The ability to swiftly and effectively support customers is paramount for business success. An efficient customer support team improves brand reputation, boosts customer retention, generates referrals, and increases long-term profitability.
Intercom is a popular AI-driven customer service solution. Apt for large enterprises, SMBs, and startups, and has features like AI chatbots and automation, CRM integrations, custom agent workspaces, and robust knowledge base creation.
Despite its many advantages, Intercom’s effectiveness depends on factors such as the size of your customer support team, short-term and long-term goals, and budget. Intercom might not be the right solution for every business and falls short in many areas:
Does not offer enhanced monitoring and supervision capabilities
Fails to deliver the expected level of customer support
Does not integrate with home-grown systems
Pricing can be prohibitive, especially as the number of agents increases
As a customer service operations manager, keep reading if you're well aware of Intercom’s limitations and looking for alternatives in the market that align with your customer service goals.
This blog post delves into 10 Intercom alternatives, their features and limitations, and pricing plans to help you find the best fit for the job.
What are the key features to consider in Intercom alternatives?
When reviewing your options:
Look for transparent, scalable pricing solutions to fit your budget without sacrificing quality
Choose a tool known for its intuitive interface, user-friendly design, and customization options
Consider whether a platform specializes in your industry or offers niche-specific features
Identify essential features you genuinely need without being overwhelmed by unnecessary functionalities
Evaluate the level of support provided, including availability, responsiveness, and resources like knowledge bases
10 Top Intercom Alternatives to Consider
1. Plivo CX Service
Plivo CX Service is a cloud contact center solution that elevates customer service with AI. It allows you to integrate email, voice, live chat, SMS, email, and WhatsApp into a single platform—working multiple channels to support your customers simultaneously.
Powered by Plivo, it offers reliable calling and messaging capabilities, enhancing agent productivity and enabling real-time coaching opportunities.
Plivo CX Service reduces the need for live agents by over 50% with OpenAI-powered chatbots, making it a strong contender for Intercom alternatives. What sets it apart as the best Intercom alternative is the easy-to-use web-based application for Mac and Windows, a drag-and-drop customer journey builder, and local and toll-free numbers in 50+ countries.
Plivo CX Service best features
Allows you to use customer data to automatically route customers to the most appropriate agents with Contacto Voice; also enables self-select for quicker routing, shorter wait times, and faster resolution
Enables agents to send a photo or link while on a call to the customers with Contacto SMS/text messaging; resolves issues faster
Contacto Whatsapp helps deflect common questions to automated responses with powerful bots in WhatsApp
Natively integrates live chat with your mobile app to help your agents give the best response every time with snippets using Contacto Live Chat
Midsize businesses looking for a scalable and affordable solution for SMS messaging and telephony services
2. Cloudtalk
Cloudtalk is a VoIP business calling solution used by sales and support teams that automates workflows and increases your team’s calling efficiency and performance with built-in analytics.
Moreover, your customer support team can speak to the callers first and determine what they need, routing them based on agent skills, custom fields, and CRM or helpdesk info.
This Intercom alternative operates in 160+ countries, allowing you to improve your pick-up rates by making local calls from anywhere globally.
Cloudtalk best features
Helps agents structure their calls with customizable notes, call scripts, and questionnaires
Allows labeling phone calls and tracking metrics like interactions, goals, and outcomes
Disconnects and blacklists unwanted spam calls immediately
Small teams with basic call routing needs, customer service centers, and sales teams
3. Avaya
Avaya’s Experience Platform is a cloud contact center solution that supports customer communication across multiple touchpoints, from voice and video calls to chat messaging.
It gives your agents a 360-degree view of the customers from both your on-premises and cloud interactions. This Intercom alternative offers a simple, flexible, secure cloud experience with worry-free upgrades, support, and administration.
Avaya is used by businesses in the healthcare, education, financial services, and public sectors for their remote contact centers to manage customer interactions.
Avaya best features
Flexible cloud deployment models match varying business needs, whether it’s entirely cloud-based, hybrid, or an on-premises solution
Offers collaboration tools like instant messaging, video conferences, ring groups, and file sharing, maximizing contact center performance
Empowers agents and supervisors to be the best at what they do with in-call monitoring and live coaching tools.
Avaya limitations
Innovation and feature roll-out is slow
Setting up, customizing, and managing the platform can be complex and may require specialized skills or resources
There can be challenges when interfacing with older systems or third-party applications not directly supported by the platform
Since the platform is not built cloud-first, a lot of features available in the on-premise software are unavailable in the cloud version
Enterprises that need a customizable and sophisticated communication solution
4. Aircall
Aircall is a phone and communication platform for improving productivity, customer service, and team collaboration.
On top of common features like call routing and recording, queue callback, and AI-generated call summaries, your contact center agents can create and share select contacts with their team so everyone can follow the conversation.
Benefit from the one-click setup from this Intercom alternative’s admin dashboard and manage all settings in one place.
Aircall best features
Hosts up to five people in the same live conference call with Aircall’s VoIP calling solution
Streamlines internal communication and better assigns tasks to your agents with Aircall’s shared inbox
Allows you to send, receive, and manage SMS text messages between you and your contacts for personalized conversations
Medium-sized businesses looking for an easy-to-use cloud-based call center solution with excellent CRM integrations
5. RingCentral
RingCentral Contact Centre is an easy-to-use cloud-based communications system for customer support teams and contact centers. It is equipped with the most standard features, including audio conferencing, unlimited calling, and video meetings.
This Intercom alternative has a centralized portal for agent activity to manage inbound and outbound conversations easily. RingCentral is ideal for large businesses with multichannel communication.
RingCentral best features
Enables you to gamify incentives to boost agent performance and encourage learning and development
Shares reports summarizing agent availability, call traffic fluctuations, and training progress
AI-powered tools like automated call scorecards, feedback modules, and keyword tracking
RingCentral limitations
Limited to generic calling usage across functions
Slow at innovating and rolling out new features
Delayed customer support due to differences in the time zones
The system is complex and requires training for setup
Lacks features that cater to the needs of the support team, like a customer’s past interaction history
Midsize businesses that want comprehensive cloud communication platform with an extensive feature set and reliability
6. Genesys Cloud
Genesys is a cloud platform that provides enterprise-grade communications, collaboration, and contact center management capabilities on a global scale.
This Intercom alternative helps you transform your customer experience, no matter where the conversations start or end, across digital channels like email, text, chat, and social media. Genesys offers AI-powered agent assistance and native CRM integrations for business optimization.
Genesys Cloud best features
Delivers deep analytics and reporting features built into the user interface
Integrates all critical apps with off-the-shelf functionality or custom-built solutions when needed
Comes with self-service options like speech-enabled IVR, voice bots, and chatbots, empowering customers to interact with you when and how they choose
Enterprises looking for a robust, scalable cloud contact center solution
7. Zendesk
Zendesk is one of the oldest customer service platforms in the market, with a unified agent workspace. It enables customer support reps to converse with customers on any channel, whether email, chat, WhatsApp, or Apple Business Chat.
Shared inbox tracking, knowledge base management, and comprehensive reporting are the other capabilities offered by Intercom alternative. From large enterprises to startups, Zendesk serves 160,000 global customers in 30+ languages.
Zendesk best features
AI-powered bots support customers with natural, human language in a tone set by you
Allows you to easily customize a live chat widget to match your brand colors, get access to unlimited chat history, and format direct messages the way you like
Robust tools like routing, CSAT ratings, time tracking, and service level agreements ensure your agents never miss any request
Midsize businesses seeking a strong customer service software with seamless integration into their support and sales pipelines
8. Talkdesk
Talkdesk is an AI-powered cloud contact center platform that transforms customer experiences, dramatically reduces costs, and supercharges operational efficiencies. Enable multichannel communication and personalize and automate workflows for your agents.
This Intercom alternative comes with 70+ pre-built CRM and collaboration tool integrations. Customize and scale your platform with AI apps within Talkdesk to boost agent productivity and optimize customer journeys.
Talkdesk best features
Delivers high reliability and call quality, backed by an enterprise-grade uptime SLA
Comes with 30+ security certifications, including SOC 2 and 3, ISO 27001, PCD DSS Level 1, HIPAA, and GDPR
Offers flexible cloud contact center deployment options; store key data in the region of your choice for compliance
Midsize companies requiring a cloud contact center solution with strong AI and analytics capabilities to improve customer service efficiency
9. Five9
Five9 is a cloud-based contact center solution integrating advanced features such as an automated dialer, comprehensive lead management, and detailed reporting tools.
With a focus on optimizing call management processes, Five9 aims to improve efficiency and effectiveness in handling customer interactions.
This Intercom alternative’s cloud software architecture delivers flexible application and storage capacity and can scale rapidly on demand.
Five9 best features
Enables agents to be more effective on the phone by giving them more time with live prospects
Helps maximize agent productivity by increasing the amount of connections they can make with customers with predictive dialing solutions
Real-time and historical reporting, recording, workforce management (WFM), quality monitoring, and CRM integrations creates consumer-centric omnichannel experiences
Midsize contact centers that need a comprehensive, cloud-based solution
10. Dixa
Dixa is a customer service platform that enhances how businesses interact with customers by providing a unified view of multichannel communications, including phone, email, chat, and social messaging.
This Intercom alternative includes popular call functionalities such as IVR (Interactive Voice Response), click-to-call, call recordings, intelligent routing, and analytics.
Dixa also provides tools for tracking team performance, analyzing and auditing customer interactions, and coaching agents when necessary.
Dixa best features
Smart algorithms and agent priority feature automatically ensure the most qualified agents handle the most critical conversations first
Helps track and improve team performance with easy-to-read dashboards and built-in QA
Gives access to customer account information, historical conversations, and company documentation in one unified, detailed view
Does not offer native support for text/SMS channels
The current system for transferring calls or interactions appears to be restrictive, as users cannot communicate with someone in a different queue without transferring the customer call directly to them
When customers use the chat feature on a website, agents currently cannot see what part of the website the customer is viewing
Medium to large businesses focusing on customer friendship platforms
Maximize Your Customer Service Capabilities with Contacto
Selecting the right Intercom alternative could improve your customer support capabilities, optimize workflows, and yield insightful data.
Book a complimentary demo with our team if you are specifically keen to learn about Plivo CX and whether it aligns with your immediate requirements and can scale as your business grows. We will take you through all its features and answer your queries.
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