5 Best Zendesk Alternatives for Customer Experience Management

Nishrath

May 15, 2024

Chapters:

A quick story

Buying software in 2023

You deserve better

Better customer experience

Looking for a Zendesk alternative but not sure which one to pick for your business?

If so, you’re in the right place. This post will cover the five best Zendesk alternatives for improving customer engagement in 2024.

We'll go over everything, from each platform's unique features to price point, and then examine why an all-in-one customer experience solution like Mevrik can be a better pick for scaling your business.

Without any further ado, let’s get started.

Why Consider a Zendesk Alternative

Though there are many compelling reasons to consider a Zendesk alternative, some of the most significant ones are:

Cost

Zendesk pricing can be a deal-breaker for startups and small enterprises.

At first glance, it may appear to be an affordable option; however, the pricing structure is set per agent, which means it can quickly scale up and become expensive.

Their most basic plan for an all-in-one support suite starts at $55 per agent per month, while their most advanced plan goes up to $115 per agent per month. Some users, like Kricey M., believe this pricing can…

Get pretty steep as you add on team members, and sometimes the bill ends up pricing companies out.

Along with the monthly cost, many companies have to hire additional help to set up the Zendesk platform in their system, which can take months to complete and can be pricey.

Too Complex Interface

Despite having a clean onboarding process, some users report that Zendesk features are difficult to understand and navigate.

Here’s what a G2 reviewer had to say about Zendesk UI complexities:

Zendesk can be tricky to get started with. There is a lot of setup involved and customisations that are not as intuitive as I'd hoped. I wish we had a dedicated representative throughout the whole user process and not just during implementation. Getting answers to things is more challenging than I'd like...

Feature Limitation

Some businesses may find that while Zendesk provides numerous features for automating ticketing workflows, marketing and sales automation options are somewhat limited compared to other platforms.

Plus, Zendesk lacks some of the most advanced AI assistant features that can help users answer customer inquiries quickly and effectively.

Customer Support

Ironically, one of the main reasons why most businesses want to switch from Zendesk is their own customer service. Many users have reported frustrating support experiences due to slow response times and unhelpful agents.

Customer care manager Alex W. shared his experience with Zendesk support, highlighting lengthy wait times and challenges in communicating effectively with agents:

They have a 2-day SLA and no phone support, and the times I have had to work with them have been incredibly difficult to work with. Very rarely do they understand the issue that I am trying to communicate to them.

5 best Zendesk Alternatives for Customer Experience Management

1. Mevrik

Mevrik

Mevrik is a standout all-in-one Zendesk alternative, especially for businesses looking to improve their customer experience at scale.

Mevrik Digital Customer Experience (DCX) is an AI-powered, all-in-one platform for connecting, engaging, and delighting customers across digital channels.

You can manage all your business interactions from one Unified Omnichannel platform and transform every interaction into a lasting relationship with your customers through meaningful engagement. 

Mevrik DCX empowers you to delight customers, boost sales, and enhance marketing efforts. You can seamlessly manage chats, business emails, social media, tasks, KnowledgeBase, and CSAT, all from one AI-powered Unified Inbox.

Key Features of Mevrik

  1. AI-Powered Unified Inbox: Mevrik automatically gathers customers’ inquiries from multiple channels. It lets you manage your Chats, Calls, Emails, Reviews, Comments, and Social Posts from a single inbox. You will get lifelong conversations about all customer interactions across channels. 
  2. Conversational and Advanced Task Management System: You can answer customer inquiries as soon as they arrive through a conversational UI. If you need further assistance, you can convert inquiries into Tasks and assign them to any proficient team members. You can also manage Task Status, Priority, Task IDs, and Tags. Another amazing thing is that it sends tasks and internal chat notifications. You will be able to manage the entire complaint lifecycle in one place. 
  3. Channels: It supports Web & Mobile SDK for chats & calls, Multiple Email & SMS gateway. Along with 10+ social channels including Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, Telegram & more.
  4. AI-powered Omni-Channel CRM: Mevrik collects historical customer data across all support channels, empowering your business to offer proactive customer support. Agents can smartly categorise leads and track their journey to boost the sales pipeline.
  5. Advanced AI Chatbot: The Mevrik AI chatbot is designed to enhance your team's efficiency. It can provide AI customer service. It can generate human-like conversations, answer common queries, and automate simple tasks so that your agents can focus on work that matters. It supports 130+ languages in text & 70+ in voice
  6. Intelligent Routing: Mevrik uses sentiment analysis, interaction history, and topic labelling to automatically select the suitable agent and route the inquiry accordingly.
  7. Generative AI: Mevrik offers AI Assist, a generative AI tool to boost your agent's productivity. Your team can create a context-aware message in seconds using the tone changer, sentence shortener/extender, grammar, and translation. It also supports AI Agent for unknown queries and away queries reply. 
  8. Knowledge-base management system: Mevrik also has a set of rich knowledge-base tools for creating, editing, and organizing support documents. For example, the automatic AI article generation tool lets you create well-organised and beautifully formatted articles in seconds. It supports multiple languages, and it is highly customizable.  
  9. AI-Powered Automated & Bulk Comment Moderation, Auto reply & more.
  10. AI-powered translation and multilingual audio transcribing facility.
  11. Conversational & Link-based Survey, CSAT & NPS
  12. Industry-standard pre-built reports & analytics
  13. Supports all Enterprise features like SLA (Service Level Agreements) and OLA (Operational Level Agreements) management

Ideal for:

  • Technical support teams
  • Solopreneurs
  • SMBs
  • Large enterprises

Pricing:

  • 14-day free trial is available
  • Starter ($41 per user)
  • Growth ($84 per user)
  • Pro ($132 per user)
  • Enterprise: Request a quote

See all pricing options here

2. Intercom

Intercom

Intercom is yet another well-known platform that provides a suite of features for managing customer interactions. However, unlike Zendesk, its focus goes beyond an automated ticketing system.

With its rich CRM features, Intercom specialises more in analysing customer data to map out sales and marketing funnels than providing customer support.

Key Features of Intercom

  • A modern and intuitive interface to quickly find advanced features.
  • Shared inbox to manage and collaborate on all customer interactions.
  • AI Chatbot Fin, to let customers serve themselves with accurate and fast answers.
  • Customisable report dashboards to visualise emerging trends.

Ideal For

  • Technical support agents
  • Sales and marketing teams
  • Medium-to-large enterprises

Pricing

  • A 14-day free trial is available
  • Essential ($39 per seat/month)
  • Advanced ($99 per seat per month)
  • Expert ($139 per set/month)

Related Read: Best Intercom Alternatives

3. Freshworks

freshworks

Freshworks is another solid customer experience management platform.

Interestingly, the creation of Freshworks was due to Zendesk's rising prices back in 2010. And, since then, it has been an affordable option in the customer experience management industry.

At a fraction of the cost of Zendesk, Freshworks offers AI functionalities, ticketing automation, shared inbox, knowledge base, advanced CRM features, and more.

Key Features of Freshworks

  • Easy-to-setup interface.
  • Shared inbox for organising customer interaction from multiple channels.
  • An AI assistant, Freddy, to help you complete repetitive manual tasks.
  • Integrated live chat capabilities.
  • A budget-friendly option compared to Zendesk.

Ideal for

  • SMBs
  • Large enterprises
  • Global brands

Pricing

  • A free version is available
  • Growth ($15 per agent/month)
  • Pro ($49 per agent/month)
  • Enterprise ($79 per agent per month)

Related Read: Best Freshworks Alternatives

4. Front 

Front

If you are a small team and looking for alternatives with a lower price point, then Front is your answer.

With its robust suite of customer experience management tools, Front lets you connect with your customers when and where they need you the most. 

You can answer customer queries, collaborate with your team, and automate repetitive tasks all from one shared inbox.  

Key features of Front:

  • Modern and sleek interface to open features with minimal clicks.
  • Unified inbox to collect support tickets from multiple channels in a single interface.
  • Built-in collaboration features to deliver results quickly.
  • Complete and customisable knowledge base for each brand.
  • Pre-built and customisable report dashboards allow you to visualise emerging trends from all touchpoints and identify your next customer success strategy.

Ideal for:

  • Technical support agents
  • Small enterprises
  • Startups

Pricing:

  • A 7-day free trial is available
  • Starter ($19 per seat/month)
  • Growth ($59 per seat/month)
  • Scale ($99 per seat/month)
  • Premier ($299 per seat/month)

5. Sprinklr

Sprinklr

Like many other customer experience platforms, Sprinklr consolidates all customer inquiries from multiple channels into one place. But what makes it a more rounded-off marketing alternative to Zendesk is its social listening, monitoring, and engaging capabilities.

The platform can seamlessly perform campaigns across channels, including editing, scheduling, and publishing of social posts. It can then track the performance of each post to understand the behavioural feedback of the target audience.

Key Features of Sprinklr

  • Advanced and automated content management system.
  • Cross-channel social media listening and monitoring.
  • One,unified inbox to receive interaction from multiple channels.
  • Sandbox feature to test new integration in a protected environment.

Ideal for

  • Social media teams
  • mid-sized to large enterprises

Pricing

  • Self-serve :$249
  • Enterprise: request a quote

Related Read: Best Sprinklr Alternatives

Why Should You Choose Mevrik Over Zendesk?

You should pick Mevrik over Zendesk for the following reasons. Let's dig deep!

Centralised Communication to Reduce Back-and-Forth

Mevrik’s unified inbox is a feature that lets you view customer interaction from multiple channels on a single screen. You don't need to create an additional ticket when an inquiry arrives, as it’s conversational ticketing system makes it possible for you to address the queries in real time through the chat window itself.

Plus, you get access to a series of smart features in the right sidebar to personalise the support. Some of the unique features include:

  • A dynamic interaction history, providing an in-depth view of when and where a customer has previously interacted with the brand.
  • A surface-level knowledge base feature that suggests relevant support documents when you are answering a query.
  • Conversation summary to note down key details of the interaction. You can also generate a summary in seconds using the Mevrik generate summary feature.

Better Monitoring of Social Media Channels

Mevrik comes with a suite of social media management tools that lets you connect with multiple platforms, including Facebook (business pages),Instagram (business accounts), and Whatsapp( business and personal accounts).

After connecting with the social accounts, you can either reply, delete, or bulk delete comments from one unified inbox.

It's also got a feature that lets you directly address any questions raised via Instagram stories. This is a feature that none other platforms offer and can be extremely appealing to customers who are looking for a more casual and impermanent way of communicating.

Advanced AI Tools to Reduce Workload

Though Zendesk has its own set of AI features that they are constantly trying to improve, nothing can beat the wide range of AI features that Mevrik provides.

For its AI assistance in emails and chats, Mevrik offers:

  • Translate: Provide high-quality translations to customers in their preferred language.
  • Change Tone: Change the tone of the written content to formal, casual, humorous, or persuasive, depending on the client's emotional state.
  • Smart Reply: Recommends quick responses based on written messages.
  • Expand text: Increase the written message length by adding more depth and details.
  • Shorten text: Focus on the main points to reduce the length of the written message.
  • Correct grammar and spelling: scan messages for grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, and other language issues.
  • Rewrite: Rephrase the written message.

And when it comes to the self-service option, Mevrik offers AI chatbots that can easily identify the language, context, and intent of the customers, so that customers can receive personalised suggestions 24/7.

Affordable and Transparent Pricing

Mevrik is considered one of the most affordable options when it comes to customer experience management, compared to Zendesk. Mevrik's pricing plans start at $41 per user per month, while Zendesk starts at $55 per user per month.

Ease of Use

Delighting customers is what has always defined Mevrik. And nothing could reflect this motto better than inviting your customers to a clean and interactive UI that they can easily navigate.

And, if a person is still having trouble navigating around the platform website, they can quickly self-serve themselves through the Mevrik chatbot or send an email to customer support through the help feature.

Final Thoughts

Ultimately, at the end of the day, your goal should be to find the right platform, not the perfect platform. Each of these platforms has its own unique features and capabilities, but the right platform is the one that aligns with your specific business goals.  

You know your business better than anyone else, so take some time to define your objectives. Once you have a clear understanding of what you want to achieve, choosing the right platform that supports those goals becomes much simpler. Then, get started and watch your business thrive.

If you want to make sure Mevrik is the right platform for your business, sign up for a free trial today!

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