Genesys PureConnect (discontinued) vs. Zendesk Suite

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Genesys PureConnect (discontinued)
Score 6.8 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 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Zendesk is a customer support solution with built-in ticketing, conversational messaging, and live chat, designed to help businesses of all sizes and industries deliver personalized service at scale. Zendesk's AI agents are trained in CX to help Service teams resolve customer issues faster and more accurately while still providing a human-centered experience. Zendesk ultimately aims to help businesses improve time to value, reduce effort per ticket, and keep costs low.
$69
per month per agent
Pricing
Genesys PureConnect (discontinued)Zendesk Suite
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Suite Team
$69
per month per agent
Suite Growth
$115
per month per agent
Suite Professional
$149
per month per agent
Suite Enterprise
Contact Sales
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 Details20% discount available with annual pricing.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Genesys PureConnect (discontinued)Zendesk Suite
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 dialing8.036 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 surveys8.035 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
8.8
171 Ratings
7% above category average
Organize and prioritize service tickets00 Ratings9.2170 Ratings
Expert directory00 Ratings8.2117 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications00 Ratings8.6118 Ratings
ITSM collaboration and documentation00 Ratings8.2121 Ratings
Ticket creation and submission00 Ratings9.4171 Ratings
Ticket response00 Ratings9.3170 Ratings
Self Help Community
Comparison of Self Help Community features of Product A and Product B
Genesys PureConnect (discontinued)
-
Ratings
Zendesk Suite
8.4
155 Ratings
5% above category average
External knowledge base00 Ratings8.4149 Ratings
Internal knowledge base00 Ratings8.5142 Ratings
Multi-Channel Help
Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Product A and Product B
Genesys PureConnect (discontinued)
-
Ratings
Zendesk Suite
8.8
167 Ratings
10% above category average
Customer portal00 Ratings9.0137 Ratings
IVR00 Ratings8.570 Ratings
Social integration00 Ratings8.4111 Ratings
Email support00 Ratings9.3164 Ratings
Help Desk CRM integration00 Ratings9.0127 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Genesys PureConnect (discontinued)Zendesk Suite
Small Businesses
CloudTalk
CloudTalk
Score 7.2 out of 10
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
CloudTalk
CloudTalk
Score 7.2 out of 10
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Bright Pattern Contact Center
Bright Pattern Contact Center
Score 8.8 out of 10
SysAid
SysAid
Score 8.9 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Genesys PureConnect (discontinued)Zendesk Suite
Likelihood to Recommend
5.3
(116 ratings)
9.0
(209 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.6
(12 ratings)
10.0
(43 ratings)
Usability
7.3
(12 ratings)
8.8
(82 ratings)
Availability
9.1
(3 ratings)
9.1
(14 ratings)
Performance
8.8
(3 ratings)
9.1
(11 ratings)
Support Rating
4.0
(12 ratings)
5.6
(31 ratings)
In-Person Training
8.2
(4 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Online Training
8.3
(3 ratings)
6.4
(10 ratings)
Implementation Rating
6.1
(7 ratings)
9.1
(19 ratings)
Configurability
9.0
(2 ratings)
9.1
(4 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
8.1
(2 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.2
(3 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Professional Services
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
8.8
(3 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
8.8
(3 ratings)
9.1
(1 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
Being a customer support agent, I found it very good when it comes to send an email or call or chat- with the user. I can do all that from the one single platform which is so easy and time saving for you. It does not take much time to use this, We can chat- with the user and at the same time we can send an email to them as well.
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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
  • UI/UX; mature macros and automations, slick and well thought out UI.
  • Reporting, reporting, reporting. With user, org, and ticket level tags, we can track every aspect of our ticket flow.
  • Extensibility; the app marketplace is a great resource for expanding functionality from the baseline offering.
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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
  • Is there a way for AEs and CSMs to be informed in a weekly summary of all their accounts and any tickets? Example: Disney submitted a ticket on XYZ. Google has an urgent issue on X still unresolved.
  • Is there a way for CSMs or AEs to have a Dashboard that's specific to their accounts instead of seeing all the tickets in the queue that are not relevant to them?
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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 an amazing tool for communicating with your customers easily. The communication tickets from sellers to us or from us to sellers are stored, and there are statuses used to make communication easy. We have internal conversations between departments, linked with useful software such as Zingtree, Talkdesk, and Webs.
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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
Pros: The agent interface is sleek, contemporary, and relatively easy to learn compared to many other enterprise tools. For common tasks, admins are given point-and-click options- adding fields, modifying workflows, constructing macros. The knowledge base (Guide) editor is easy to use for non-developers. Drawbacks: Once you move past the initial things - complex automations, reporting/analytics in Explore, and/or customizations integrating the API, it requires much more advanced training to use successfully. Navigating between the different modules (Support, Explore, Chat, Guide) can feel very disconnected; often you are reminded that it really is a "suite" of products brought together -not really one unified platform. If you're using multiple brands managing simultaneous support tickets, or heavily customizing workflows to meet your brand, you may run into a bit of struggle with usability. So: it's a lot more user friendly than the palaces (Salesforce Service Cloud, ServiceNow), but is not used as quickly or with as much streamlined flow as a product made for a small shop. So if you are looking for a great balance, this is a good option if you are a net new organization or an organization on their way to scaling from 15 - 50 employee. Expect some elbow grease from the admin team once learning, adapting, and working efficiently once you move past the basics with your support tickets and initial customizations.
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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
We rarely need to contact their support team, but when we do they are responsive. However there have been notable times when communication between myself and the support rep was challenging despite me providing clear explanation of the issue, screenshots, and a thorough explanation of the goal we hope to achieve. It took several back and forth attempt, on a few occasions, to get resolution on an otherwise simple request
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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
The customisable reporting every time. Our leadership reply on me to run my team and want to know what customers are telling us so they can elevate our products. We have extensive custom reports that tie up all aspects of our product and customer journeys. I've not found another product that allows me as much freedom as Zendesk Suite explore does, so far.
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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
WHY we will use Zendesk in HR and PD internally
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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
  • Integrating other AI solutions for an organization with high volumes can cost about USD5000 monthly. With Zendesk AI and by building onto the same with AI powered apps built for Zendesk Suite we save a projected USD4000 monthly.
  • Robust Zendesk APIs have enabled us to integrate our internal system with a customized app saving us hundreds of hours every quarter spent loading customer profiles that are not loaded instantly from the app.
  • Plug and play apps like Round robin save us weeks of sprint delay timelines as they do not require additional coding or developer support to install and start using.
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ScreenShots

Genesys PureConnect (discontinued) Screenshots

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Zendesk Suite Screenshots

Screenshot of the 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