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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Kustomer

    Score8.7 out of 10
    N/AKustomer is a customer service CRM platform built for managing high support volume by optimizing experiences throughout the customer service journey. Kustomer was acquired by Facebook in late 2020, but spun out in 2023 and re-launched as an independent entity, Kustomer, LLC.

    $8,544

    per year for 8 users (minimum)

    Zendesk Suite

    Score8.5 out of 10
    N/AZendesk 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
    KustomerZendesk Suite
    Editions & Modules
    Enterprise
    $89
    per month (billed annually) per user
    Ultimate
    $139
    per month (billed annually) per user
    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
    KustomerZendesk Suite
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoYes
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
    Additional DetailsAll plans require an annual subscription and 8 users minimum.20% discount available with annual pricing.
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    KustomerZendesk Suite
    Considered Both Products
    Kustomer, LLC
    Chose Kustomer
    Apps like Intercom, Zendesk, and Gorgios all treat customer inquiries as tickets, just tracking that one issue or interaction with a customer. Kustomer treats each customer as an individual, which allows us to provide top-notch customer service. Customers love that we're able …
    Incentivized
    Chose Kustomer
    Kustomer is far more intuitive, personal, and holistic than Zendesk. As a company who has a lot of interaction with a single customer, it is such an advantage to take the customer approach rather than a single ticket approach. Zendesk was very limited in a lot of the actions …
    Incentivized
    Chose Kustomer
    Kustomer simply does more than any other platform I've been able to work with. Sure some others will give you a handful of neat tricks built in for managing a channel or two but those rarely offer any external integrative capacity or limit what you can do in connections. …
    Incentivized
    Chose Kustomer
    Kustomer was better suited to the personalized nature of the service that we're trying to provide.
    Incentivized
    Chose Kustomer
    I think Kustomer is the best.
    Incentivized
    Chose Kustomer
    Moving from Zendesk to Kustomer was driven by the clarity that the customer timeline brings for advocate engagement alongside the custom workflow abilities.
    Incentivized
    Chose Kustomer
    Zendesk did not give a big picture of the customer. It was more of a ticketing platform, and only gave statistics of those conversations. We were unable to track customer sentiment, or other attributes of the customer.
    Incentivized
    Chose Kustomer
    Kustomer is far more scalable and flexible than Zendesk, and it provides a real omni-channel experience far from the "Zendesk for mails, Zendesk Chat for chats" we were used to. On the automation and customisation features, it gets even clearer how Kustomer can deal with a lot …
    Incentivized
    Chose Kustomer
    That fact that I had to add 3 tags for one tool says a lot. We had 3 different avenues with Zendesk. So not only was the order information, shipping information, and more in another site or page, so was the live support. This just created a lot of confusion, especially when …
    Incentivized
    Chose Kustomer
    The sales rep did a great job of making us feel heard and instilling trust. We felt that we would be valued as a client instead of just one of thousands, and a small company at that. When we signed they promised and delivered on an additional channel that they hadn't previously …
    Incentivized
    Zendesk
    Chose Zendesk Suite
    Zendesk Suite is very similar to the companies we listed, but, in my opinion, there are a lot of things that these companies do right that Zendesk Suite fails at. Particularly reporting and phone systems. We have looked into Five9 in great detail to replace our current phone …
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    88%
    Would buy again
    7 Answers
    87%
    Would buy again
    123 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    5 Answers
    85%
    Delivers good value for the price
    108 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    88%
    Happy with the feature set
    7 Answers
    92%
    Happy with the feature set
    131 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    No answers on this topic
    85%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    82 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    80%
    Implementation went as expected
    4 Answers
    85%
    Implementation went as expected
    94 Answers
    Features
    KustomerZendesk Suite
    Incident and problem management
    Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Kustomer and Zendesk Suite
    Feature
    Kustomer
    8.1
    15 Ratings
    1% below category average
    Zendesk Suite
    8.6
    187 Ratings
    5% above category average
    Organize and prioritize service tickets8.014 Ratings9.1186 Ratings
    Expert directory8.212 Ratings7.9127 Ratings
    Subscription-based notifications8.611 Ratings8.4130 Ratings
    ITSM collaboration and documentation8.011 Ratings7.8131 Ratings
    Ticket creation and submission8.015 Ratings9.3186 Ratings
    Ticket response8.015 Ratings9.0185 Ratings
    Self Help Community
    Comparison of Self Help Community features of Kustomer and Zendesk Suite
    Feature
    Kustomer
    8.5
    13 Ratings
    6% above category average
    Zendesk Suite
    8.5
    169 Ratings
    6% above category average
    External knowledge base8.013 Ratings8.5163 Ratings
    Internal knowledge base9.013 Ratings8.4156 Ratings
    Multi-Channel Help
    Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Kustomer and Zendesk Suite
    Feature
    Kustomer
    8.1
    15 Ratings
    1% above category average
    Zendesk Suite
    8.4
    182 Ratings
    5% above category average
    Customer portal8.710 Ratings9.1150 Ratings
    IVR8.69 Ratings8.076 Ratings
    Social integration7.313 Ratings7.4119 Ratings
    Email support10.015 Ratings9.2178 Ratings
    Help Desk CRM integration6.011 Ratings8.4138 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    KustomerZendesk Suite
    Small Businesses
    Help Scout
    Score9.3 out of 10
    Help Scout
    Score9.3 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    LiveAgent
    Score8.8 out of 10
    LiveAgent
    Score8.8 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Front
    Score9.2 out of 10
    Front
    Score9.2 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    KustomerZendesk Suite
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.0
    (36 ratings)
    8.7
    (225 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    10.0
    (43 ratings)
    Usability
    10.0
    (4 ratings)
    8.6
    (98 ratings)
    Availability
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    9.1
    (14 ratings)
    Performance
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    9.1
    (11 ratings)
    Support Rating
    9.4
    (7 ratings)
    5.5
    (31 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Online Training
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    6.4
    (10 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    9.1
    (19 ratings)
    Configurability
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    9.1
    (4 ratings)
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Professional Services
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    KustomerZendesk Suite
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Kustomer, LLC
    I would say the greatest strength of Kustomer is its flexibility. In the hands of a skilled admin, it can be adapted to tons and tons of different use cases. I've been able to make custom displays for different groups of agents, produce complex cross sections of users, draw interesting data relationships combining marketing contacts and customer-initiated contacts. For example, there's really no other data source in our company which could tell you which users received a specific promo code and checked out with it, received their delivery within 14 days and then can related that to the number of times they contacted us about using our product. At the intersection of communication, marketing, data, and relationship-management, Kustomer shines at the center. I would say it falls short when you are trying to coordinate multiple "side conversations" with multiple sources to resolve an issue. This is a tough task for any type of platform, but if you're maintaining 3 different email chains with a 3PL partner, the customer, and a separate internal conversation, it would be confusing anyway!
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Zendesk
    Zendesk is good for small teams where work is not passed along to internal teams or situations where escalations lead to further customer interactions and no further oversight is needed. It is weak as a product for larger and medium-sized companies, where processes are in place that are not aligned with its workflow, as it is a very rigid tool.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Kustomer, LLC
    • All customer data (past orders, communication with customer service, rewards account data) is in one place. This helps agents avoid confusion and reduces the number of tabs they need to open.
    • The Knowledge Base (or K Base) is very helpful. Any time we roll out a new policy or have a limited-time promotion, we can add all the relevant information and worksheets there for the convenience of the agents. That way they can stay in a chat while looking up the answer to a question.
    • We can seamlessly move from chat into email if the customer leaves or the queue times are too long. All the interactions will stay on the customer profile page, so they are kept up to date.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Zendesk
    • Merging of the tickets with similar issues, it is easy to avoid confusion
    • Al global team somehow gets connected with different ways like Slack, with the Zendesk Suite which is so easier to highlight & the issue quickly
    • The best thing is that this tool gives you to send the message via chat-, email, call through the one single platform
    • Now AI has been added so it works good
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Kustomer, LLC
    • For our team, the feature that defaults all notes to begin in "done" status is difficult. Throughout each day we need to have notes open and assigned back and forth to different teams, and we have to remember to manually "open" each note. There is too much room for human error with this setting, and it is easy for important notes to be missed if a user forgets to open the note.
    • Similarly, it can be hard to remember to assign emails/notes to a particular team in addition to a user. We almost exclusively work out of team inboxes, and if someone on Care writes an email to a customer, the email will automatically be "done" when it is created, and it will be assigned to the user who wrote it, but not also to the user's team. There are instances where an email needs to be snoozed for several days/hours with further action needed, and unless the user remembers to assign the email to their team it may "awake" from the snooze and not be visible to anyone except the user who created it. Similarly to my first comment, this leaves a lot of room for human error and is not very intuitive.
    • Personally, I do not love that all tickets/emails/notes are jumbled together in the same inbox. While this gives visibility to everything on the "to do" list at the same time, it can be visually overwhelming. We have created unique folders for certain types of projects or categories of work, but have experienced tech glitches or just the awkwardness of another step to manually read the note, determine what type of category it is, and then manually assign it to another folder. Would love to have things auto-sort and take out this manual lift.
    • I love the idea of the autopilot setting, but we have not been able to use this for our work because it sorts items based on time, and not based on priority. In our line of work, we may have an urgent situation arise that needs attention before an email that was sent in 60 minutes ago. The autopilot feature would push the email to my associates sooner than it would the urgent situation from 5 minutes ago. Due to this, we manually monitor inboxes and assign work to ourselves and others.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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?
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Kustomer, LLC
    Because there's no other tool like Kustomer
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Kustomer, LLC
    There is a learning curve, but it is more than worth it, especially to have a dedicated resource pointed at Kustomer and any other software it interacts with. The basic implementation is useful, and powerful - certainly a MASSIVE upgrade over taking care of your customers in an email inbox or shuffling between multiple windows and applications! It is also set up really well to grow and reconfigure with your business. I'm a big fan.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    Kustomer, LLC
    Because Kustomer is available when you need it
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Zendesk
    In the past year, I'd say I have only noticed maybe two hours total of downtime in my own usage. Very minimal.
    Read full review
    Performance
    Kustomer, LLC
    Because ages load quickly, reports complete in a reasonable time frame, given their complexity
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Zendesk
    There has been minor performance degradation on a very few days out of the two years I have been using the product.
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Kustomer, LLC
    I did not reach out to Kustomer support when we had an issue. Still, whenever we provide feedback to our manager regarding what can improve based on our experience using Kustomer, our manager always comments that Kustomer support always replies with some positive feedback based on our suggestions.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    Read full review
    In-Person Training
    Kustomer, LLC
    Because they are very hands-on in training us and very approachable
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Zendesk
    No answers on this topic
    Online Training
    Kustomer, LLC
    It was very easy to understand.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    Kustomer, LLC
    Nothing really because it is easy to use. After an hour of using it, we're already getting the hang of it.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    Kustomer, LLC
    Apps like Intercom, Zendesk, and Gorgios all treat customer inquiries as tickets, just tracking that one issue or interaction with a customer. Kustomer treats each customer as an individual, which allows us to provide top-notch customer service. Customers love that we're able to be more conversational and informal, while still solving their issues quickly. It also helps us build relationships with customers and increases repeat orders.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Zendesk
    At the time of evaluation, Dynamics had extremely limited knowledge and support capabilities. The UI is clunky, and reporting requires a deep understanding of the underlying data structure. Ongoing maintenance was costly and didn't provide a positive ROI in any sense of the term.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Scalability
    Kustomer, LLC
    Because customer is flexible and scalable
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Zendesk
    WHY we will use Zendesk in HR and PD internally
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    Kustomer, LLC
    • We’re getting so much positive feedback — which is not something you traditionally associate with a customer care team — because we’re making it effortless for customers to deliver both positive and negative feedback, and we can now resolve the bad feedback really really quickly.
    • Primarily from our increased efficiency with Kustomer, we’ve seen a significant reduction of $3 to $4 for every cost per contact.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Zendesk
    • More than anything, provided a boost to our perceived professionalism. The portal is a massive improvement on email only support.
    • Workflow optimization via macros and automations has enhanced response times and raise our 'first call resolution' metric.
    • Speaking of metrics; having them at all! Before Zendesk Suite we were email only so had no insight into agent and vendor performance.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    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