Zendesk vs Freshdesk: Are you confused between the two?

In our survey, a large proportion – 60% of consumers reportedly ended business relationships with a company due to “long response times.” Not only a real-time response but omnichannel support, skilled representatives, good self-service, and live chat are crucial too.

This is where a helpdesk software that best matches your requirements, can help you provide a unified and real-time customer service experience.

In this post, we’ll go through an in-depth comparison between two of the top helpdesk software: Zendesk vs Freshdesk. It will give you a fair idea as to which out of the two helpdesk software might be the best suited for you.

In this post, we’ll cover the following topics:

• Zendesk vs Freshdesk: Overview
• Zendesk vs Freshdesk: In-depth comparison
• Zendesk vs Freshdesk: Is there a clear winner?

Zendesk vs Freshdesk: Overview

– Zendesk

Established in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 2011, Zendesk has gained recognition as a “service-first CRM company”. They provide services in the field of sales as well as customer service. They are best known for providing various customization, automation, and integration options.

Zendesk aims to create an efficient and smooth ticketing system that would be convenient for both the customer and the agent.

– Freshdesk

Freshdesk is best known to be a cloud-based customer service software that was founded in the year 2010 in Chennai, India. They are best recognized for their self-service portal, wherein, the customers can mostly find a solution for their own queries. 

Freshdesk aims to deliver the best customer service by optimizing the smooth flow of information across all channels that can be viewed through a single location.

Zendesk vs Freshdesk: In-depth comparison

1. Customer Portal
2. Live Chat
3. Voice Support
4. Social Media
5. Automation
6. Reports

1. Customer portal

a) Checking status of their support requests

By checking the status of support requests, customers can search through previous interactions or tickets that they’re CC’d on. This way the customers can find answers to questions that they’ve already asked. Also, it’s a great way to tackle repetitive queries, saving time for both the customer as well as your team.

– Zendesk’s customer portal gives customers the option to track their support requests from a single place. However the option ‘Mark as solved’ is not available in Zendesk. Thus, requestors aren’t allowed to mark tickets as ‘Solved’ in help center, only an agent can close a ticket.

– Freshdesk, on the other hand, also offers a self-service portal, wherein, customers can find solutions to basic and repetitive queries. Additionally, customers can not only track and check the status of their support requests but they can also close tickets by themselves once this issue is resolved, which is a plus point in our opinion.

Winner: Freshdesk

b) Portal customization

Portal customization is a key feature that you should look for. Because it helps you come up with logos and custom themes that best match the look and feel of your brand.

– On Zendesk’s customer portal, you can customize most of the portal right from your brand logo, the color of the portal, themes, knowledge base, help center, and layout of the article pages.

– Freshdesk’s customer portal also offers you various portal customization options like custom themes, custom colors, and custom brand logos. Also, you get an option to integrate with Freshthemes and set a customizable theme for your portal.

Winner: Both

c) Knowledge base

A knowledge base is a type of self-service option through which customers can find answers to basic and frequently asked questions. Providing a knowledge base is a good way to redirect a significant proportion of tickets and reduce the workload on your customer service team.

– Zendesk provides you with the option to build your own knowledge base with the help of the Zendesk guide. Zendesk’s knowledge base offers various types of information like IT knowledge base, internal knowledge base, and support-agent knowledge base.

– On the other hand, the knowledge base of Freshdesk allows you to add various articles and important platform information that helps provide quality self-service. Freshdesk’s knowledge base offers a wide range of information that includes email channel, configuring automation, agent guide, end-user experience, customer portal set up, help widget, self-service setup, reporting and analytics, and Freshdesk API.

Winner: Both

d) Community/Forum 

Forums are a customer portal feature that provides businesses with an opportunity to build communities with their users. This enables customers to interact and help each other by answering each other’s questions and sharing best practices. Also, it helps save support agents a lot of time. Customers can get help from other community users who have experienced a similar issue and found a helpful workaround.

– On Zendesk, a customer can start a new discussion and can request a new feature by commenting on the forum. Also, Zendesk provides the admin with a feature wherein they can either moderate content or set a filter for abusive words and spam words. The admin can remove abusive and vulgar content by unchecking the  “Display unsafe content” feature.

– On Freshdesk, you can fully moderate the topics and the comments of end-users. Whenever a user posts a new topic, it will require prior approval by the admin. Freshdesk offers 3 types of settings: “moderate all topics and replies containing external links”, “moderate all topics and replies”, and “do not moderate”. Also, Freshdesk provides a “report an error” option to block abusive content.

Winner: Both

e) Submit a new support request/Ticket submission 

Ticket submission is a customer portal feature that enables customers to get in touch with a company’s support team. Customers usually submit a support request when they are unable to find answers to their questions in the knowledge base articles and community forums. The section allows customers to do various things ranging from submitting support requests, managing their tickets, reading their ticket history, and tracking the progress of each ticket.

– Zendesk gives you the option to submit a new support request with attachments on their customer portal.

– Freshdesk too offers the same features. However, Freshdesk gives its customers the option to describe their requests and format the text according to their will.

Winner: Freshdesk

f) Auto-suggestion of solutions  

Every time a new ticket is created on the customer portal, the customers get auto-suggested solutions in the form of articles that might help them solve their own queries.

Freshdesk offers the auto-suggest solutions feature while creating a new ticket. In this feature, Freshdesk analyzes the subject or the keywords that you already have a knowledge base article on and then suggests the same to the customer.

Winner: Freshdesk

Final Winner: Freshdesk

We can see that Freshdesk clearly offers a slightly smoother and better customer portal and knowledge base. Freshdesk helps the customers access their interactions, track their status, and self-serve their basic queries easily.

2. Live chat

a) Live chat interface 

The live chat UI allows users to communicate with each other, request detailed information, and share interesting product experiences or events.

Both Zendesk and Freshdesk offer a user-friendly live chat interface that helps them easily pose their queries with the best-suited agent.

Winner: Both

b) Live chat to ticketing 

The process of converting live chat messages to tickets is one of the most common features of live chat support. The feature converts all the customer’s message requests to tickets that can be viewed by the agent from a single place.

• In Zendesk, every time a customer chats, a ticket gets created automatically. While it is certainly a positive thing it can sometimes lead to a huge amount of spam tickets as well.

– Freshdesk does not create live chat tickets automatically. The agent can decide whether the ticket for the conversation is required or not. This helps agents to easily ignore or discard spam conversations instantly.

Winner: Freshdesk

c) Live chat analytics 

Live chat analytics offer various live chat reports and analytics that help in improving agent performance and overall engagement.

Zendesk offers the following live chat analytics:

1. Chat Report (Tab)
2. Custom report (Up to 90 days) (hourly report)
3. Satisfaction ratings
4. Agents report (Tab)
5. Individual agent profile
6. Chat timing

Freshdesk offers the following live chat analytics:

1. Time period report (Unlimited time)
2. Conversation Overview
3. Productivity
4. Volume
5. Team Performance
6. Productivity Metrics
7. CSAT Metrics
8. Online time
9. Bot Performance
10. Message in-depth
11. Conversations In-depth
12. APIs – Overview and Performance
13. Bot Session Consumption

Winner: Both

d) Canned response 

Canned responses are yet another common feature of live chat support. In it, you can set predefined messages for basic and repetitive queries.

Both Zendesk and Freshdesk offer almost similar options for creating canned responses that help the customers find an answer to basic queries.

Winner: Both

e) Triggered message/Auto response/Advanced automation

A triggered message is a kind of outreach (e.g. live chat, email) that is sent in direct response to an action taken by the message recipient.

Zendesk provides you with the option to set custom triggers by defining various conditions and their subsequent actions. You can also name your trigger and describe it so that the other agents of your group stay aware of the newly created triggers.

However, if you have to use the triggers option on Freshdesk, you would need to install an official app offered by Freshdesk.

Winner: Zendesk

f) Live chat campaign 

The live chat campaign feature helps engage your customers and leads by sending proactive contextual messages.

A live chat campaign is an exclusive feature offered by Freshdesk, that offers a new way to engage your customers and leads by sending proactive contextual messages at the right time in Freshdesk Messaging. The live chat campaign feature is a bit different from a normal triggered message, as it helps you keep track of your campaign with various tracking options like “sent”, “seen”, and “replies”. Moreover, it helps you nurture prospects, onboard new users, upsell to customers, and send in-app and push messages based on customer actions on your app/website.

Winner: Freshdesk

g) Offline experience

The offline experience of live chat helps in proactively conveying to customers that you are currently away. Also, it prompts customers to leave detailed descriptions of their problems, creates a separate view for all ‘away conversations’, and auto-converts ‘away conversations’ to tickets.

Both Zendesk and Freshdesk offer a similar offline experience functionality that helps alert customers when you’re not online.

 Winner: Both

h) CSAT 

Customer Satisfaction or CSAT is yet another very common feature provided by live chat support. As the name suggests, it helps you measure customer satisfaction. CSAT is a great way to find out the satisfaction levels of your customer and then accordingly come up with strategies to improve the CSAT score.

– Zendesk’s satisfaction Ratings section displays the proportion of chats that received Good and Bad ratings during the specified time frame.

– Freshdesk, on the other hand, offers CSAT features such as additional feedback and feedback conditions that help you select when to ask for ratings and when to avoid them.

Winner: Freshdesk

i) Appearance setting 

The appearance setting helps you customize the theme and color of your live chat channel. With it, you can customize your live chat to a setting that best suits your brand image.

– Zendesk just allows setting title, name, and byline.

– However, Freshdesk allows you to customize your background and appearance as well.

Winner: Freshdesk

j) Banned users 

Banning users who post abusive or spam content is quite crucial. You can block such users by entering their IP addresses. Blocking an IP address will ensure all current and new users from the IP address are blocked and would, therefore, not disturb or hinder your team and get in the way of your overall productivity.

Both Zendesk and Freshdesk offer similar functions.

Although, Zendesk offers a slightly better banned-user functionality, as it asks for the reason for the ban. Through it, you can easily rectify why a particular IP was banned.

Winner: Zendesk

k) Chat routing

The chat routing feature of live chat helps you prioritize and route incoming chats to the right operator based on easy to set up rules and conditions.

– Zendesk offers the broadcast and auto-assign feature for chat routing. In the Broadcast setting, all incoming chats are equally distributed to the available agents as per the set amount of chats per head. By using the auto-assign feature, the chat will be auto-assigned as per the agents’ skills and load capacity.

The chat routing feature further provides you with the following options:

1) Skills routing: Route chat to agents based on their skills and visitor tags applied to the visitor.

2) Chat limit: Limits the number of chats that each agent is allowed to take at one time.

3) Hybrid Assignment Mode: Agents can serve unassigned chats when they have reached their chat limits.

4) Reassignment: Reassign chats if the agent does not serve the assigned chat within a specified time frame.

5) Automatic idle: Set an agent’s status to Away or Invisible if they have a consecutive number of chats reassigned.

– Freshdesk, on the other hand, offers auto-assign conversations within your team based on factors like agent skill level, available bandwidth, and other parameters. The conversations would be only assigned to the active team members for Intelliassign or Omniroute.

Winner: Zendesk

l) Live translation 

As the name suggests, the live translation feature helps translate the chat into a customer’s preferred language, if that particular language is supported by the helpdesk.

– Zendesk, unfortunately, doesn’t provide a live translation feature.

– Freshdesk, however, provides the option to view conversations in your preferred language and reply to customers in their native language seamlessly using Google Translation API. On Freshdesk, all you need is a project that has an enabled Cloud Translation API and the appropriate credentials to make authenticated calls.

Winner: Freshdesk

Final Winner: Freshdesk

Freshdesk and Zendesk for the most part are equally matched with the type of live chat support that they provide. However, Freshdesk takes the live chat support a notch further by providing features like a live chat campaign and live chat translation.

3. Voice support

a) Voice to ticket 

The voice-to-ticket feature is quite a common yet beneficial feature of voice support. In it, the incoming or outgoing calls get converted into tickets that can be viewed and assigned to the best-suited agent.

– On Zendesk, you can easily view all the tickets of incoming and outgoing calls and the caller details from a single place.

– Freshdesk, on the other hand, provides a user-friendly interface that gives you the option to check all calling history from a particular caller during the ongoing call.

Winner: Freshdesk

b) Basic IVR menu 

The basic IVR menu in voice support is the response system that helps customers navigate the IVR experience.

Zendesk offers a basic IVR menu through which you can set various keypresses to carry forward certain tasks.

Freshdesk, on the other hand, offers a much more advanced IVR menu that provides features like:

–Call Queue: helps you create a basic call flow and route calls to a particular team, agent, or external numbers. Also, you can place the callers in a wait queue, if all agents are busy. The call queue option also helps you decide what to do if the wait time exceeds a particular duration.

–Agent Extension Flow: helps you create a call flow to route callers to an agent’s personal extension number directly.

–Speech-enabled IVR: helps you create a call flow that allows customers to give their voice responses to the IVR options set. 

–Smart Answer Call Flow: This helps you create a call flow that allows customers to talk to the Freshdesk Contact Center and get instant answers to their queries.

–Routing Automation: helps you create a call flow that allows you to route callers based on dynamic real-time inputs from external systems (CRMs/Helpdesks) used by your business.

Winner: Freshdesk

c) Group routing

An IVR lets customers identify the reason for their call and then routes the caller to a particular group.

Both Zendesk and Freshdesk offer an almost similar group routing that helps efficiently route a caller to an appropriate caller concerning the type of query they have.

Winner: Both

d) Call auditing

The call auditing feature of voice support helps you in viewing and monitoring both incoming and outgoing calls.

In terms of monitoring call quality, Zendesk provides supervisors with the capability to monitor and evaluate all agent interactions with customers, facilitating the identification of areas for enhancement. This encompasses call recordings, customer conversations, and real-time metrics and reporting on queue volumes.

Freshdesk, on the other hand,  offers a live dashboard that is visible to supervisors, admins, and account admins. Additionally, supervisors and admins can monitor the calls discreetly and barge into incoming and outgoing calls anytime.

Winner: Freshdesk

e) Call queue 

Call queues in voice support provide you with the option to route your callers to people in your organization who can help with a particular issue or question.

Both Zendesk and Freshdesk offer a similar call queue functionality. However, Freshdesk offers a slightly better service, as it gives you the option to view a caller’s ID.

Winner: Freshdesk

f) Real-time analytics

Real-time analytics is a pre-built live dashboard that displays important information and statistics about the type of support you provide in real-time.

Both Zendesk and Freshdesk offer similar real-time analytics. However, Freshdesk offers slightly better functionality by offering in-depth real-time analytics, graphs (call volume by day and month), and call outcomes analysis. These statistics help you to understand your teams’ performances very closely.

Winner: Freshdesk

g) Call history

The call history tab of your voice support shows information about all the calls that have been made and received by the agent. You can filter the call history reports by date, talk number, IVR group, and the end user’s organization.

Both Zendesk and Freshdesk offer a similar call history functionality. However, Zendesk offers slightly better functionality by offering an in-depth history of the number of calls, average holding time, and response time. You can even download the report in CSV format.

Winner: Zendesk

h) Call transferring (See screenshots)

The call transferring feature of voice support lets agents quickly transfer live calls to another agent. The process of call transferring usually occurs when a particular call requires the presence of an expert who has the technical or working experience to resolve a complex query.

On Zendesk, you can transfer talk calls to a group, another agent, or an external number. When you transfer a call to a group, the call is added to the queue for that group until an agent from the group answers it.

Freshdesk, on the other hand, offers cold and warm call transfers. In cold transfer, you will be transferring a call to another agent or team without giving them a prior notification. When you perform a warm transfer, you can talk to another agent or even exchange call notes before transferring the call.

Winner: Freshdesk

Final Winner: Freshdesk

For the most part, Zendesk and Freshdesk are equally matched for the type of voice support that they provide. However, Freshdesk offers a much more dynamic and easy-to-use IVR menu, smooth call transferring, and hassle-free call auditing.

4. Social media

a) Twitter ticketing

Both Zendesk and Freshdesk give you the option to interact with Twitter accounts by converting tweets into tickets. As an agent, you can either reply to these tickets through Twitter or your helpdesk platform.

Winner: Both

b) Facebook messenger 

Both Zendesk and Freshdesk give you the option to reply to the messages of Messenger from your helpdesk portal. In the portal, these messages directly get converted into tickets that can be viewed by the agent.

Winner: Both

c) Facebook comments

Both Zendesk and Freshdesk convert the comments on your Facebook posts to tickets, wherein, the agent can directly answer the comment from the helpdesk. You can view all the converted comments as Tickets on your helpdesk portal.

Winner: Both

Final Winner: Both

Both Zendesk and Freshdesk come out as victors when it comes to providing quality social media support. They conveniently convert the comments on Facebook posts, Tweets, and Facebook Messenger messages into tickets that can be viewed by the agent from a single place.

5. Automation

a) Trigger on ticket creation 

The trigger on the ticket creation feature of automation takes action to modify ticket properties at a specified time after a ticket is updated. This helps the agent save time by not having to manually fill in details whenever a new ticket is created.

– Zendesk offers all the ticket trigger options from a single place. This helps you create multiple automation using the conditions and their subsequent actions.

– Freshdesk offers the same automation functionalities under 3 different options: ticket creation, time triggers, and ticket updates.

Winner: Both

b) Time trigger

The time trigger automation helps set rules to tickets like “escalation”, and “closed no. of days” after they are solved, and asks for customer details. This feature helps automatically run these conditions with subsequent actions whenever a ticket hits those time conditions.

Both Zendesk and Freshdesk offer efficient and smooth time trigger options.

Winner: Both

c) Time escalation

Ticket escalation in a ticketing system is the automation feature through which you escalate a higher-priority ticket to tend to it first. This helps you distinguish a high-priority ticket from a low-priority ticket.

Both Zendesk and Freshdesk offer easy and convenient options to set time escalation that helps you assign tickets to the agents according to the ticket’s priority.

Winner: Both

d) Bot article recommendation

The bot article Recommendations feature automatically recommends relevant help center articles to customers. This helps the customers answer their own basic queries which end up saving time for both them and you.

Both Zendesk and Freshdesk offer a similar type of bot article recommendation feature that helps send relevant help center/knowledge base articles to the customers.

Winner: Both

Final Winner: Both

Both Zendesk and Freshdesk provide ample automation features such as time trigger, time escalation, and triggered ticket creation which greatly helps reduce the waiting time of the customer and increase the overall productivity of the agent. Therefore, both hold a victory for providing top-notch automation features.

6. Reports

a) Live chat

The live chat reports help the businesses to measure their performance and to see where they are lagging. These reports help the agents analyze their productivity and then improve upon it accordingly, to provide a better customer experience.

Zendesk offers the following live chat reports:

1) Chat Report (Tab)

2) Custom report (Up to 90 days) (hourly report)

• Chats served
• Chats missed
• Response time
• Chat duration
• Satisfaction
• Wait time (Served)
• Wait time (Missed)
• Conversions

3) Satisfaction ratings

4) Chat timings

• Response time
• Chat duration
• Wait time (Served)
• Wait time (Missed)

5) Agents report (Tab)

• Custom report (Up to 90 days) (hourly report)
• All agents
• Agents sign in
• Agents online
• Activity breakdown
• Satisfaction
• Response time
• Chat duration
• Conversion (Attributed)
• Leaders board

6) Individual agent profile

• Chat served
• Total chat
• Total chat missed
• Chat duration
• Conversion (Attributed)
• Performance
• Satisfaction
• Download the report (CSV)
• Setup email reports
• Set timezone

Freshdesk offers the following live chat reports:

1) Time period report (Unlimited time)

• Daily, Weekly, and Monthly frequency
• Download (CSV)

2) Conversation Overview

• Median
• Average
• 90th Percentile

3) Productivity 

4) Volume

5) Team Performance

• Median
• Average
• 90th Percentile

6) Productivity Metrics

7) CSAT Metrics

• Customer Satisfaction
• Conversation labels
• Agents Availability
• Median
• Average
• 90th Percentile

8) Online time

• IntelliAssign

9) Bot Performance

10) Message in-depth

• Messages grouped by Sender
• Messages grouped by Type
• Messages grouped by Flow
• Messages grouped by Dialog
• Export report
• Present report
• Clone report

11) Conversations In-depth

• Conversations grouped by Landing URL
• Conversations grouped by Day
• Conversations grouped by Status
• Conversations grouped by Bot
• Export report
• Present report
• Clone report

12) APIs – Overview and Performance

• Triggered APIs grouped by Status
• Triggered APIs grouped by Name
• Triggered APIs grouped by Day
• Triggered APIs grouped by Flow
• Export report
• Present report
• Clone report

13) Bot Session Consumption

• Sessions consumed
• Sessions consumption trend
• Sessions consumed grouped by a bot
• Sessions consumed grouped by channel
• Monthly session consumption volume
• Schedule report
• Subscribe report
• Export report
• Present report

Winner: Both

b) Support

The support report analytics helps businesses monitor the status of their support requests. By analyzing these reports, they can improve their performance by working on their first response time.

Zendesk Support offers the following reports:

1) Tickets

2) Efficiency

3) Assignee activity

4) Agent updates

5) Unsolved tickets

6) Backlogs

Freshdesk offers the following reports:

1. Helpdesk analysis

• In-depth report

• • Created tickets
  • Resolved tickets
  • Unresolved tickets
  • Reopened tickets
  • Avg. 1st response time
  • Avg. Response time
  • Avg. Resolution time
  • Avg. 1st assign time
  • First contact resolution
  • First response SLA
  • Resolution SLA

• Ticket Volume Trends

• Report time
• Analysis type

2. Productivity

• Agent Performance

• Group Performance
• Performance Distribution
• Timesheet Summary
• Ticket Lifecycle

3. Customer Happiness

• Top Customer Analysis
• Satisfaction Survey

Winner: Both

c) Voice

Voice report analytics helps businesses to measure and improve their voice call performance. By analyzing the voice reports, the agents can work on areas where they fall a bit short and provide an overall better customer experience.

Zendesk offers the following voice reports:

1) Calls

2) Efficiency

3) Agent activity

4) Quality

Freshdesk offers the following voice reports:

1) Agent Activity Report

2) Service Level Metrics

• Service Level by Date
• Service Level by Queue

3) Call Volume Analysis

4) Call Summary Report

5) Call Center Health Report

6) Agent Performance Report

7) Abandoned Call Metrics

Winner: Both

d) Customer portal reports

See screenshots: Zendesk

The customer portal reports give you the analytics that helps you monitor the views of your knowledge base or guide. It helps you understand whether people found your articles useful or not.

Zendesk offers 2 customer portal reports:

1) Knowledge base

2) Search

Winner: Zendesk

e) Bot (See screenshots)

The bot reports help you monitor the performance of the automated bots. It helps you understand whether the bot was able to resolve the query of the customer or not. By analyzing the bot reports you can make certain improvements in the automation of these bots to provide better results.

Zendesk offers the following bot reports:

1) Suggestion rate

2) Click-through rate

3) Resolution rate

4) Rejection rate 

Winner: Zendesk

Final Winner: Zendesk

Zendesk and Freshdesk, for the most part, stay equally matched when it comes to providing reports. Zendesk, however, manages to stay slightly ahead of the curve, by providing a dynamic customer portal and bot performance report.

Zendesk vs Freshdesk: Is there a clear winner?

Zendesk and Freshdesk are two of the top customer service software. However, in this in-depth comparison, we do have a victor. While both of them were equally matched for most features, Freshdesk managed to beat Zendesk by a hair to become the clear winner of this comparison.

Freshdesk stays ahead of its competition by providing a better customer portal, voice support, and live chat support features.

You can opt for Zendesk if you are a medium or large-sized business. It offers basic monthly prices that include Suite Team and Suite Growth, which can suit the requirements of a medium-sized business. Large businesses, on the other hand, can apply for slighter higher pricing that includes Suite professional, Suite Enterprise, and Enterprise-ready plans.

On the other hand, if you are a small-scale or newly established business, Freshdesk can be the best option for you. Freshdesk is best suited for small-scale companies that want to manage and deliver customer support services without paying extravagant amounts.

If you’re still confused, you can contact Saufter’s experienced team. They will help you choose a great helpdesk as per your business needs.