Zendesk vs. Talkdesk

Creating and managing a great customer experience (CX) is a huge undertaking, and the customer support software you use can either make life easier for everyone or much more difficult.

Explore the offerings of Zendesk vs. Talkdesk to see what each can provide to your business. You’ll find that Zendesk stands out with its robust selection of apps and integrations, product scalability, and low total cost of ownership—you’ll gain all the tools you need to exceed customer expectations.

Robust apps and integrations

Zendesk has over 1,500 pre-built apps and integrations, providing a significantly extensive and diverse set of tools that seamlessly integrate with third-party applications and services. The wealth of options enables businesses to customize and extend their CX solution by integrating Zendesk with the rest of their tech stack. In comparison, Talkdesk offers a more limited selection of 100+ apps and integrations.

Total cost of ownership

With Zendesk, there's no need for expensive software developers. Our intuitive interface allows your team to set up their systems and make adjustments without extensive technical knowledge, keeping your total cost of ownership low. On the other hand, Talkdesk can be difficult to implement, and building workarounds for missing features can require users to enlist help from developers to tailor the software to their needs. When Talkdesk does roll out a workaround or additional feature, it often comes with an extra fee.

Scalability

Over 40 percent of Zendesk reviewers on G2 represented small businesses compared to the under 20 percent that reviewed Talkdesk. Unlike Talkdesk, which has prohibitive pricing, Zendesk provides a more affordable entry point for small businesses, eliminating the need to migrate services every few years. Bottom line: Zendesk can support your organization’s growth at every stage.

More in this guide:

• At-a-glance comparison: Zendesk vs. Talkdesk
• Zendesk vs. Talkdesk: Features comparison
• Pricing plans: Talkdesk vs. Zendesk
• Customer stories on using Zendesk
• Frequently asked questions
• See why Zendesk is a best-in-class CX partner

Check out this overview of Zendesk and Talkdesk for a quick side-by-side comparison.

Unpack the key features of Talkdesk vs. Zendesk for a more in-depth understanding of how they compare.

Integration ecosystem

Zendesk boasts over 1,500 pre-built apps and integrations spanning diverse categories, including customer relationship management (CRM) software, marketing automation, billing systems, and productivity tools. This extensive range caters to a wide array of business needs with easy plug-and-play configuration. Plus, the open API allows for deeper customization and smooth integration with your specialized solutions.

In contrast, Talkdesk offers over 100 apps and integrations in its marketplace. The limited selection of native integrations could require custom development for niche needs, potentially increasing costs and hindering operational agility.

Free trial

Zendesk offers businesses a risk-free opportunity to test drive its CX software for up to 14 days. During that time, you can experience how our omnichannel tools seamlessly handle emails, chats, social media, and phone calls—all in one central hub.

On the contrary, Talkdesk doesn’t currently offer a free trial, so businesses can’t test its performance in real-world scenarios before committing to a purchase.

AI and chatbots

Zendesk AI-powered chatbots leverage billions of real customer interactions to provide quality support in over 20 languages. The AI's magic goes beyond merely suggesting self-service articles to customers—generative AI can write articles from scratch, revise old content, and converse in a natural way. Plus, Zendesk AI comes pre-trained, so you can set it up yourself and avoid expensive developers.

Talkdesk includes a virtual agent to help customers and AI-powered agent assist tools that can write interaction summaries, respond to customer questions, and suggest next steps to agents. However, one user noted that the AI is less reliable when providing service in languages other than English.

Omnichannel help desk

With Zendesk, teams can say goodbye to channel chaos—our omnichannel support capabilities enable agents to manage all conversations across communication channels in one place. The unified workspace also gives agents a complete view of the customer journey so they can deliver consistent and personalized experiences, no matter how a customer reaches out.

Talkdesk also has omnichannel help desk solutions. Agents can route calls and convert them to digital conversations without disrupting the customer’s experience.

Ticketing and case management

Using Zendesk, agents can prioritize and assign tickets based on urgency, intent, language, sentiment, and agent skill or availability. When an issue needs extra attention, agents can quickly escalate the ticket up the chain of command. Powerful filtering and tagging capabilities make it easy to track trending issues that customers face and identify areas for improvement in agent performance.

With Zendesk, agents can also leave internal notes, share files, and discuss strategies in side conversations within each ticket. This ensures everyone stays on the same page and no customer gets left behind.

In contrast, Talkdesk offers limited ticket management options. While agents can make notes and initiate calls in tickets, the platform lacks the option to escalate tickets that require additional care.

Call center

Unlike traditional clunky systems, Zendesk seamlessly embeds call center software within its omnichannel system. Agents can answer calls directly from the Agent Workspace, with all customer history and relevant context readily available.

Additionally, Zendesk interactive voice response (IVR) software can intelligently route customers to the most qualified agent based on their skill set for specific issues. Businesses also benefit from AI call center solutions that can detect customer sentiment, transcribe calls to text, and measure agent performance against department goals.

Talkdesk provides the basic tools expected in a call center, such as IVR, call routing, and customizable workflows. Businesses can also bring their carrier to Talkdesk, allowing them to maintain their existing telephony infrastructure. However, some Talkdesk users have encountered issues with screen recordings.

Workforce management

Zendesk provides comprehensive tools for workforce management, empowering businesses to optimize agent schedules, anticipate staffing requirements, and enhance overall operational efficiency. Customizable dashboards let managers monitor agent activity in real time, so they can identify who is online, what channels they’re using, and how many tickets they’ve handled.

The forecasting tools in Zendesk also analyze historical data and predict future workloads, ensuring you have the right number of agents on deck to handle incoming requests. Automated scheduling takes the guesswork out of creating agent schedules by factoring in agent preferences, skill sets, and time off.

Talkdesk also offers workforce management tools in the CX Cloud Elite and Experience Clouds plans. These tools include staff forecasting, scheduling, and coaching resources. Businesses that use the add-on can also give employees access to the Talkdesk Schedule mobile app.

Knowledge management and community forums

With Zendesk, you can build a knowledge base to house articles, FAQs, troubleshooting guides, and videos. Generative AI helps automate knowledge management by flagging content gaps and writing articles with up-to-date information. To boot, your chatbots can access information from these resources to assist customers and produce accurate responses. Lastly, our community forum provides a place for your customers to connect, share experiences, and help each other solve problems.

Talkdesk provides internal knowledge management teams with some tools to create and revise information. The Talkdesk Virtual Agent and Talkdesk Agent Assist can source information from knowledge base content. However, Talkdesk doesn’t enable businesses to build their own community forums.

Reporting and analytics

Reporting and analytics features from Zendesk offer powerful insights into customer service operations. You can access real-time data on key metrics, enabling timely decision-making and responsiveness to evolving trends. The intuitive interface and user-friendly design simplify the process of recording and interpreting data. You can evaluate agent performance, monitor customer satisfaction, and assess help request trends.

On the other hand, Talkdesk users cite poor reporting and message analytics. Complaints include the reporting features not being intuitive and the real-time data being difficult to analyze.

Zendesk provides a transparent and straightforward pricing structure, eliminating hidden costs and offering clarity on expenditure. Our tiered pricing plans are also designed to scale with businesses of all sizes so they can optimize costs based on their current needs.

Talkdesk pricing is less transparent than Zendesk and more limited when it comes to included features. For instance, Talkdesk offers workforce management, CX analytics, AI agent assistance, and proactive outbound engagement tools as add-ons for its CX Cloud Elite plan, but businesses can only choose one. If you would like more add-ons or an industry-specific plan, it’s unclear how much it will cost. Additionally, the advertised prices are based on a three-year commitment.

Zendesk boasts over 160,000 customers across industries, including Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, Lush, and Liberty London. Hear from other customers who have benefited from partnering with us.

Mailchimp

“When I came across Zendesk, what worked for me was that it was all out of the box: automations, macros, customer satisfaction reporting. All of that was already there. It wasn’t stuff we had to custom build out. I have implemented it at previous companies, but seeing it be implemented in a 1,000-employee company, as easy as we were able to do it, has been astronomical.”

—Joe Tinter, Operations Manager for Support at Mailchimp

HotDoc

“Without the help of a really seamless tool and product like Zendesk, we wouldn't have been able to create a whole support strategy in 48 hours for 150 customers for a brand new product that we’ve only just built, while working remotely in the middle of a pandemic.”

—Aaron Sims, Support Team Leader at HotDoc

Vimeo

“We saw a boost in confidence across the team, agents, managers, in the stability of [Zendesk] and the fact that there aren’t as many cracks for things to slip through. Whether you’re a frontline agent answering tickets or you’re administering the system, it’s much easier to trust the numbers and know it’s an accurate reflection of how things are going. We now have a single source of truth.”

—Noah Kardos-Fein, Director of Digital Support at Vimeo