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SAP CRM vs Zendesk comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 19, 2024

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

SAP CRM
Ranking in CRM
3rd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
43
Ranking in other categories
Local Government CRM (2nd), Marketing Management (3rd)
Zendesk
Ranking in CRM
20th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
60
Ranking in other categories
CRM Customer Engagement Centers (7th), Help Desk Software (9th), IT Service Management (ITSM) (7th), Sales Force Automation (7th), Reporting (13th), Knowledge Management Software (3rd), Community Platforms (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the CRM category, the mindshare of SAP CRM is 10.7%, up from 10.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zendesk is 1.4%, down from 1.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
CRM
 

Featured Reviews

GodfreyNoel - PeerSpot reviewer
Excellent user experience with ease of use and reliable technical support
When SAP CRM does the maintenance, it can take a long time, which can impact business continuity because we have to wait for the maintenance team to finish their work. Maybe if SAP could establish how you can access the tool using a cloud-based environment that would be virtualization, that would be better.
JohanSkibdahl - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"What I found most valuable in SAP CRM is its multitenancy, and you can use it from your website, SMS, and even social media, and it's all integrated, so my company is trying to leverage on all of those."
"The user interface is excellent."
"I have found the most valuable feature of the SAP CRM system is its ability to integrate with other modules. SAP CRM is all about integrating with other modules. For example, SuccessFactors is their learning management. This is one use case that SAP CRM themselves use. Their lead generation versus their sales from their educational services. You can instantly receive insight into how many leads have been generated and how much it turned into real business or revenue for them. I was told in one of the seminars that the data transfer from the lead generation to sales is only 24 hours in SAP CRM."
"The solution's contract management and product hierarchy features of SAP CRM are the most beneficial for our business operations."
"I have found the sales reporting feature specifically useful as it provides reporting and visualization which helps in decision-making. I use this to understand where to improve, which in-turn, helps generate sales."
"SAP CRM is a scalable solution."
"It was comfortable setting up the tool."
"We get very good support from SAP."
"The most valuable features of Zendesk Support are collaboration, reports, and a self-service portal. The customer and team can see all the information needed from the portal."
"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."
"It is a scalable solution."
"I love how the tickets would auto-populate very quickly in Zendesk, especially when a call comes in."
"The stability has been very good."
"We rarely had issues with Zendesk."
"It is very easy to connect back and forth between the requester and the person fulfilling the ticket."
"The product offers very good management. It has a great ability to assign tickets based on content."
 

Cons

"What I see as a challenge against our competitor is that Salesforce comes with more flexibility, for enhancement purposes, whereas the SAP CRM Cloud is more robust and rigid. It's not flexible to implement any bespoke solution."
"I think what needs to be improved is the solution for Brazil's organization."
"The navigation must be improved."
"In terms of visibility of the data, there's a very limited set that we have access to and sometimes it's very difficult and not user-friendly to analyze from front end to back end. It's the biggest challenge, even if I'm working with an organization where we've implemented SAP."
"Improvement is needed for SAP CRM's integration with Microsoft Teams and Outlook Its integration with Microsoft collaboration software, including Teams, Outlook, and SharePoint, is not very good. There are issues with synchronization between appointments in CRM and Outlook, as well as challenges with managing contacts, which creates problems."
"When features do get added, we would like the product to notify us in a timely way."
"The B2C features of SAP are strong, but they are not very known to the public and companies. They must make it more known for B2C applications or B2C use cases."
"There is a lot of missing data and data latency issues between the different modules of SAP CRM, which creates a lot of problems."
"The support team is time-consuming, and they don't find the answer to our problem."
"Zendesk Guide could be improved by allowing us to put our assets in one location. What happens now for each article, for example, is we have to upload the images for that article to that location, so the image reuse is still not something that they have perfected. If they could allow us to update all the images in one location, and then pull the image from there, it would be easier when working on Multibrand projects. There are no Multibrand updates available—we have to update each brand manually. For my company, I have come up with an API tool which allows me to push the content to multiple brands together, but if you don't have something like that, you have to manually do it."
"The solution could integrate better with QR codes from some websites such as Facebook."
"It wasn't easy to set up so we're only using a third of all of the features,"
"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."
"Zendesk Guide's customization could be improved. I would like it to be easier and maybe open-sourced, so that if you have a developer in your company, you can do it yourself. Right now, that isn't allowed, so you need to have it done via the integrator. Another improvement—this is nit-picking—is that it could be less easy to make changes. Some things are so easy that they sometimes look a little amateur-ish. Most of the templates are built-in so they can be used directly, so they are very simple."
"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."
"It needs to improve in terms of its flexibility, price, and installation."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing model for SAP CRM is customer-based."
"There is a license required to use SAP CRM."
"The product is costly."
"SAP CRM costs approximately a couple of thousand a month."
"Every user needs to have a license."
"The solution is expensive."
"Its price is reasonable. As compared to other CRMs, this CRM is competitively priced. They have multiple flavors with different sets of functionality. Pricing is based on the flavor that suits your requirement. If you have more users, the cost will come down."
"From the maintenance perspective, SAP CRM is quite expensive compared to cloud services because the current solution they're using is managed by us and we are hosting it on servers. There is the cost of hosting, and managing servers and applications. The overhead is substantial, but this solution is a legacy system. It will take some time for the customer to migrate out of it."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"From what I hear, Zendesk's pricing is a little expensive."
"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."
"The price is very competitive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
24%
Educational Organization
11%
Financial Services Firm
8%
University
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about SAP CRM?
Getting the right information at the right time across different programs is important. These programs lack interaction between them. IPA is a good option to bring them together.
What needs improvement with SAP CRM?
One area for improvement is the security model, especially regarding records management retention and the audit and legal holds. Since we're in the middle of a cloud digital transformation, it's es...
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 ...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Zendesk Support, Zendesk Guide, Zendesk Sell
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Brau Union Osterreich AG, Nu Skin Enterprises Inc., AOK Bundesverband, RAK Ceramics, NHS 24, Wholesale Sports Outdoor Outfitters, FC Bayern Munchen AG, Tumi, The Kellogg Company, MVV Energie AG, Anglian Water Services, German Football Association (DFB), Nebraska Book Company Inc.
Mailchimp, Tesco, Vimeo, Instacart, Mediaocean, Slack, Uber
Find out what your peers are saying about SAP CRM vs. Zendesk and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.