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ServiceNow Customer Service Management vs Zendesk comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 29, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
6.7
Organizations achieve ROI with ServiceNow CSM by streamlining processes, reducing costs, and aligning with business goals for improved efficiency.
Sentiment score
6.7
Zendesk enhances organizational efficiency and productivity, reducing costs despite licensing fees, with varied but significant financial benefits.
Without such tools, the business would be affected by five to ten percent in annual revenue.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.5
ServiceNow's customer service is praised for responsiveness and multilingual support, with some delays in lower packages.
Sentiment score
6.3
Zendesk excels in responsiveness and issue resolution, though reliance on documentation may delay human support replies.
It is better because partners have a deep understanding of the code and configuration challenges.
The technical support is good, but there are very few people who understand the technicalities and background configurations.
Their support team from Zendesk is excellent, similar to what you have in Freshdesk.
The technical support provided by Zendesk has been very satisfactory.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.5
ServiceNow Customer Service Management is praised for scalability, customization, and efficient self-service, enhancing business operations without extra costs.
Sentiment score
7.4
Zendesk scales well for various team sizes; praised for customization, integration, though challenges include data backup and departmental customization.
The solution is scalable and offers high scalability as new features are added regularly.
If challenges are resolved efficiently with tools like ServiceNow Customer Service Management, it significantly impacts business operations.
Scalability can lead to performance issues.
Zendesk can scale from very small companies to very large ones.
The scalability of Zendesk is still in the same range as Freshdesk.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.3
ServiceNow Customer Service Management is stable, efficiently handles high traffic, yet customization limitations and portal issues can occasionally arise.
Sentiment score
7.7
Zendesk is stable and reliable, despite occasional outages, making it ideal for small businesses and startups globally.
ServiceNow Customer Service Management is highly stable, which is critical because it operates as a live system 24/7.
Overall, it is very stable aside from these issues.
The stability has been quite reliable.
 

Room For Improvement

ServiceNow Customer Service needs improved customization, integration, AI features, pricing flexibility, and easier report downloading and upgrades.
Zendesk users face challenges with interface clumsiness, slow performance, customization, integration, and pricing, affecting overall usability and efficiency.
It is important to follow practical rules and best practices to avoid misconfigurations caused by different developers doing things their own way.
Managing this platform requires sophisticated handling.
If our organization wants to customize features that are not initially available in the system, these customizations might cause issues during upgrades.
There could be improvements in integration, which can be achieved with APIs or tools like Zapier.
 

Setup Cost

ServiceNow Customer Service Management is costly but valued for efficiency, with premium pricing potentially unsuitable for smaller businesses.
Zendesk pricing varies, perceived as high, but offers value and flexibility; negotiation advised for larger teams to optimize costs.
ServiceNow Customer Service Management is expensive, with costs around half a million US dollars per year.
The pricing is around a seven, making it rather expensive.
ServiceNow Customer Service Management is expensive, although there is value for money considering the time and administrative efficiencies it brings.
It is not the cheapest solution nor the most expensive, but it provides value for money.
 

Valuable Features

ServiceNow CSM offers powerful workflow and integration, enhancing service delivery with automation and AI on a flexible platform.
Zendesk offers user-friendly integration, robust features, and valuable tools, enhancing efficiency and streamlining customer support processes effectively.
The best aspect of ServiceNow Customer Service Management is its out-of-the-box features that support all customer service processes.
The most valuable features are incident management and change management.
ServiceNow Customer Service Management offers valuable features such as workflow management, an approval cycle, and integration with a payment gateway, which allows for payments to be made using the system.
It allows us to handle more support cases with fewer people due to its advanced artificial intelligence capabilities.
The benefits I have seen from using Zendesk include faster response times.
 

Categories and Ranking

ServiceNow Customer Service...
Ranking in CRM Customer Engagement Centers
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Customer Experience Management (3rd)
Zendesk
Ranking in CRM Customer Engagement Centers
7th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
61
Ranking in other categories
CRM (24th), Help Desk Software (11th), IT Service Management (ITSM) (11th), Sales Force Automation (11th), Reporting (19th), Knowledge Management Software (4th), Community Platforms (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the CRM Customer Engagement Centers category, the mindshare of ServiceNow Customer Service Management is 11.1%, up from 4.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zendesk is 7.5%, down from 8.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
CRM Customer Engagement Centers
 

Featured Reviews

Arvind  Mehrotra - PeerSpot reviewer
Integrating departments for unified service while managing complexity and learning curve
ServiceNow Customer Service Management integrates the admin, finance, HR, and service departments, enabling an employee of an organization to get service from a single window. It integrates all different queues into one dashboard and consolidates various departments, ensuring visibility across the organization is transparent. It helps to create a shared services organization, reducing the operational complexity and facilitating a more unified service delivery. It consolidates all service desks under one umbrella, enhancing efficiency.
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, enhancing our workflows.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Healthcare Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Computer Software Company
21%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Educational Organization
7%
Performing Arts
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about ServiceNow Customer Service Management?
We can integrate different technologies in ServiceNow Customer Service Management. An organization would like to offer a digital transformative experience to its employees and customers, which the ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ServiceNow Customer Service Management?
ServiceNow Customer Service Management is expensive, although there is value for money considering the time and administrative efficiencies it brings.
What needs improvement with ServiceNow Customer Service Management?
The integration cost and learning curve are very high, and managing this platform requires sophisticated handling, which is more complex compared to other solutions.
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 ...
 

Also Known As

ServiceNow CSM
Zendesk Support, Zendesk Guide, Zendesk Sell
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Siemens Healthineers, SAP SuccessFactors, Asurion
Mailchimp, Tesco, Vimeo, Instacart, Mediaocean, Slack, Uber
Find out what your peers are saying about ServiceNow Customer Service Management vs. Zendesk and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,140 professionals have used our research since 2012.