Khoros Service vs. Zendesk Suite

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Khoros Service
Score 8.0 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 8.6 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
Khoros ServiceZendesk 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
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.
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 …
Top Pros
Top Cons
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
8.7
153 Ratings
11% above category average
Organize and prioritize service tickets00 Ratings9.0152 Ratings
Expert directory00 Ratings8.0101 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications00 Ratings8.4105 Ratings
ITSM collaboration and documentation00 Ratings8.3103 Ratings
Ticket creation and submission00 Ratings9.3152 Ratings
Ticket response00 Ratings9.2151 Ratings
Self Help Community
Comparison of Self Help Community features of Product A and Product B
Khoros Service
-
Ratings
Zendesk Suite
8.4
138 Ratings
10% above category average
External knowledge base00 Ratings8.4132 Ratings
Internal knowledge base00 Ratings8.4126 Ratings
Multi-Channel Help
Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Product A and Product B
Khoros Service
-
Ratings
Zendesk Suite
8.6
149 Ratings
12% above category average
Customer portal00 Ratings8.7120 Ratings
IVR00 Ratings8.459 Ratings
Social integration00 Ratings8.097 Ratings
Email support00 Ratings9.1146 Ratings
Help Desk CRM integration00 Ratings8.9111 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 8.8 out of 10
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Front
Front
Score 8.8 out of 10
Front
Front
Score 8.8 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Khoros ServiceZendesk Suite
Likelihood to Recommend
7.9
(113 ratings)
8.8
(191 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
7.7
(80 ratings)
10.0
(43 ratings)
Usability
6.4
(8 ratings)
8.8
(64 ratings)
Availability
9.0
(2 ratings)
8.6
(13 ratings)
Performance
9.0
(2 ratings)
8.0
(10 ratings)
Support Rating
8.5
(10 ratings)
6.5
(31 ratings)
In-Person Training
9.0
(2 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Online Training
7.3
(1 ratings)
7.9
(9 ratings)
Implementation Rating
7.4
(72 ratings)
9.0
(18 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
9.3
(3 ratings)
Ease of integration
6.4
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.1
(78 ratings)
-
(0 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
One specific thing I love about Zendesk Suite lately is the ability to use AI "Enhance writing" it allows me to freehand a response and then have it help me sound more formal or friendly, this is very useful, not only for those free handed ones, but also when you need to repeat the same information to a customer, it can help you make it sound slightly different. I don't like that when a ticket comes, even if you have the shortcut to toggle between chat and email, it doesn't actually toggle.
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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
  • The development of messaging out of the earlier Chat module is clunky and still has limitations for multi language flows.
  • When creating queries in Explore, you can't search for 'or' conditions, only 'And', meaning you have to build multiple queries and manually add them.
  • You can't download the charts in the reports, they come down as tables and then you have to make your own charts.
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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
Zendesk Suite is a straightforward solution that provides agents with everything they need on the same screen. Allowing an agent to navigate one tab, one screen and switch between features, pin favorite features while viewing the customer profile and details in 360degrees. A view like this empowers agents to support customers better and in a more composed state.
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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
Zendesk Suite is exceptionally user friendly and highly customisable. Free training for all levels and roles of users which is easy to follow and engaging for users is particularly helpful along with the added support behind the scenes from Zendesk support and the Zendesk community is second to none.
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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
No answers on this topic
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
  • We have been able to deliver IT accurately and onetime
  • Our customers have been able to provide feedback on a given ticket and helped us build a better support structure
  • Zendesk Suite has allowed us to be more efficient in our every day operations
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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. Monitor key metrics across your 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 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