A Zendesk alternative: the best customer support software for your business

Customer support is about providing the best experience to your customers. Other than customer retention and cultivating loyalty, it holds a significant role in increasing sales and revenue. It is the first point of contact between your prospects and your brand. When potential customers first reach out to you, the quality of your customer service will make or break the deal. This is why many businesses are now incorporating smart tools or customer support software like Zendesk to enhance the quality of their customer service. However, as issues arise and customer support from Zendesk becomes rather unresponsive, many have begun to search for Zendesk alternatives to acquire better services and lower their costs. 

What Zendesk does

Zendesk is an omnichannel customer support software that allows your customers to reach out to you through email, phone, messenger, and chat. Their products featured include

• Zendesk for service: a complete customer service solution

• Zendesk for sales: sales CRM solution for leads management, agent productivity, and pipeline visibility

• Sunshine Platform: an open and flexible CRM platform for customization

Zendesk has a lot of advanced features, but it is heavily dependent on your own developer resources since no user interface is provided.

While Zendesk is a well-known customer support software with a large customer base worldwide, the disadvantages of using its platform have led users to other Zendesk alternatives. Here are some complaints listed by Zendesk users:

• Expensive costs

• A per-agent pricing structure that makes it hard to scale

• Complex setup

• Features that are difficult to integrate

• Slow customer support

52% of customers will abandon their purchases if they can’t find the information they are looking for.

In a hurry? Skip right to the comparison table with the Zendesk alternative, SleekFlow.

Why should we search for a Zendesk alternative?

What Zendesk does is great, but it is not for all businesses. For those lacking time and developer resources, it is probably not the best option. SleekFlow, as one of the alternatives to Zendesk, is made for businesses of all sizes. It provides tools to enhance customer support, marketing, and sales. Read on to find out why it is the best Zendesk alternative.

Cost-effective pricing and package

To use Zendesk, you need to accommodate a large amount of budget. This is because their plans are charged per agent monthly.

SleekFlow, as one of Zendesk alternatives, offers much affordable, cost-effective pricing plans.

To see the full list of features for each plan, visit SleekFlow’s pricing page.

Moreover, you can also add on the number of users from $19 to $39 without upgrading the whole plan.

No-code integrations for a wide range of CRM platforms and messaging channels

When it comes to scaling your business, the process should be quick, easy, and effective. Zendesk has 1200+ apps for you to connect through their marketplace, but it often requires additional fees and charges. For example, to connect to Instagram, you need to pay for plans ranging from $29-119 per month after a 14-day trial. 

On the other hand, on SleekFlow’s free-forever trial plan, also known as a free Zendesk alternative, you do not need to pay to connect to Instagram, Facebook, or Telegram. You can freely choose any 3 messaging channels (except for WhatsApp) from the list of popular social media or messaging apps. 

If your business is already using Salesforce or HubSpot CRM, you can even integrate the contacts and data to all the popular social media channels to reach your customers through messaging. This way, when they contact your business through different channels each time, you can still access their lead stage, campaign source, order history, and more on the complete customer profile right next to the chat box.

Complete chat-to-pay commerce on your customer's preferred channel

Customer support is all about speed, convenience, and precision. Since most customers now prefer messaging on social media, it is vital that your business offers options and makes as many channels as possible to make communication more accessible. Once their inquiries are solved, and they show intention to place an order, your agents can generate an in-chat payment link instantly to complete the purchase. 

Although Stripe can be integrated via a third-party app on Zendesk, you will need to pay $4.95 per agent per month after a 7-day trial. Imagine having spent over $120 to have only 25 agents who can send this payment link or access payment statuses. The cost will be demanding to handle on top of the Zendesk per-agent charges. Also, as it is a third-party integration, it can take a longer time to escalate issues.

On the contrary, SleekFlow, as the best Zendesk alternative, has native Stripe integration for you to collect payment in chat within a few clicks. Refunds can also be completed if required. Since the add-on is only $99 per month for unlimited agents, you can equip your sales team with this useful tool. Other than improving the customer experience, it will undoubtedly motivate your agents to sell more and increase sales for your business.

The beauty of conversational commerce is that it enables local businesses to have a global outreach. I knew that having the ability to accept credit card payment within WhatsApp and let the customer pay their way would be the gamechanger.

Julien de Préaumont

Founder of Le Dessert

Instant and high-quality customer support

For your team to provide accurate assistance at the highest level of efficiency, there needs to be an organized workflow and structured data storage for them to pull the information required for the inquiries. As an alternative to Zendesk, SleekFlow has a unified view similar to Zendesk, and an ‘Internal Notes’ tab above the typing space of the chatbox, just like the ‘Side Conversations’ tab on the right column on Zendesk. 

Free-forever plan for trial

Most software offer paid solutions with a 7-day or 14-day trial, and we know it might not be enough. On Zendesk, you can get a free trial of up to 14 days; after that, all your data will be lost. 

Unlike Zendesk, you can get a trial that is free forever on SleekFlow. However, do keep in mind that the features on the free plan can be limited.

Free live chat widget: continue chatting even after customers leave the website

As one of the best alternatives to Zendesk, SleekFlow offers a free no-code live chat widget that includes a wide range of messaging channels. This means that your leads or potential customers can choose their preferred platform to chat with your brand when they reach out to you via live chat. It also means that you can continue the conversation with them even after they leave your website. 

Furthermore, with SleekFlow Live Chat installed, you can monitor the customers’ activity, such as browsing history, time spent on a web page, and more, and assess the performance of your website. These details will also be great for retargeting when you organize marketing campaigns in the future.

Zendesk vs. SleekFlow: a detailed comparison

Whether you’re a Zendesk user looking to switch to Zendesk alternatives or other customer support software, or you’re just a new user doing research for your business, you’ve landed in the right place. This table will show why SleekFlow is the best alternative to Zendesk and compare its features to what Zendesk does.

Zendesk alternative: SleekFlow as a customer support software

As shown in the comparison above, what Zendesk does either require developer resources or extra costs to connect to apps on its marketplace. This not only adds an extra financial burden but also creates a lot of tedious processes for your work operations. The reason for this is that if you opt for those third-party integrations on the Zendesk marketplace, you have to deal with many parties for different issues. We all know how frustrating it is to get ignored or neglected by the customer support team, not to mention the extra work of dealing with many parties.  

At SleekFlow, the Zendesk alternative for all businesses, you will be an important customer. You don’t have to be a big brand or an enterprise to get our Priority Support Plan and receive timely responses for your issues. Other than that, you can choose to purchase our add-on features and get a free trial before that. You don’t have to upgrade the whole plan and take a big chunk out of your budget to get a specific function, such as Salesforce or HubSpot CRM integration. 

What SleekFlow offers

SleekFlow is an omnichannel social commerce platform that goes beyond customer support. It is a great Zendesk alternative that provides a complete chat-to-pay ecosystem and welcomes customers on whichever channel they prefer. On the all-in-one platform, you can:

Messaging

• Manage conversations from WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Instagram DM, Telegram, WeChat, LINE, SMS, and more in an all-in-one inbox

• Access the latest WhatsApp Business features on Meta’s Cloud API

CRM management

• Integrate major CRM platforms such as Salesforce and HubSpot for lead and campaign tracking

• Segment customers with structured CRM and labeling

Marketing campaigns

• Personalize broadcast campaigns with an open rate of over 90%

• Gather detailed analytics of campaigns for better retargeting

Commerce

• Draft orders in the chat with native Shopify integration

• Send in-chat payment links for customers to pay in a few clicks

• Install no-code live chat widget on your website for free

Automation and workflow

• Automate FAQs, set up chatbots and workflows

• Dedicated sales performance dashboard to monitor sales agents

The best part is, you can use free trial add-ons to try out customized plans, and all the features above can be implemented without coding knowledge. 

Also, if you’re a startup or a budding entrepreneur looking for a free Zendesk alternative, you can go for SleekFlow’s free plan.

Still not sure how SleekFlow can function as a Zendesk support alternative? Take a quick read at the success story below.

Tutor Circle boosts customer support efficiency by 60% with SleekFlow

When we talk about SleekFlow as a Zendesk alternative, it indicates that there is a wide range of features that can support your customer support team better. For Tutor Circle, an internet-based tutoring agency, SleekFlow has helped to achieve:

• 75% decrease in response time

• 60% increase in customer support efficiency

• 30,000 contacts managed effectively

• Over 1,000 daily inquiries resolved daily

SleekFlow web and mobile applications are stable, fast, and user-friendly compared to the WhatsApp Business app. Our maximum first response time is reduced from 4 hours to an hour. As a result, customer support efficiency has improved by 60%.

Andy Ng

Founder of Tutor Circle

See the full success story of Tutor Circle and an interview of the founder for more.

SleekFlow is suitable for any industry that requires customer service. The potential is pretty limitless with the integration of multiple CRMs.

Jovan Lin

AVP Marketing & Corporate Communications

See another success story from PSB Academy, which has used SleekFlow, the Zendesk support alternative.

Switch to SleekFlow without losing your existing customer contacts and data

Our professional team of developers is committed to providing the best assistance for you to switch to SleekFlow, the best Zendesk alternative. 

If you’re using WhatsApp Business API, you can also migrate your account to SleekFlow without losing your business phone number.

Check out our YouTube videos to learn more about what working on SleekFlow looks like.

Get started with SleekFlow today to generate more sales

Social commerce is the future of commerce. To please customers, you must make your business available on your customers’ preferred platforms. SleekFlow, as the best alternative to Zendesk, offers features that you can find on customer support software, yet much more than that. Not only can it make a great Zendesk support alternative, but the wide range of features that completes the seamless chat-to-pay process also establishes it as an appropriate Zendesk chat alternative.

Further reading:

• SleekFlow as a respond.io alternative

• SleekFlow as a WATI alternative