Zendesk vs. Genesys

An end-to-end customer service solution is a comprehensive package that covers all aspects of customer service—from the initial point of contact through the engagement process until the end of the service cycle. This type of solution aims to provide a seamless, integrated experience for customers to improve their satisfaction and loyalty.

As you decide between Genesys and Zendesk for accomplishing this, it’s important to understand the long-term implications of your choice. Aspects like the total cost of ownership, industry specialization, and agility will all impact your team’s success. Read on to learn how Zendesk and Genesys compare in these areas and more.

• Low total cost of ownership

  
  Zendesk has a low total cost of ownership (TCO) compared to other software, like Genesys. Its tools are ready out of the box, so even employees who don’t have technical knowledge can deploy it quickly for a fast return on investment (ROI). In contrast, Genesys can be complex and often requires substantial training, which increases your TCO and slows down ROI. Additionally, users incur additional costs to get add-on services due to the limited number of features available with its basic plans.
• Built for customer service

  
  Zendesk was designed to focus on customer service, making it a specialized tool tailored to address the nuanced needs of modern customer experiences (CX). In fact, Zendesk was named number one in Digital Customer Service use case by Gartner. On the other hand, Genesys is typically recognized for its contact center solution first and foremost. As a result, it’s missing certain customer service features, such as a wide variety of integrations.
• Agile performance

  
  Zendesk was built for flexibility, ensuring businesses can adapt quickly to their changing needs. Organizations can easily integrate new features or third-party applications without extensive overhauls. As a result, businesses leveraging Zendesk can pivot faster than if they were using a system like Genesys, which lacks the flexibility to accommodate particular business objectives or workflows.

More in this guide:

• At a glance comparison: Zendesk vs. Genesys
• Zendesk vs. Genesys: Features comparison
• Pricing plans: Genesys vs. Zendesk
• Customer stories
• Frequently asked questions
• Ready to try Zendesk?

Zendesk and Genesys both offer contact center and customer service solutions, but they differ on the extent of their capabilities. Let’s look deeper at which software provides the key features you need.

AI, automation, and deflection

Zendesk AI is pre-trained on real-life service interactions, so you can start leveraging it from day one.

Chatbots can answer customer questions around the clock while automated workflows eliminate the work of manually assigning and routing inquiries, freeing up team capacity and reducing operating expenses. Automated triggers can even send proactive notifications to customers, deflecting potential tickets by addressing issues before they escalate. Generative AI tools can also equip agents with insights and suggestions, such as the top macros (pre-written responses) to resolve the customer’s request.

Genesys provides a range of AI tools to help contact centers provide better service, including predictive engagement and routing, agent assist, and voice bots. However, one user noted their dissatisfaction with the limited routing settings, like the lack of multi-level skill targeting for available agents.

Knowledge management and self-service

Zendesk excels in knowledge management and self-service capabilities, letting businesses proactively provide customers with the resources they need to find answers. Businesses can create a community forum for customers to collaborate on resolutions to each other’s questions.

Zendesk also has tools to build knowledge bases filled with articles, FAQ pages, and tutorials—complete with pre-built templates for articles, sections, and categories. AI-powered Content Cues further improve the knowledge base by identifying common customer inquiries so agents can create new articles or expand existing content.

Genesys provides knowledge management features to create articles and facilitate self-service, too. But it offers only two pre-built templates for articles and FAQ pages. Bots can recommend articles, and AI can monitor how agents and customers use the articles.

Case management, escalation, and collaboration

The Zendesk case management system is meticulously designed to track and categorize customer queries, ensuring that no issue goes unresolved. Escalation features allow for the transition of complex cases to higher-level support so customers receive expert assistance. Employees can use Side Conversations to collaborate and resolve issues directly within the ticketing system.

Genesys also has tools so teams can connect, work on projects, and resolve customer issues. Coworkers can communicate in private or public chats, share documents, and escalate conversations to phone or video calls. However, some functionalities are missing. For example, one user explained that it’s difficult to find conversation history when looking through past tickets, while another said that it’s “not designed for complex contact centers.”

Omnichannel support

Zendesk omnichannel support capabilities help businesses provide seamless customer experiences across multiple touchpoints. Recognizing the diverse communication preferences of today's consumers, Zendesk integrates email, chat, phone, social media, and text messaging into a unified interface. Support agents can effortlessly switch between channels or manage multiple interactions without losing the conversation’s context.

Genesys touts omnichannel capabilities, but this primarily centers around their voice and chat solutions. Users cite connection issues that interfere with customer communication. Genesys voice and video calls get disconnected, with audio sometimes having poor quality.

Integrations and 360-degree customer view

The Zendesk Marketplace has over 1,600 integrations, encompassing everything from customer relationship management (CRM) systems and e-commerce platforms to productivity tools, ensuring that businesses can tailor their Zendesk environment to their unique operational needs. Businesses can use these integrations to create a 360-degree customer view. By pulling data from integrated systems, agents get a comprehensive snapshot of the customer's:

• History.
• Preferences.
• Past interactions.

Genesys also has integrations. However, it has around 400 pre-built integrations in its marketplace as opposed to the 1,500+ in the Zendesk Marketplace.

Unified customer profiles

Zendesk offers deep insights into every individual interacting with a business, ensuring personalized and informed support. Zendesk aggregates information for each customer, including their interaction history, purchase records, and feedback. The customer profile is dynamically updated with every new interaction, ensuring that support agents have the most recent and relevant information at their fingertips.

Genesys offers customer profiles, but much of the information needs to be imported by an agent. While users can customize profile information, it doesn’t automatically update the customer’s interaction history unless the agent verifies it.

Reporting

Zendesk has powerful analytics and reporting tools for businesses seeking actionable insights into their customer support operations. Zendesk offers pre-built and customizable dashboards and reports that delve into various metrics, from ticket resolution times and customer satisfaction scores to agent performance. Zendesk customers have access to an intuitive interface that allows users to easily:

• Distill granular data.
• Identify trends.
• Uncover areas of improvement.

The software’s real-time reporting lets businesses monitor their support operations as they unfold, enabling them to make swift decisions and adjustments.

Genesys has reporting capabilities, but it’s been noted that there are some shortcomings in the quality of the data it provides. It lacks the advanced features needed to pull meaningful data from reports and requires team members to export reports to other programs to manipulate the data effectively.

Compared to Genesys, Zendesk's basic plans are more well-rounded. For example, AI-powered customer engagement functionality is available with Zendesk starting plans, but it is absent in the basic plan for Genesys and available only in the middle-tier plan.

If your business needs to support contact center operations while delivering great experiences, partnering with the right software provider can effectively provide both. Take a look at how these real businesses benefited from partnering with Zendesk.

CoreLogic: Centralize customer data

CoreLogic has been a leader in housing market intelligence for over four decades, but as its client pool expanded, the team recognized the need for a more agile and collaborative digital solution. CoreLogic’s legacy service center operated on three distinct systems for chat, phone, and email software, lacking a comprehensive view of its customers and offering minimal self-service options.

This setup often required customers to make phone calls for even basic inquiries. To address these challenges, CoreLogic partnered with Zendesk to enhance its customer experience technology. CoreLogic integrated its communication channels into a unified system that allowed employees to access a customer's entire interaction history effortlessly.

The collaboration with Zendesk also introduced a knowledge center, equipping customers with valuable information and enabling them to find answers without agent intervention. Between 2020 and 2022, CoreLogic experienced a 33 percent reduction in incoming calls, while digital engagement surged from zero to 63 percent. The reasons for customers to call became more consolidated, allowing agents to address queries faster and provide more value during these interactions.

“We are quicker to act on our clients’ requests because of the single platform…Even something as simple as automatically issued tickets for inbound customer calls resulted in 30% savings in post-call work for an employee.”

-Sarah Edwards, Executive, Client Experience at CoreLogic

Liberty London: Utilize AI

Liberty London is a premium department store that has been a beacon for fashion enthusiasts, offering designs that resonate with its discerning clientele for nearly a century and a half. However, as the digital age dawned and online sales began to constitute almost half of its total sales, the iconic retailer’s reliance on a switchboard and shared inbox couldn’t keep up.

Recognizing the pressing need for modernization, Liberty moved to integrate its operations with Zendesk. This decision allowed Liberty to consolidate chats, emails, and calls into a single-view solution, ensuring a consistent customer experience. Zendesk provided Liberty with tools to capture all contact data within one system, enabling agents to access a customer's entire interaction history, regardless of the communication channel.

The partnership with Zendesk didn't stop at mere consolidation. Liberty harnessed the power of the Zendesk AI capabilities to automatically classify and direct incoming tickets to the appropriate agents. This intelligent triage system, powered by AI, identified customer intent, sentiment, and language, ensuring that it swiftly routed issues to the right personnel for resolution. Such automation was pivotal in handling ticket surges during peak times.

The integration of communication channels into Zendesk, coupled with real-time analytics, empowered Liberty to deliver personalized service. The average ticket resolution time is down 11 percent, and self-service savings totaled more than $21,000 in just one year.

“With Zendesk AI, I’m seeing an exciting opportunity to streamline and be more efficient with the day-to-day stuff. That will allow for myself and others on the team to have more time to work on other projects of importance to the business, be it driving revenue or new sales channels.”

-Ian Hunt, Director of Customer Services at Liberty London

Netwealth: Manage call volumes

Netwealth, a financial services company, sought to enhance its customer service experience by transitioning from its outdated telephony system and shared inbox to a scalable and customer-centric solution.

Recognizing inefficiencies in tracking customer interactions and providing timely responses, Netwealth turned to Zendesk to overhaul its customer service system. Zendesk offered a comprehensive solution that Netwealth could implement immediately, while other options would require years of development.

With Zendesk, Netwealth adeptly managed increases in call volumes, ensuring customers received prompt responses. On average, call tickets were addressed within 40 to 60 seconds. The system's capacity to consolidate all customer interactions in one place has been pivotal in enhancing service quality and building trust.

“The ability to record, access, and store calls and emails makes providing a high level of service very easy. We can track the time it takes to respond to inquiries and avoid situations where inquiries can fall through the cracks as they move to the other parts of the business.”

-Matt Heine, Joint Managing Director at Netwealth

Read on for more information on how Zendesk outperforms Genesys.