Genesys PureConnect (discontinued) vs. Zendesk Suite

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Genesys PureConnect (discontinued)
Score 6.1 out of 10
N/A
Genesys PureConnect was an omnichannel contact center platform that offered cloud-based or on-premise deployments. It featured a SIP-based architecture with VoIP capabilities, allowing companies to connect legacy voice systems and use existing phones. A legacy product, new users are encouraged to investigate Genesys Cloud.N/A
Zendesk Suite
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
The Zendesk Support suite is a cloud-based customer support software built for better customer relationships. Designed to improve customer satisfaction and to support customers on any channel: text SMS, web, mobile app, phone, email, social media. The vendor states more than 200,000 companies such as Uber, Groupon, Box, Airbnb, and Slack are using Zendesk to lower their support costs, raise productivity, and increase customer satisfaction. Zendesk offers a full suite of products to meet customer…
$55
per month agent
Pricing
Genesys PureConnect (discontinued)Zendesk Suite
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Support Team (Foundational Support Only)
$19
per month agent
Suite Team
$55
per month agent
Support Professional
$55
per month agent
Suite Growth
$89
per month agent
Suite Professional
$115
per month agent
Support Enterprise
$115
per month agent
Suite Enterprise
$169
per month agent
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Genesys PureConnect (discontinued)Zendesk Suite
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Genesys PureConnect (discontinued)Zendesk Suite
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Genesys PureConnect (discontinued)Zendesk Suite
Contact Center Software
Comparison of Contact Center Software features of Product A and Product B
Genesys PureConnect (discontinued)
7.9
64 Ratings
5% below category average
Zendesk Suite
-
Ratings
Agent dashboard6.755 Ratings00 Ratings
Validate callers7.548 Ratings00 Ratings
Outbound response8.541 Ratings00 Ratings
Call forwarding7.756 Ratings00 Ratings
Click-to-call (CTC)8.043 Ratings00 Ratings
Warm transfer8.357 Ratings00 Ratings
Predictive dialing7.936 Ratings00 Ratings
Interactive voice response8.045 Ratings00 Ratings
REST APIs7.037 Ratings00 Ratings
Call scripts8.539 Ratings00 Ratings
Call tracking7.755 Ratings00 Ratings
Multichannel integration9.044 Ratings00 Ratings
CRM software integration8.038 Ratings00 Ratings
Workforce Optimization (WFO)
Comparison of Workforce Optimization (WFO) features of Product A and Product B
Genesys PureConnect (discontinued)
5.5
54 Ratings
40% below category average
Zendesk Suite
-
Ratings
Inbound call routing6.551 Ratings00 Ratings
Omnichannel inbound routing6.539 Ratings00 Ratings
Recording4.552 Ratings00 Ratings
Quality management4.546 Ratings00 Ratings
Call analytics3.043 Ratings00 Ratings
Historical reporting5.052 Ratings00 Ratings
Live reporting6.548 Ratings00 Ratings
Customer surveys7.935 Ratings00 Ratings
Customer interaction analytics5.030 Ratings00 Ratings
Incident and problem management
Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Product A and Product B
Genesys PureConnect (discontinued)
-
Ratings
Zendesk Suite
8.2
113 Ratings
4% above category average
Organize and prioritize service tickets00 Ratings8.5112 Ratings
Expert directory00 Ratings7.269 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications00 Ratings7.575 Ratings
ITSM collaboration and documentation00 Ratings8.171 Ratings
Ticket creation and submission00 Ratings9.2113 Ratings
Ticket response00 Ratings8.8112 Ratings
Self Help Community
Comparison of Self Help Community features of Product A and Product B
Genesys PureConnect (discontinued)
-
Ratings
Zendesk Suite
8.1
100 Ratings
4% above category average
External knowledge base00 Ratings8.096 Ratings
Internal knowledge base00 Ratings8.289 Ratings
Multi-Channel Help
Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Product A and Product B
Genesys PureConnect (discontinued)
-
Ratings
Zendesk Suite
8.1
111 Ratings
5% above category average
Customer portal00 Ratings7.685 Ratings
IVR00 Ratings8.236 Ratings
Social integration00 Ratings7.367 Ratings
Email support00 Ratings8.7109 Ratings
Help Desk CRM integration00 Ratings8.679 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Genesys PureConnect (discontinued)Zendesk Suite
Small Businesses
CloudTalk
CloudTalk
Score 9.5 out of 10
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Bright Pattern Contact Center
Bright Pattern Contact Center
Score 10.0 out of 10
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Agiloft Flexible Service Desk Suite
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Google Cloud Contact Center AI
Google Cloud Contact Center AI
Score 8.9 out of 10
Salesforce Service Cloud
Salesforce Service Cloud
Score 8.7 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Genesys PureConnect (discontinued)Zendesk Suite
Likelihood to Recommend
5.3
(116 ratings)
8.3
(151 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.6
(12 ratings)
10.0
(40 ratings)
Usability
7.3
(12 ratings)
7.7
(24 ratings)
Availability
9.1
(3 ratings)
8.6
(13 ratings)
Performance
8.8
(3 ratings)
8.0
(10 ratings)
Support Rating
4.0
(12 ratings)
9.0
(29 ratings)
In-Person Training
8.2
(4 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Online Training
8.3
(3 ratings)
7.9
(9 ratings)
Implementation Rating
6.1
(7 ratings)
9.0
(18 ratings)
Configurability
9.0
(2 ratings)
9.3
(3 ratings)
Ease of integration
8.1
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.2
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
8.8
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
8.8
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Genesys PureConnect (discontinued)Zendesk Suite
Likelihood to Recommend
Discontinued Products
CIC is best suited for business models that rely on heavily leverage Data Integration especially one like ours that require real-time and high-speed data access for billing and customer integration. CIC is not well suited for small organizations < 50 where they are only answering phones in the course of doing business VS. the business is the phone.
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Zendesk
Inbound messaging it is top notch, it does it well and couldn't imagine anyone's program doing it better. Like I said before been using ZenDesk for over 7 years and absolutely love it. We use the talk feature with the phone very limited so Zen works fine for us, but if I was running an inbound or outbound call center I don't believe Zen has all the functions I would want as a manager. For limited phone use and mostly email, text, and even web chat, ZenDesk works great. Having the iOS App is so great and flexibility with notifications allows my team to be "on call" anytime without unnecessary interruptions
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Pros
Discontinued Products
  • Purely Software Based System: On Microsoft OS. It is an all software-based system making it easy to manage, integrate and interface with other systems
  • One Vendor: All modules, IVR, ACD, Dialer, WFM are from one vendor. So, no compatibility and latency issues at all.
  • Superb Notifier Service: You don't have to restart any process or service for a change to take effect.
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Zendesk
  • Reporting and Analytics
  • Ease of Agent Training and Use
  • Able to add multiple brands with related custom reports and dashboards
  • Adding a new brand and basic help center is easy to do without the need of an expert or web team
  • Ability of agents and supervisors to see customer history across multiple channels
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Cons
Discontinued Products
  • Licensing can be challenging and very expensive.
  • Client templates are hard to administer and are built very different than the rest of the functionality.
  • Web desktop has been slow to come along and include all the features.
  • Optimizer is very sub-par product.
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Zendesk
  • I think the Graphical User Interface could use a facelift. It not the most aesthetically pleasing platform in my experience.
  • Particular things like where the default is when you click on each and every dropdown menu.
  • The macro integration could be a little more simplified.
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Likelihood to Renew
Discontinued Products
We are so embedded on Pure Connect that we like to progress with it. For instance, we are looking into ways to provide different solutions to our customers, help our business to succeed, and work in a better CX.
One of the biggest advantages is that all is in one platform.
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Zendesk
Zendesk is super easy to use and navigate. I really enjoy the sleek layout, the ability to tailor tickets, the macro option, and the quick key guide they have to make your use of time even more effective. My whole team loves working with Zendesk and rarely ever has problems.
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Usability
Discontinued Products
The interface is only semi user-friendly on almost every front. Agent experience is lacking and we have found many limitations within the system. Workforce forecasting is not as robust as expected. Quality continues to be a struggle. Interaction searches are not robust.
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Zendesk
As an agent it's very simple to use. As an admin it's also easy to use, but sometimes lacks some functionality that would be nice to have such as expanded native 2 way sync functionality for many major apps that are commonly used today like HubSpot and Salesforce. The ability to add followers to tickets to they get updates and are in the know without the customer seeing this agent cc'd is a nice touch. This ensures additional visibility and easily following the communication without having to appear as a CC to the customer, who could accidentally remove that person in a response, thus breaking the visibility
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Reliability and Availability
Discontinued Products
The application itself uses a hub and spoke model that can help isolate errors in one section of the application from the rest, creating a much more stable overall program. Of all of the outages that we've had with our contact center platform, I can count on one hand how often it was truly a Genesys issue rather than a network issue, server issue or issue with a platform relied upon for an integration (web services, db calls).
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Zendesk
In the past year, I'd say I have only noticed maybe two hours total of downtime in my own usage. Very minimal.
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Performance
Discontinued Products
Some of the client applications take a bit of time on initial load, but with the move towards web based applications that issue is alleviated. You can tell that effort really isn't putting into the desktop apps any longer and that the client development effort is being put into bringing Interaction Connect closer to feature parity with the desktop (and bringing wholly new features to Connect). As far as IVR operations, web service calls, database operations: they all operate reasonably.
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Zendesk
There has been minor performance degradation on a very few days out of the two years I have been using the product.
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Support Rating
Discontinued Products
Some cases are resolved quickly others are taking longer and the reseller sometimes has to chase support several times and explain the issue seen several times. While being a direct customer before, I recognise this and it seems that when a case moves to another engineer they don’t read the previous case notes or don’t understand what has been done. This, from a customers perspective, slows down resolution times.
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Zendesk
Every time I contacted them they were not only very responsive and knowledgable, but always seemed to have a positive upbeat attitude. It probably helps that we did not have significant service outages or sev 1 level issues, but even my lower severity issues were quickly answered. And the positive and upbeat attitude really made things feel comfortable.
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In-Person Training
Discontinued Products
I liked the setup of the whole class. The instructor knew the topic well enough to answer questions from entry level to a more advanced one.
Instructor encouraged participation of the whole class and was able to engage every one. Also provided "real live" examples so everyone can relate to it.
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Zendesk
No answers on this topic
Online Training
Discontinued Products
The online training itself is good. You are provided resources and can self study to a certain point, but the pacing always felt off. Either snails pace or like trying to drink from a fire hose. I think this easily could have had to do with course material and my personal preparations, though. I would say my main gripe is that since the acquisition the team responsible for actually booking training is very unresponsive and often not knowledgeable about the courses they offer. Booking my last training was a real chore.
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Zendesk
Zendesk has tons of available material for training - videos, webinars, articles, etc. The only reason this is not a 10 is because it can be hard to figure out how to navigate to these things and find what you are looking for.
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Implementation Rating
Discontinued Products
Don't try to go the perfect solution as a first target. Work on answer the more needs with a simple solution. Then analyse and try again to answer the most needs with adding a bit if complexity only if require. No needs to customise straight from the beginning or deployment takes too long.
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Zendesk
I was very satisfied. They have a free trial for 30 days and I recommend you do that and use it. It is very easy to get started with the basics and the build on over time.

The only thing technically complex was single sign-on and integration to Salesforce.com required some tweaks – otherwise setting up system was very easy
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Alternatives Considered
Discontinued Products
Call Manager, you had to buy all the components that are out of the box for PureConnect. The licensing model is more expensive on the Cisco side vs the Genesys PureConnect side. Lastly was on the Cisco side since you have to connect/integrate all the components on the cisco side you have to have so many vendors to install those parts. This drives the cost up even more so it was not worth going that route for our organization.
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Zendesk
If spoken honestly Intercom is a level-par with any nearest competitor, Tools like Zendesk has to catchup with them in speed. However, there is an advantage to Zendesk with its simple and easy-to-get software which falls in every mid and small-size business pocket wherein Intercom is way too expensive and needs a tech admin to customize the product. The kick-starting feature with negligible configuration made Zendesk the ideal choice of our organization + the budget fell under our expenses.
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Scalability
Discontinued Products
Genesys PureConnect's core and adjunct model allows for fairly easy growth in satellite locations via off site session managers, remote located media servers, remote content servers, etc to allow you to spread the infrastructure out while not pushing as much network traffic to your core data centers.
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Zendesk
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Discontinued Products
  • We're improving our CX by optimizing our call centers, using additional attributes and keys to identify the best rep for the job.
  • We are also streamlining the journey of each individual customer by using PureConnect as the central interface for omnichannel interactions, allowing us to pick up the conversation where we left off.
  • Using additional attributes that start with the contact center interaction, we're able to track a student journey and proactively step in - increasing our individualized support to focus on the student outcome.
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Zendesk
  • The positives weigh more than the negatives here, as it gives us a one-stop portal where we can tend to customer needs using one web app
  • It has also helped us identify areas of improvement based on the reporting feature
  • The value it provides outweighs any missing or lacking features that I'm sure will be available in the future
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ScreenShots

Genesys PureConnect (discontinued) Screenshots

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Zendesk Suite Screenshots

Screenshot of Zendesk Agent WorkspaceScreenshot of Omnichannel MessagingScreenshot of Zendesk TicketingScreenshot of Bots powered by Zendesk AIScreenshot of Tone shift with Zendesk AIScreenshot of Zendesk ticketing side conversations