Looker Studio vs Zendesk comparison

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93% willing to recommend

Looker Studio

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 2025

Looker Studio and Zendesk compete in the fields of data visualization and customer service management, respectively. Looker Studio is strong in data analytics while Zendesk stands out in customer service features, leaning towards Zendesk for customer-focused operations.

Features: Looker Studio offers excellent data visualization with features like seamless integration with Excel and Google Sheets, data aggregation before visualization, and custom filter creation. Zendesk provides robust customer service management with features like comprehensive ticketing, integration with multiple business applications, and customizable workflows.

Room for Improvement: Looker Studio could enhance its real-time collaboration capabilities, expand its integration options beyond Google products, and improve data model customization. Zendesk may benefit from streamlining its interface for easier navigation, improving integration with non-CRM tools, and offering more affordable pricing for smaller teams.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Looker Studio integrates well with existing data ecosystems, providing instant insights, although it may need enhanced guidance for users. Zendesk requires alignment with CRM systems but compensates with excellent implementation support and comprehensive user training that supports its complex deployment.

Pricing and ROI: Looker Studio's competitive pricing offers good ROI due to its data utilization capabilities without significant initial costs. Zendesk demands a higher upfront investment because of its extensive features; however, it promises high ROI through improved customer satisfaction and retention.

To learn more, read our detailed Looker Studio vs. Zendesk Report (Updated: July 2025).

Looker Studio vs. Zendesk

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Helped 864,053 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Looker Studio

Ranking in Reporting

9th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Zendesk

Ranking in Reporting

16th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

CRM Customer Engagement Centers (7th), CRM (21st), Help Desk Software (9th), IT Service Management (ITSM) (9th), Sales Force Automation (9th), Knowledge Management Software (4th), Community Platforms (3rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of Looker Studio is 3.0%, up from 2.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zendesk is 0.4%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Reporting

Featured Reviews

Vijay Subramanyam

Delivery Head at cblsolutions

The ability to perform aggregation before visualization allows for effective data slicing and dicing

Looker's ability to perform aggregation before visualization allows for effective data slicing and dicing. The seamless integration with Excel and Google Sheets and custom filter creation features facilitate detailed trend reports and analysis. Looker has significantly improved productivity by reducing the time spent on creating summary reports from weeks to a day.

Read full review

JohanSkibdahl

CEO at Etcetera Networks

Automating customer support with advanced AI capabilities and seamless communication

Zendesk has been invaluable in automating communications such as email and phone calls. It allows us to handle more support cases with fewer people due to its advanced artificial intelligence capabilities. This intelligent tool can manage complex queries before users even realize they are interacting with a non-human. Additionally, we have integrated Zendesk with Datto and Klaviyo ( /products/klaviyo-reviews ), enhancing our workflows.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"The ability to integrate with a great variety of data sources."

"I would rate this solution eight or nine out of ten."

"This has improved our organization by allowing people to see their data and develop visualizations themselves."

"Data Studio integrates seamlessly with other Google products, and we can use it with other APIs if we like."

"The solution is free so that is a good feature."

"The best thing about the tool is that it allows you to share information easily and dashboards with colleagues and teammates because it's all online. No matter where you are, as long as you have the Internet, you can connect and use these dashboards. Google made good documentation for this tool. There are many examples of how to use and create dashboards and videos on YouTube. So, I think it's easy to learn."

"Looker's ability to perform aggregation before visualization allows for effective data slicing and dicing."

"The ability to design complex data models and equations."

More Looker Studio pros

"The most valuable feature is the trackability of incoming requests. The system keeps a comprehensive history of work requests, making it a useful tool for our internal processes."

"It's very convenient to use."

"Zendesk Support has a lot of good APIs."

"It's a very stable tool, very powerful."

"One of the most valuable features is that Zendesk gives you a lot of configurability, and a lot of leeway in terms of customizing the look and theme. Zendesk offers you the facility to design your own landing page, as well as the look and feel of the entire knowledge base. At the same time, they offer themes that you can simply purchase and implement. Either way, it can really be turned into the right look and feel of the knowledge base required by our company, which is very important—if you have a bland-looking page, most of the time, people will lose interest. Zendesk also allows you to test the customizations before you publish it. It gives you a sandbox location where you can test everything new that you're trying to create and publish, which is very interesting."

"I found the user experience with vendors on Zendesk to be straightforward, especially when it comes to understanding and searching for specific tickets. The search and navigation tools are easy to use, and I haven't encountered any issues with delays or communication gaps in ticket resolutions."

"The initial setup is simple and straightforward."

"What is cool about Zendesk Guide is how it works together with others Zendesk products. Especially with support and with the analytics. Put those together for a small or medium-sized company and it's a really powerful tool."

More Zendesk pros

Cons

"The tool has a lot of room for improvement. It's not very professional and allows for only simple tasks like indicating KPIs or quick calculations. It lacks a good calculation-based language like Power BI's DAX, making it less suitable for professional use. Additionally, the variety of visualization tools is limited, and customization options are restricted."

"Other tools might be worth considering if you need more advanced features or support for a larger user base."

"From the perspective of infrastructure, I cannot provide a valuable opinion on the ease of use and customization options of Looker Studio."

"When you physically install a product on one machine instead of the cloud, you have a better visibility, best icon quality, etc.. It's more of an issue with how we are adapting to the transition. We are still in the early moments of using this tool, and we need to go deeper to discover some improvements."

"There is a significant degree of sophistication required to compete with Tableau or Cognos."

"The tool should come up with data modeling layer features that are present in other products like Power BI."

"It's not yet a replacement for a complete BI tool."

"Stability and scalability an be improved for a full ten."

More Looker Studio cons

"The price of the solution should be reduced."

"The support team is time-consuming, and they don't find the answer to our problem."

"The data you get when logged in to Zendesk Support differs from the data you get when you programmatically query Zendesk Support through its API because of a sync time delay."

"You couldn't give administrative access to new hires."

"There is always a network issue with Zendesk. But we don’t know whether it is managed. The network issue is that when I call, it does not let us."

"They have something called Zendesk Explore, which isn't as good as what they had in place previously."

"If I write an article, and I have a team of 30 people, and they all have a Zendesk account, when I write an article, I send them an email. "Hey guys, I just wrote this article. It's one of the most popular topics this month on which we are not covered. Please check it and make sure that you include it in your resolutions". The issue is, once I send it to those 30 people, and they open it, the next morning, that article is the most popular article."

"The solution could integrate better with QR codes from some websites such as Facebook."

More Zendesk cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is free."

"The product is available for free."

"The solution is free but the Google Looker is expensive."

"I think the tool is cheap because you don't need to pay anything for using the tool. However, when connecting and analyzing other data sources, you should consider where to analyze this information because Google Data Studio doesn't handle much data well. You must also consider how you will connect this data to it. In this case, you might need to hire DevOps or a data team to help with these issues."

"The cost is quite affordable based on feature analysis."

"You have to pay extra for better support. So it's not only the license that you pay for, but you have to pay extra for the support as well."

"There are different plans that are offered. We are using the entry-level plan. The overall price of the solution should be reduced. The price is too high."

"From what I hear, Zendesk's pricing is a little expensive."

"The price is very competitive."

"Zendesk's licensing is not cheap. For Enterprise, we are paying $200 per agent. It's a per-month cost, so it's pretty steep. There are some services you need to pay extra for. For example, with Zendesk Guide, we had to buy the most expensive offering in order to get Multibrand and everything. We also had to pay a lot of money for themes."

"We pay for the solution on a yearly basis and my understanding is that the cost is about $30,000. That's the cost for 24 to 25 agents."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

University

Computer Software Company

23%

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

Performing Arts

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Google Data Studio?

The company dashboard is useful because we could share it via a link as a reminder for everyone to check it weekly. We observed the progress of our portfolio from last week to the current week, all...

What needs improvement with Google Data Studio?

From the perspective of infrastructure, I cannot provide a valuable opinion on the ease of use and customization options of Looker Studio. I can ask our designers how they feel since they have expe...

What is your primary use case for Google Data Studio?

We use Looker and Looker Studio, as Looker licenses Looker Studio for data presentation and reporting. With GCP, we use Cloud Functions, Cloud Run, Kubernetes, and we utilize BigQuery extensively. ...

What do you like most about Zendesk Support?

I found the user experience with vendors on Zendesk to be straightforward, especially when it comes to understanding and searching for specific tickets. The search and navigation tools are easy to ...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zendesk Support?

Zendesk's pricing is reasonable. It is not the cheapest solution nor the most expensive, but it provides value for money.

What needs improvement with Zendesk Support?

There could be improvements in integration, which can be achieved with APIs or tools like Zapier ( /products/zapier-reviews ). However, easier integration could enhance the usability. Multilingual ...

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Comparisons

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Compared 5% of the time

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Compared 4% of the time

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BMC Helix ITSM vs Zendesk

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Product Reports

Looker Studio

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Download Zendesk product report

Also Known As

Data Studio

Zendesk Support, Zendesk Guide, Zendesk Sell

Overview

Google Looker Studio is a free tool designed to help users create visually appealing reports and dashboards, making data easier to understand. It allows you to connect to various data sources such as Google Analytics, Facebook Ads, and spreadsheets. With Looker Studio, you can create charts and graphs to showcase trends and comparisons, build comprehensive dashboards that provide an overview of your data, and customize reports to match your brand or preferences. Additionally, you can share your reports online or export them as PDFs for wider distribution.

Google

Zendesk Support is intuitive, and it's built with support agents in mind. Everything they need lives in a single, dynamic help desk interface so it's easy to be productive and manage customer interactions.

Sample Customers

Genesys, Shueisha

Mailchimp, Tesco, Vimeo, Instacart, Mediaocean, Slack, Uber

Looker Studio vs. Zendesk