Zendesk vs Salesforce Service Cloud Compared: Which Is Best?

Do you want to give your customer service team a real boost in productivity, organization, and the means to offer the best customer support experience to your users? Then you’ll want to implement an amazing customer support software solution. Today, we compare two juggernauts: Zendesk vs Salesforce Service Cloud.

In this article, we’ll dig deeper into the features, pricing, pros and cons of both tools and help you determine which one is more suitable for your business.

So, let’s get started!

What is the difference between Zendesk and Salesforce?

The main difference between Salesforce and Zendesk is that Salesforce offers tons of business SaaS in everything from marketing to sales and to customer support to a range of suites for startups, small businesses, and larger companies. Meanwhile, Zendesk offers platforms for sales and customer support only.

Check out any Zendesk review, and what you will read there is the Zendesk emphasis on connecting sympathetic customer support reps with users who want that specifically human touch. 

This is not to say that Zendesk does not offer a range of automated tools, like workflows and AI-powered recommendations, to help your customer service team along the way. People also praise Zendesk's ease of use. 

So, if you want to spend less time training your team, Zendesk is a great option where agents can go from A to Z in mastering all the Zendesk features. 

Overall, Zendesk Service is what we are looking at today, but just so you know, there is also a sales module, and you can read about it in any Zendesk Sell review.

So, what does the average Salesforce review talk about? Well, first of all, most reviews go on about many of the Salesforce apps, like its CRM, marketing, and sales tools. When it comes to Salesforce Service Cloud, which includes its customer support features, reviews are generally positive. 

Obviously, those who love Salesforce Service the most are the ones who use many of its other products.

Zendesk vs Salesforce service cloud comparison chart

This table demonstrates our Salesforce Service Cloud vs Zendesk comparison stats side by side for a fast prelude to our in-depth analysis.

Zendesk vs Salesforce pricing

Zendesk offers basic plans and suite plans. Basic plans are Support Team for $19, Support Professional for $55 and Support Enterprise for $115, all per user per month billed annually, or $25, $69 and $149 on a per month basis. 

The suite plans are Suite Team for $55, Suite Growth for $89, and Suite Professional at $115, per user per month billed annually, or $69, $115 and $149 per user per month billed monthly. Contact Zendesk for Suite Enterprise and Suite Enterprise Plus pricing. 

Zendesk also has an AI add-on for $50 per agent per month. Finally, startups can qualify for six months of free Zendesk.

Meanwhile, over at Salesforce Service Cloud, the pricing is as follows: The Essentials plan for small business CRM is $25 per user per month billed annually. Professional plan for complete CRM and businesses of any size is $75 per user per month billed annually. 

Service Cloud Enterprise plan is $150 per user per month, billed annually with a customizable CRM. The Service Unlimited CRM plan is $300 per user per month, billed annually. 

Salesforce also offers add-ons, like $50 per user per month billed annually for field service, $75 for digital engagement tools, and $50 for Service Cloud Einstein AI features, also both per month on an annual payment plan. 

Winner: Salesforce

This is a close category; however, for the Salesforce products, when it comes to support software, offer a more well-rounded package with tools and features that work within the greater Salesforce CRM system and therefore streamline better with sales and marketing tools. You can do a free Zendesk trial, and Salesforce does also offer a free trial.
 

Salesforce vs Zendesk customer support

When it comes to comparing Zendesk to Salesforce for their customer service, a few points need to be made. First, Zendesk offers 24/7 proactive support as an add-on to any of their plans. 

There are also add-on professional services to help with things like data migration and customizing apps. Finally, there is something called Zendesk Assist, a subscription-based support system that is more hands-on. All plans have basic digital support during regular business hours.

Salesforce provides exceptional customer service plans to its users that you get on a subscription basis. For example, the premiere success plan offers exclusive coaching from Salesforce experts, and, more importantly, 24/7/365 support with minimal interruptions. 

The Signature success plan provides a dedicated technical account manager, proactive monitoring and key event management, and 24/7/365 with the fastest response times from support engineers. 

Winner: Zendesk

The comparison between Zendesk and Salesforce in this category results in Zendesk having slightly superior customer service for the right price. But if support is on a high degree of crucial needs from your customer service solution, and you can pay for Salesforce's premiere or signature, then Salesforce is also pretty good. 
 

Knowledgebase & learning

Our next category deals with the knowledge base systems that each of these platforms offers to their users. 

Salesforce has, for example, a thorough help and documentation center. You can explore issues by how common they are, or by topic. Salesforce also has user community forums called Trailhead and a Trailblazer community. There are also video tutorials on Youtube.

Zendesk provides access to a robust Zendesk help center. Here you can find many self-service tools, including an FAQ, a community forum, and a team of Zendesk experts who also chime in to add extra advice and tips. You also can use guided learning paths, do on-demand training sessions, and get digital onboarding and adoption resources. 

Winner: Zendesk

The Zendesk guides to help you leverage every tool and feature are really great, as are many other elements of the Zendesk self-service tools for either the basic plans or the Zendesk Suite plans.

Salesforce vs Zendesk features & functionality

In this section, we’ll explore the features and functionality of both Zendesk and Salesforce, starting with the ease of use to examining ticketing systems, live chat, and even advanced AI features!

Zendesk or Salesforce for ease of use?

User-friendliness is not to be taken for granted, especially when it comes to training new support team members on using new software. 

Salesforce is very popular, but many Salesforce key features do require a bit of time to master their ins and outs. Not that you will have a really hard time figuring everything out, but it won't be instantaneous, either.

Zendesk heavily relies on ease of use to attract users. It takes little time and effort to get to know all the tools, especially for those using it on a regular basis. And when there is only a little effort for new support teams to learn the system, more time and energy can go into helping customers across all support channels. 

Winner: Zendesk

If you are already using Salesforce, you might disagree that it is not as user-friendly as Zendesk, and of course, this category is highly subjective. Zendesk's dashboard makes it a snap to browse through the tabs on the left and on the right, for example. 

Either way, your customer support software team won't need to spend weeks training every day on the platform. Once again, we advise you to try a free trial to see for yourself the level of effort new support teams will have to make to become customer support software experts.
 

Salesforce Essentials vs Zendesk for small businesses

Many small businesses today seem to be the main target market for software solutions like Zendesk and Salesforce, as larger companies and enterprise operations often get bespoke platforms, though that is not to argue that SaaS does not try to cater to large companies too. 

Zendesk is practically synonymous with small business systems and is a ready-made and out-of-the-box solution that’s popular for ease of use and competitive costs. However, Salesforce knows a thing or two about the SMB market. 

Winner: Tie 

If you are a startup or a small business, then you really cannot go wrong with either Salesforce or Zendesk to handle your customer support or any other aspect of your business. 
 

Salesforce vs Zendesk online versions

Both Zendesk and Salesforce offer online versions. This has many advantages, like service cloud data and backups, as well as easy access to all the platform's tools and features from any computer or device that is connected to the internet. 

Providing good online versions is a boon for support software for teams who want to avoid having to download and install desktop versions.

Winner: Salesforce

Salesforce has excellent online versions of its products, whether Salesforce Service Cloud or Salesforce Sales Cloud. 

It should be noted, though, that Zendesk's online versions are pretty effective as well. Either way, there is a minimal overview of the next steps that you can take to complete and get acquainted with these online platforms.
 

Zendesk vs Salesforce desktop versions

Unlike when it comes to online versions, desktop apps for customer support software are less common. 

It seems from conducting much research and trials that both Zendesk and Salesforce only have desktop apps for some of their features but not for the entire software platform. For example, Salesforce Chatter is an app and extension that has a desktop version, which is mostly for knowledge and file sharing internally within a company.

Winner: Salesforce

This category should not be taken too seriously, as most users will only ever require the online version. But since there seem to be just a few extra apps in the Salesforce system that offer desktop versions, Salesforce just barely wins out here.
 

Zendesk vs Salesforce app capabilities

Let’s look at the capabilities that each of these apps offer to their users. Zendesk’s app is capable of letting you create more meaningful relationships with your customers by providing great customer service via messaging, AI-assistance and a help center. It is also highly capable of scaling up its tools if your business begins to grow. Finally, Zendesk is very adaptable and offers you many ways to customize the experience to suit your work style.

Meanwhile, over at Salesforce, you get a wide range of capabilities. Of course, we will cover some of these in more detail below. Some Sal;esforce app capabilities include self service portals, a contact center, field service tools, and digital engagement features. AI app capabilities get you a chatbot, service automation and even team productivity tools to name a few.

Winner: Tie 

This category must go down as an even split, as both Salesforce and Zendesk have app capabilities that will help boost productivity, efficiency and even customer support employee satisfaction rates. 
 

Help Desk and knowledge 

If you want to make your own help center, then you'll need things like a clean text editor. These let you create and easily add articles in a clean text database with an easy searchable system. 

After reviewing Zendesk and Salesforce, it is evident that both of these tools offer help center and knowledge base features, and if you are a user, we advise you to try and use self-service whenever possible.

Winner: Zendesk

Zendesk's help center and knowledge base tools include contextual self-service, multilingual content, article view permissions, and a customer portal that can require little effort for new users to get their own help and that you also have the ability to brand. 

The knowledge base text editor is WYSIWYG, and the articles are SEO optimized. Salesforce offers many similar tools and features for self service help desk systems, but the Zendesk help center tool is just slightly better. 
 

Ticketing systems 

The ticketing system is one of the core elements of any customer support portal. 

Tickets are new issues or problems that users report, and the ticketing system lets support reps handle these tickets alone or in collaboration with other reps, offer timelines like SLAs, monitor ticket progress, and analyze ticket resolution stats like time. 

Ticketing systems also streamline with CRM user data, so that a 360-degree view of your customer and engagement history overview is clear, even using data from marketing and sales.

Winner: Zendesk

Salesforce is obviously pretty decent and supports ticket management, but again, this area of comparison goes to Zendesk. 

The Zendesk ticketing system is fully integrated into the platform, allowing reps to track ticket productivity and pipeline visibility, as well as letting you collaborate on customer communication with reps throughout the entire customer journey. 

More advanced Zendesk packages even let you handle multiple ticket forms.
 

Salesforce or Zendesk for live chat and messaging

When you try both software solutions, you should think about live chat and messaging as necessary features. 

Live chat windows can be embedded as widgets on websites, whereas messaging features can work via multiple communications channels. Chat software for such a vital aspect of your business, being customer service, can make a huge difference in offering an excellent customer experience.

Winner: Zendesk

Zendesk has many tools for live chat and messaging. Firstly, there is Zendesk Sunshine, which allows developers to create natural-sounding conversation tools. 

You can easily customize Zendesk Sunshine without knowing how to code, so even if developers understand the software best, we advise you to try Sunshine out even if you're not a full-time developer. 

You also get features like pre-chat forms, automatic translations, and conversation histories. Salesforce is not bad at handling a lot of customer contact through chat or messaging too. They even have their own AI-powered bots.
 

Zendesk or Salesforce for field service 

Sometimes a customer needs a certain kind of support rep to show up in person and provide service. This is field service, and customer support software solutions sometimes include tools to help with this part of doing a business. 

There are many steps you can take to improve field service, like fusing it with virtual support, keeping track of safety protocols on site, as well as having map tools for faster travel times and better field service visit planning.

Winner: Salesforce

Salesforce is a true winner here in the category of field service, as this is kind of a weak spot for Zendesk. 

As software for such a vital part of your business, Salesforce offers in-person mixed with virtual customer service, AI-based job prioritization, skills-based job routing, location and travel optimization, and workplace safety protocols. 

Salesforce's AI called Einstein helps streamline a lot of field service activities, and can reduce the time you take in your process to get your agents on the road and on site to fix problems.
 

Telephony tools 

In order to make collaborating on customer communication easy, we should not forget to include the old telephone among chat, email, and messaging. 

In the old days, one would have had a really hard time without phone support, but today, it is often seen as an extra, even for smaller businesses. But since reps using their sales and marketing tools can have access to omnichannel communication, support reps need the same, including the phone.  

Winner: Zendesk

Watch a customer go from needing that human touch to being totally satisfied when you implement Zendesk's many phone and voice tools. 

These include a call button on a widget with embedded voice, voicemail, text messages, the ability to answer the phone in your web browser or have calls forwarded to a phone. 

There is also caller ID, call routing, customized greetings, and a queue size and wait time automated feature. Call recording is also great with Zendesk. Salesforce has basic telephony integration, and this includes computer telephony. 

Advanced AI features 

When you think about all the time and effort it takes to get ahead by offering amazing customer support, one can not neglect the role of artificial intelligence. 

This can be as simple as automatically filling in forms and undertaking easy tasks that you can complete with much less human time and effort, to offering sophisticated and intelligent suggestions and recommendations to reps in helping them help users. 

Winner: Salesforce

Salesforce's major AI tool is called Einstein, and it pops up a lot in the Salesforce Service Cloud packages. Einstein can give you AI-based predictions and recommendations to streamline your support process better. It can also be used to enhance chatbots and other digital channels. 

It is easy to implement Einstein and it will take little time to get acquainted with how to customize and optimize it. As mentioned above, there is AI enhancement offered as an add-on with Zendesk. This is useful for intelligent recommendations, content cues, triage, and AI-generated business insights and rules analysis.
 

Salesforce Zendesk Integration capabilities

Let's discuss the topic of Salesforce and Zendesk integration abilities. When considering each product on its own, it's good to know that both of them have solid integration libraries where you can add many more useful tools on top of the existing platforms. 

You could probably review a Zendesk Salesforce integration guide or two to see the range of functionalities. What's more, there are such things as connecting apps, and these can be used to create new interoperable tools through integrations with Zendesk or Salesforce to third-party apps. 

Remember, not all software comes as a blank slate, and integrations are a sure way to bulk up the toolkits.

Winner: Tie

Thanks to apps like Zapier, it is very hard to determine which system is better for integrations overall, Salesforce or Zendesk. Therefore, this category is a tie.

A note on Zendesk Salesforce integration

But what about a Salesforce Zendesk integration? Do these two systems function together? 

Zendesk and Salesforce are prominent players in the fields of customer support and customer relationship management (CRM), respectively. Zendesk and Salesforce integration enables businesses to synchronize data, enhance workflows, and provide a seamless customer experience. 

Zendesk offers a native integration with Salesforce, allowing a streamlined connection between the two platforms. This integration allows sales and support teams to have a unified view of customer information, ticket data, and sales activities.

To connect Zendesk to Salesforce or vice versa, you can read the developer documents on either site. There are also explainers to offer help with Zendesk to Salesforce migration or other ways to get a company's Zendesk data to their Salesforce system. 

If additional customization or unique workflows are needed, Zapier can be used to carry out Zendesk integration with Salesforce. Pre-built Zaps or custom workflows can be designed to automate processes across both platforms.

Is Zendesk better than Salesforce? Our key takeaways

So, this comparison was really close. In the end, as you can see from our table, Zendesk just barely gets past the post before Salesforce at 53 to 52 points. 

Clearly, these are not the only two service desk software options on the market today. Do not feel you must absolutely pick between these two. What’s more, in some cases, you might want support software that really specializes in remote monitoring. In that case, it’s a good thing to learn about the best RMM software.

That wraps it up. We hope, if you’ve been mulling over the Salesforce Zendesk question, that now you have your answer. Subscribe to our newsletter for more insights. Cheers.