lets you create fast and easy-to-use portals for your customers, including FAQs and community forums. You can track customer satisfaction scores, internal KPIs, and more with analytics.

Zendesk features list

The main features of Zendesk are:

• Ticket management

• Automation

• Self-service portal

• Omnichannel support

• Integrated voice software

• Analytics and reporting

• Integrations 

Ticket management

Zendesk comes with powerful ticket management features that ensure nothing falls through the cracks and each customer receives a personalized and timely response to their inquiries and concerns. 

Whether a customer gets in touch via live chat, phone, email, or social media, every submission will create a ticket that goes into Zendesk. The ticket that goes into Zendesk will contain detailed information about the customer who submitted it, including their order history, loyalty status, web activity, and more, so that agents provide more personalized service. 

Tickets can be assigned manually or automatically. Agents can even collaborate with other team members on tickets and share internal notes for easier and faster resolution. You can give limited permission to key team members so they can stay informed and provide expertise via private comments. Once the issue is resolved, the customer will receive a message via their preferred communication channel. Additionally, admins can create workflows and assign different levels of responsibility to agents.

The SLA functionality helps agents prioritize tickets so they can answer the most urgent ones first. 

Automation

Automations and triggers are powerful features that take the burden off of agents by putting tickets where they should go and completing repetitive tasks automatically. An automated ticketing system can provide quick answers to less complex issues and make agents more readily available to handle tougher issues. 

You can activate the AI bot to answer customer queries and have agents jump in only when necessary. The good thing is that by activating the AI bot, you’ll enable 24/7 customer support. Instead of employing hundreds of customer support agents, you can have the AI bot interact with customers during those hours when agents aren’t available. You can add a bot to support channels like messaging, email, Slack, and more. With the Flow Builder, you can create the conversation between a bot and your customers and translate it into multiple languages. 

Self-service software

Self-service is practical for customers and handy for agents. Zendesk offers knowledge base software that is simple to customize and use, letting you create different types of knowledge bases, including an internal and external knowledge base, an IT knowledge base, and a support agent-only knowledge base. 

And get this: you can even translate your help articles into more than 40 different languages. You can also create multiple help centers that cater to different audiences, regions, or brands. 

External knowledge bases can contain hundreds of help articles where customers can find the answer to their questions without contacting a live agent. You'll have the complete freedom to organize your knowledge base as you see fit. 

In addition to knowledge bases, Zendesk also lets you create community forums where your customers can connect and collaborate. Instead of contacting agents or reading help articles, people can simply look for relevant answers to their questions in the community forum. With Zendesk, you’ll be able to top users with badges, add statuses to posts, escalate posts to agents when one-on-one help is needed, and more. Just like with knowledge bases, you can create multiple communities for different audiences, regions, or brands. 

Omnichannel support

With Zendesk, you can provide an omnichannel customer experience where customer interactions can move seamlessly from one channel to another. Customers can contact you through various channels, including email, phone, live chat, and messaging platforms like Facebook Messenger, Line, and WhatsApp.

Let's say a customer gets in touch with you via live chat. If their issue is going to take a day or two to resolve, they can have the option to receive their response via email. Or, if the problem they have is more complex and very urgent, they have the option to talk to a live agent via Zoom. The agent who will be assisting them will receive all the relevant information, meaning the customer won't have to repeat themselves. 

And the good thing is that all customer interactions, including those from email, live chat, and on messaging apps like Whatsapp, go into a centralized workspace, so agents get all the context they need to help customers. Agents can switch channels and add or subtract bots as needed.

Integrated voice software 

The integrated voice software comes in handy when your agents are dealing with more complex issues. If a customer has a more complex problem that can't be solved via email communication, you can speak directly with them to deliver a more personalized solution.

The integrated voice solution syncs with all other channels and lets agents immediately see customer information. You can start or take customer calls from the same interface you use for your other channels. If a customer calls, you'll have all their information at hand to get a sense of why they're calling. Once the call ends, the call recording will be attached to the corresponding ticket for easy reference.

Analytics and reporting

Data is always intimidating, but Zendesk makes understanding your customers simpler. The reporting and analytics features give you instant access to customer insights that can improve your business. You can track customer satisfaction scores, internal KPIs, and more with analytics.

Integrations

Zendesk integrates with 1,200+ third-party apps via the Zendesk Marketplace. You’ll find integrations with all kinds of tools, including CRMs, marketing and lead generation, IT and project management, and even customer feedback and quality management platforms like Stella Connect.

Zendesk's API is also a great tool for building any app you need. You can even place the app you build in The Zendesk Marketplace for other Zendesk users to find. 

Zendesk has seamless integration with tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams. For instance, team members can receive real-time notifications on these platforms when there's a new or updated ticket in Zendesk. What's more, they'll be able to use message actions in either tool to create new tickets or add notes to existing tickets in Zendesk.

Another neat integration is with Zoom. Agents can launch Zoom meetings with customers right from a Zendesk support ticket. And when the call ends, the call/video recording will be posted as a private comment on the corresponding ticket. 

Zendesk pros and cons

Here are the advantages and disadvantages of Zendesk:

Zendesk advantages

Zendesk brings all customer communications into one place. This means that tickets from different channels will be funneled into one workspace. This can not only help service agents but improve other systems, such as your CRM, as you can easily share data between the two systems. You can even integrate Zendesk Service with Zendesk Sell, which is Zendesk's own CRM product. Additionally, you'll be able to integrate Zendesk Service with other CRM systems via the Zendesk Marketplace. 

Not to mention the importance of omnichannel support that Zendesk does so well. You can meet customers where they are and provide them with personalized support. Agents can easily transfer the conversation from a chat app to an email, from an email to a phone call. Customers can choose how they'd like to continue the conversation or how they'd like to get notified of a reply later on. This can be crucial for customer engagement, satisfaction, and retention.

Customers are not the only ones who can benefit from a solution like Zendesk. Customer support agents will be freed up to focus on more important tasks, while customers will resolve issues independently with the help of AI bots and community forums. With features like side conversations, agents can collaborate with other team members without ever leaving the ticket. Even people from other teams can collaborate on tasks and projects. You can link and create Zendesk tickets through platforms like Jira, Trello, and Asana.

Zendesk disadvantages

Zendesk is one of the most expensive help desk solutions on the market that doesn’t offer a free plan. Its pricing plans come with a high price tag, starting at $19 per agent per month for the more lightweight plans, and $49 per agent per month for the more robust Zendesk Suite plans. If we compare Zendesk vs Freshdesk, or any other popular player in the industry, Zendesk is the most expensive.

Freshdesk has a free plan that’s free for up to 10 agents and its paid plans start at $15/month/agent. Zoho Desk also has a freemium version that’s perfect for businesses with minimal needs. Plans start at $14/agent/month and go up to $40 for the most expensive plan that includes all the features. 

Another downside of Zendesk is that the best support features are only available at higher pricing tiers. For example, the more powerful features like the Answer Bot and the Flow Builder are only available with the Zendesk Suite plans that start at $49 per agent per month. Not only that, for $49, you can only deliver up to 50 answers.

The Community forum features are only available if you subscribe to the Suite Professional plan or up. The collaboration tools are only unavailable with the cheapest Suite plan. The Zendesk Support plans also lack features like live chat and messaging, and the self-service software. 

Zendesk complaints & praise (from real Zendesk customer reviews)

User reviews of Zendesk reveal a few things about the software’s perks. Many users love how Zendesk centralizes all points of contact with customers, resulting in better team efficiency and customer experience. Moreover, they say agents find it easy to collaborate with each other and resolve tickets much quicker than before. Many businesses were worried that the COVID-19 pandemic would negatively impact the customer experience, but with Zendesk, their response times were hardly affected. 

Some users even go on to say they feel ready to grow their business, knowing that Zendesk comes with all the features to support their business as it scales. 

A few positive comments praise the ease of setting up ticket forms and fields to capture the necessary customer information and deliver personalized customer service. Users also love the wide option of integrations. People especially seem to love the Slack integration that enables all support tickets to be sent to a Slack channel, informing everyone of what's happening. 

Several people seem to like the reporting and analytics features of Zendesk. The software helps them keep track of metrics like how many tickets they're getting, how many of them are solved, the average resolution time, most resolved tickets by agent, and more. 

Most of the negative Zendesk reviews seem to be related to the pricing. Users say the software is quite expensive for smaller and mid-sized companies. They complain about how getting access to the software's best features means paying $99/agent/month, which at times affects their ROI. Other negative reviews mention how the company often releases new features but doesn't update the knowledge base simultaneously.

Review of Zendesk support

You can get in touch with Zendesk customer support via various channels. There's an extensive knowledge base and a community forum where you can look for answers on your own. Additionally, there's email support, live chat, and 24/7 phone support for users of the highest pricing tiers. 

Is Zendesk worth it? Final points

There are many reasons to love Zendesk. The ticket management solution is superb, and it supports omnichannel engagement with customers. The knowledge base management system works seamlessly, and the reporting capabilities are excellent.

But is Zendesk worth it? 

In short, yes. Although Zendesk might be one of the most expensive help desk solutions on the market, its suite of powerful features justifies the high price. 

How good is Zendesk? Well, the fact that Zendesk joined Unity’s Verified Solutions Partner Program as the first CX platform says a lot about the tool and how it can be used to provide seamless customer support, even in the gaming industry.

With that said, Zendesk is more geared toward midsize to large businesses that deal with hundreds, if not thousands, of tickets on a weekly basis. It can also be a smart option if you have a large user base and need to provide 24/7 customer support. Zendesk can be of great help if you're looking for a scalable solution to support the growth of your business, especially if you consider additional purchases. Our Zendesk Sell review will teach you how you can use this additional tool to scale your business.

If you’re a startup or a small business with a tight budget, Zendesk’s pricing plans might be too expensive. There are other, more cost-effective options available that could be a better fit. Take a look at this list of the 10 best Zendesk alternatives that includes solutions with similar features but more affordable plans.