Salesforce vs Zendesk Comparison: Is There a Clear Winner?

manage customer support tickets

Last Updated: December 2024

As per a report, 74% of customers say that helpdesk solutions give them better access to customer data, allowing them to provide better-personalized service. Two of the best CRM software are Salesforce and Zendesk, but there is always a dilemma on which one to choose.

Though it’s hard to differentiate between the two, we have still prepared an illustrative difference to help you decide the best.

Customer Portal (Final Winner: Salesforce) Rating 5/5⭐

Portal Customization(Winner: Zendesk)

Portal customization helps you match the CRM software with your Website. You can add logos or even matching themes.

  • Salesforce allows only five portal customizations at a time whereas there is no limit in Zendesk

Winner: Zendesk

Community/Forum(Winner: Salesforce)

A community or forum is an online meeting place where people can discuss their knowledge, share videos, or even talk to each other online. This helps you in building a community that enables long-term clients.

  • Both Zendesk and Salesforce allow you to create a community. Though, Salesforce has an advantage over here as it allows you to create an employee forum too.

Winner: Salesforce 

Knowledge Base( Winner: Salesforce)
  • Zendesk allows you to create a company-wide knowledge base that can be easily used by your customers and employees. It allows you to manage, update, edit, and publish content in the knowledge base as per your choice. The analytics provided by Zendesk is a bit hard to configure. 
  • Salesforce provides a knowledge base in the form of articles, videos, guides, and tutorials. Salesforce provides easy configuration of metrics. 

Winner: Salesforce

Live Chat(Final Winner: Zendesk) Rating 5/5⭐

Features(Winner: Salesforce)
  • Salesforce provides you with more features compared to Zendesk. Salesforce’s additional features are real-time agent coaching, instant message session metrics, multilingual support, and many more.

Winner: Salesforce

Integration(Winner: Zendesk)
  • Zendesk: It can be integrated with several other software such as Shopify, google analytics, high rise, magneto, and many more.
  • Salesforce: Integration of Salesforce live chat is limited and can only be integrated with the help of its marketplace. 

Winner: Zendesk

Language Support(Winner: Salesforce)

The helpdesk should have a wide array of language support options that can help customers globally.

  • Zendesk provides 40 different language support, whereas Salesforce provides only 27 multi-language support. 

Winner: Zendesk

Social Media(Final Winner: Salesforce) Rating 5/5⭐

Twitter Ticketing(Winner: Zendesk)
  • Only Zendesk can be integrated with Twitter and easily turn tweets into tickets. There is no option available for Salesforce and Twitter integration. 

Winner: Zendesk

Facebook Integration(Winner: Both)
  • Both Zendesk and Salesforce can integrate with Facebook and convert messenger messages into tickets. They can also convert Facebook comments under your posts to tickets.

Winner: Both

Instagram Integration(Winner: Salesforce)
  • Zendesk can only be integrated with Instagram direct, whereas SalesForce can convert comments and DMs into tickets. 

Winner: Salesforce

Youtube Integration(Winner: Salesforce)
  • Just like Instagram only Salesforce can integrate with Youtube and convert comments into tickets. 

Winner: Salesforce

Automation(Final Winner: Zendesk) Rating 4.5/5⭐

Time Trigger(Winner: Zendesk)

This feature automatically triggers an action when a ticket reaches a specific time limit. Enabling you to answer every ticket and ensures that no ticket is left unattended

  • Both Zendesk and Salesforce allow you to automate your ticket resolution through time trigger but in salesforce, your agents need to save the record to allow the automation to work. 

Winner: Zendesk

Time Escalation(Winner: Zendesk)

This feature of the helpdesk allows you to attend to high-priority tickets first. Thus helping you give more attention to a high-priority ticket than a low-priority ticket.

  • Both of the software offer this feature but the set-up of time escalation of Salesforce is a bit lengthy. 

Winner: Zendesk

Bot Article Recommendation(Winner: Both)

Bot article recommendation feature enables you to quickly solve your customers’ queries with the help of knowledge base articles. When a customer asks for a query that can be solved through these articles then bots automatically send them the recommendation.

  • Both Zendesk and Salesforce have a bot article recommendation feature.

Winner: Both

Task Management(Winner: Salesforce)

Task management allows you to create a task or reminder for your clients. It can be integrated with the calendar and when the task is completed then it gets recorded into your system.

  • Only Salesforce has this feature which assists you to provide personalized service to your clients.

Winner: Salesforce

Reports(Final Winner: Salesforce) Rating 5/5⭐

Chat Reports(Winner: Salesforce)

Chat reports give you an overview of your chats and agent activity. With the help of this data, you can easily make plans and strategize your work

  • Zendesk: It offers the following chat metrics: Chat Stats, Satisfaction Rating, Chat timing, Agents report, etc.
  • Salesforce: The reports which can be given by Salesforce are: Flag Lowered(agent), Flag Lowered(supervisor), Chat Request Assigned, etc. 

Winner: Salesforce

Support(Winner: Salesforce)

Support reports are the reports used to monitor the status of your customer support request.

  • Zendesk: Reports that Zendesk provides are: Efficiency, Agents Updates, Unsolved tickets, Re-open Tickets, etc.
  • Salesforce: It provides custom reports as per your choice. Some of the reports which can be pre-selected are Tickets booked in a single day, Tickets resolved with the help of a knowledge base, Re-opened Tickets, etc.

Winner: Salesforce

Forecasting(Winner: Salesforce)

These reports allow companies to allocate resources efficiently for future growth and manage their cash flow. 

  • Only Salesforce can provide forecast reports which can help you manage your sales beforehand. 

Winner: Salesforce

Conclusion

If integrating your business with helpdesk software is in your pipeline, then this post is for you. We have listed a detailed comparison between the two leading helpdesk software Zendesk vs Salesforce. As per the features listed above, you can easily decide which software fit bests with your store.  

However, if you are looking to automate your customer support then Saufter is for you.  It is software for 24*7 live support on your product with excellent customer support tools, smart AI integrated solutions, and social media integrations for effective marketing of your store.

Outsource Your Customer Support To the Experts!

Related Posts

AI Generated Marketing?

Behavioral Segmentation + AI Designs Campaigns

Behavior based campaigns

Latest trends & memes

Just hit 'Approve'

AUTOMATE CUSTOMER SERVICE AND REDUCE REFUNDS

Claim Your 6 months of FREE Credits Now!

Get the code. Use anytime in the next 6 months.

Helplama Helpdesk is now Saufter.io!