Khoros Service vs. Zendesk Suite

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Khoros Service
Score 8.5 out of 10
Enterprise companies (1,001+ employees)
Khoros Service offers omnichannel engagement on publicly available channels like social, digital, chat, and voice, as well as owned online communities like Khoros Communities. The solution offers 1-to-1 and 1-to-many engagement with customers and consumers, bringing together automation through bots and human agents. Customer inquiries and support-related conversations can be routed and prioritized based on a variety of parameters, and the robust agent desktop solution…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
Khoros ServiceZendesk 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
Khoros ServiceZendesk Suite
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesYes
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalOptional
Additional DetailsPricing is variable based on the needs of the customer.20% discount available with annual pricing.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Khoros ServiceZendesk Suite
Considered Both Products
Khoros Service
Chose Khoros Service
Zendesk was too big and complex, way more functionalities than we needed and that made the onboarding process dificult.
Zendesk Suite
Chose Zendesk Suite
Salesforce.com cases - we use Salesforce.com as our CRM and it is the support system of record for our company's other major product line (our enterprise solution). Salesforce.com cases is more flexible than Zendesk, and therefore ultimately more powerful, but Zendesk is easier …
Features
Khoros ServiceZendesk Suite
Incident and problem management
Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Product A and Product B
Khoros Service
-
Ratings
Zendesk Suite
8.9
172 Ratings
8% above category average
Organize and prioritize service tickets00 Ratings9.3171 Ratings
Expert directory00 Ratings8.2118 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications00 Ratings8.7119 Ratings
ITSM collaboration and documentation00 Ratings8.2122 Ratings
Ticket creation and submission00 Ratings9.4172 Ratings
Ticket response00 Ratings9.3171 Ratings
Self Help Community
Comparison of Self Help Community features of Product A and Product B
Khoros Service
-
Ratings
Zendesk Suite
8.4
156 Ratings
4% above category average
External knowledge base00 Ratings8.3150 Ratings
Internal knowledge base00 Ratings8.5143 Ratings
Multi-Channel Help
Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Product A and Product B
Khoros Service
-
Ratings
Zendesk Suite
8.8
168 Ratings
10% above category average
Customer portal00 Ratings9.1138 Ratings
IVR00 Ratings8.570 Ratings
Social integration00 Ratings8.4112 Ratings
Email support00 Ratings9.3165 Ratings
Help Desk CRM integration00 Ratings9.0128 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Khoros ServiceZendesk Suite
Small Businesses
Simplify360
Simplify360
Score 7.8 out of 10
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Front
Front
Score 9.0 out of 10
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Front
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Score 9.0 out of 10
SysAid
SysAid
Score 8.9 out of 10
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User Ratings
Khoros ServiceZendesk Suite
Likelihood to Recommend
8.4
(113 ratings)
9.0
(209 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.1
(79 ratings)
10.0
(43 ratings)
Usability
7.3
(7 ratings)
8.8
(82 ratings)
Availability
9.0
(2 ratings)
9.1
(14 ratings)
Performance
9.0
(2 ratings)
9.1
(11 ratings)
Support Rating
8.1
(9 ratings)
5.6
(31 ratings)
In-Person Training
9.0
(2 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Online Training
7.3
(1 ratings)
6.4
(10 ratings)
Implementation Rating
7.6
(71 ratings)
9.1
(19 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(4 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.3
(78 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Professional Services
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Khoros ServiceZendesk Suite
Likelihood to Recommend
Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
Less Appropriate Scenarios- A fintech company has highly specialized or industry-specific workflows that are not easily accommodated within the standard capabilities of Khoros Care. In such cases, the platform may be less appropriate for businesses with extremely unique processes that require a high degree of customization. Well suited- financial institutions face a high volume of customer inquiries related to account management, transactions, and security concerns. Khoros Care's security features, automation capabilities, and integration with banking systems make it suitable for managing customer interactions in the financial services sector.
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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
Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
  • Tagging system - it's possible to add a wide variety of labels and categories
  • Search feature - being able to find users by conversation number, username, or keywords makes it easier to navigate old conversations
  • Easy system for assigning conversations to other users
  • When you claim a conversation, it gets removed from the queue. This is much more visually explicit than Khoros Marketing's queue, for example, where all content remains visible in the queue and a bookmark gets moved around to distinguish the point where other users left off
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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
Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
  • I would like to be able to see deleted comments/tweets so we can look into the issues.
  • I would like to be able to better customize dashboards for our exact metrics. Some things previously available in Spredfast are no longer available in Care.
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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
Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
Simply, there isn't anything on the market that is quite as personable as Khoros Care. After using a few different client messaging systems, this program gave the closest feel to in-person interaction that we could get during the COVID-19 epidemic and is an important part of our agency still to this day in 2023.
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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
Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
The ability to auto tag, manually tag, make notes, and "snooze" posts is extremely helpful. The efficiency of the work flow for agents is also a huge plus. It keeps agents moving quickly and prioritizing responses for the cases that need it most.
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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
Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
No issues.
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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
Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
No issues.
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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
Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
Khoros Support has always very responsive and helpful when it comes to getting my issue/inquiry addressed. Their ticket portal is great for tracking any open tickets and they can be updated via the portal or by responding to the email thread. Support reps are always extremely knowledgeable and care about getting you taken care of
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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
Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
The team received training (from the same executive team member who has been supporting us) over the web and this was of very high quality.
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Zendesk
No answers on this topic
Online Training
Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
No answers on this topic
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
Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
Implementing the platform was not a big hassle for our client, it was seamless and easy we just had to follow a few steps and it was done. Just scaling was a bit of an issue but it got resolved with time and a bit of effort at both ends
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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
Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
Khoros is more than just a platform for social publishing. No other competitor provides the in-depth moderation and social listening services that they do. If you're looking for a one-stop-shop of a platform for all things social, this is the tool to be using. Others are better in usability and innovative functionality.
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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
Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
Of course as the company grows owing to its growing customer base, they need to think of out-of-the-box solutions to offer its clients and customer satisfaction is one of them. Retention is very much needed in competitive environment like today and hence it becomes imperative for companies to find different ways to reach their client basis and fix their issues
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Zendesk
WHY we will use Zendesk in HR and PD internally
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Return on Investment
Khoros (Formerly Spredfast + Lithium)
  • We have seen a positive shift of customers from reaching out to the Call Centre to the Social Care Team.
  • Monthly and Annual Reporting to keep track of performance and stats related to the team has been much easier to highlight areas for improvement (month2month and anually)
  • CSAT/NPS Survey results have increased via Khoros Care in comparison to the Call Centre.
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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

Khoros Service Screenshots

Screenshot of a customer conversation in Agent view. Access past customer conversations and interactions in a single pane of glass.Screenshot of the analytic dashboard used to monitor key metrics across a service organization, such as available agents, time to first response, and agent handle time.Screenshot of Khoros Agent Assist. This feature provides agents with real-time recommendations, reducing the time needed to handle customer inquiries, deliver accurate resolutions, and train new agents.Screenshot of Work Queues under Rules and Routing. This allows admins to build rules around tagging to ensure timely and effective follow-up from agents.

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