Salesforce Service Cloud and Zendesk compete in the CRM and customer service software category. Salesforce seems to have the upper hand in customization and robust integration capabilities, while Zendesk is noted for its ease of use and straightforward setup.
Features: Salesforce Service Cloud is known for its rich customization capabilities, robust integrations with platforms including Marketo, and excels in case management, reporting, and automation. Its platform is highly customizable and upgradeable, leveraging powerful APIs for integration. Zendesk offers strong ticket management, ease of configuration, and efficient integration with popular apps like JIRA. It focuses on simplicity and features like macros, reporting, and a self-service portal.
Room for Improvement: Salesforce users cite issues with its complex pricing structure, cumbersome email integration, and a need for enhanced knowledge management. Frequent updates complicate user experiences. Zendesk users seek better customization options in reporting and support for more channels, along with improvements in ticket merging and multilingual support capabilities.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Salesforce Service Cloud is primarily deployed on public cloud infrastructure and is praised for excellent customer support. It has extensive resources and community support, though Level One support can be challenging. Zendesk supports cloud hosting models including private and hybrid, with its customer and technical support rated favorably, though lacking some advanced features Salesforce offers.
Pricing and ROI: Salesforce Service Cloud is generally viewed as expensive, with a suggestion to negotiate pricing for advanced features. However, it offers high ROI due to automation and comprehensive functionalities, catering mainly to larger enterprises. Zendesk’s pricing, though on the high side, is competitive and offers good value, focusing on simplicity and efficiency, providing substantial ROI.
Salesforce Service Cloud requires significant maintenance effort to see ROI.
I can tell you that we probably saved at least three employees full-time with the ticket management and the automation and the macros and the user follow-up being built in.
I feel that Zendesk helped us set up our platform for providing support way faster than other platforms due to its easy configuration.
We were able to offer a seamless 24/7 support experience and meet all our SLAs due to the robust nature of the platform.
Unless you have premium support, assistance is restricted.
Salesforce directly does not give you the support, and it is through the partner that you have to go, leading to some time delays.
There appears to be a lack of connection between the bot and the agents, making it feel scripted rather than helpful.
The technical support provided by Zendesk has been very satisfactory.
Their support team from Zendesk is excellent, similar to what you have in Freshdesk.
Salesforce Service Cloud is the most advanced in scalability, rating around nine to ten.
Nobody can compete with Salesforce Service Cloud's scalability.
We have not hit a peak or a turn yet that Zendesk has not been able to go with us or been able to grow with us in the process, change or pivot that the company is making.
Zendesk can scale from very small companies to very large ones.
Zendesk's scalability is excellent.
We rarely encounter stability issues with Salesforce Service Cloud, although when they occur, they cause significant disruption.
They are always informing us with a status update and an ETA, and the turnaround time is usually within the same day with no extended downtime that would cause a detriment to our company.
Zendesk is quite stable; we experience major outages only once or twice a year, making it very reliable.
The stability has been quite reliable.
Salesforce Service Cloud should focus on simplification.
Configuring Flows in Salesforce Service Cloud is very difficult.
It could be better in areas such as media; it does not handle media effectively, particularly with pictures and uploads.
Zendesk could actually support HTML on the tickets so we could format our text better than the current options such as size, bold, italic, or underscored, because the text processing is too simple.
Zendesk is missing an AI aspect that could help provide quick answers based on the knowledge housed within the platform.
Zendesk is amazing, and because they are always working on a new upgrade or a new integration, they are very forward-thinking from an engineering perspective.
The approximate licensing costs for Salesforce Service Cloud are around three hundred dollars a year per user.
Salesforce Service Cloud is expensive.
It is not the cheapest solution nor the most expensive, but it provides value for money.
The experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Zendesk was quite expensive.
Salesforce Service Cloud improved our organization with its mobile capabilities.
Salesforce Service Cloud offers pre-built packages that are best in class.
Usability is one of the strongest characteristics of Salesforce Service Cloud.
It allows us to handle more support cases with fewer people due to its advanced artificial intelligence capabilities.
Zendesk is way cheaper than other ITSM platforms such as ServiceNow, providing a good platform at a lower price so we could offer good support with a low budget for the license.
Being able to put response counters on certain tickets and have certain ones that are high priority and have a tighter SLA than lower priority items, being able to categorize them as a question versus an urgent request, and being able to bucket them as feature requests or product enhancements.
| Product | Market Share (%) |
|---|---|
| Salesforce Service Cloud | 11.1% |
| Zendesk | 6.9% |
| Other | 82.0% |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 20 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 13 |
| Large Enterprise | 24 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 36 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 20 |
| Large Enterprise | 11 |
Service Cloud is fully customizable support and help desk that provide faster, smarter service that will increase loyalty, retention, and satisfaction. From call-center software to self-service portals, our service solutions enhance your customer service with more responsive, more intuitive, more flexible support that anticipates customer needs.
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.
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