Evaluating Zendesk vs. Kustomer

Nicholas Ayala

Hi all! ?

I am evaluating Zendesk vs Kustomer for a mobile-first (almost mobile-only) B2C startup that has a user-base throughout the world...

...so they are receiving support inquiries in multiple languages. 

I am interested to hear about people's experiences between the two while scaling and if possible would love to connect for a chat or two about your experiences. 

Hearing first hand the good, the bad, and the ugly is priceless in decision making. 

Thanks in advance!

Ido Barnoam

Hi Nicholas

We are using Zendesk extensively for all of our customers, including mobile. 

Feel free to send me a private message and we could schedule a call.

Brittany Newman

Hi Nicholas!

I don't have a ton of insight to offer but can tell you that we've used ZD for the past 4+ years and have outgrown it. We are looking for an omni-channel solution and have been testing Kustomer after looking at Nice-In Contact and Fresh Desk. So far, Kustomer has been able to provide us with the platform we need to be able to see the customer journey all the way through the system. I'll be following this thread to see if any others chime in

Nicholas Ayala

Hi Brittany! 

What are some of the aspects of ZD that your team has outgrown? When I look at ZD, I can see that they do so well when it comes to traditional ticket management, especially in a B2B space...however it's not the newest when looking at (exactly as you mentioned) true omnichannel. Was there anything else additional to omnichannel that drove the trial to Kustomer? 

Some of the things that I was thinking as a concern with Kustomer were their implementation time and the switching costs of retraining the teams...

Brittany Newman

Hey Nicholas! 

For context, I work for a startup that has had major growth over the past year, and we are expanding all teams internally. ZD was relatively user-friendly and excellent in the "ticketing" arena, but we were looking for something more collaborative across teams, and we wanted to stop having to use/integrate multiple systems. We found a product called Front, which solved the problem of collaboration for email, sms, provided ticketing in a totally different way than ZD, and has been AMAZING from a collaboration aspect. But now we're looking for something that doesn't require an entire engineering team to integrate multiple solutions (phone, email, chat, knowledge base, sms, social, CRM, etc) and maintain them because that's not scalable, which is what had led us to looking at omni-channel solutions. None of them have seemed as collaborative as Front is, but all of them provide some level of access in the form of "seats" for different user types, and Kustomer has the CRM that will allow all teams across the company to see the customer journey, not just their part of it. 

As far as implementation timeline, it's hard to tell how long it will actually take. We are in the middle of testing - week 2 - and are working with product and engineering to see if it's a good fit. The CSS team is only 15 people, and are the main stakeholders, but we also have Business Development, sales, and our lending team involved as well, to make sure it's a good fit overall. Our plan is to do a slow rollout with whatever product we choose, but everyone is in agreement that we need a new solution so implementation/retraining teams isn't a huge concern. 

I don't know if any of that helps in your decision, but I will keep you posted on the outcome of the Kustomer trial!

Chad Horenfeldt

Nicholas - I head of Customer Success at Kustomer. If there is anything I can help you with, please let me know. From my experience, your mobile first approach will fit will with our capabilities.

Chad Horenfeldt

Brittany - let me know if there is anything I can help you with as you go through this testing phase.

Brittany Newman

Thanks, Chad! So far, so good: Sam and Jeremy have been great!