Tableau Desktop vs. Zendesk Chat

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Tableau Desktop
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
Tableau Desktop is a data visualization product from Tableau. It connects to a variety of data sources for combining disparate data sources without coding. It provides tools for discovering patterns and insights, data calculations, forecasts, and statistical summaries and visual storytelling.
$1,380
per year (purchased via a Creator license)
Zendesk Chat
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
Zendesk Chat (formerly Zopim) is a live chat tool developed by the Singaporean company also called Zopim, acquired by Zendesk in April 2014.
$11.20
per month
Pricing
Tableau DesktopZendesk Chat
Editions & Modules
Tableau Creator License
$115
per month (billed annually) per user
Lite
$0
per user
Basic
$14
per user
Advanced
$25
per user
Premium
$55
per user
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Tableau DesktopZendesk Chat
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional DetailsAll pricing plans are billed annually. A Creator license includes Tableau Desktop, Tableau Prep Builder, and Tableau Pulse. Discounts sometimes available for volume.The pricing above is price per user per month. You will get a discount when you opt for annual payment.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Tableau DesktopZendesk Chat
Features
Tableau DesktopZendesk Chat
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Tableau Desktop
8.4
175 Ratings
3% above category average
Zendesk Chat
-
Ratings
Pixel Perfect reports8.0145 Ratings00 Ratings
Customizable dashboards9.1174 Ratings00 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates8.1151 Ratings00 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Tableau Desktop
8.3
172 Ratings
3% above category average
Zendesk Chat
-
Ratings
Drill-down analysis8.5167 Ratings00 Ratings
Formatting capabilities8.4170 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages8.0126 Ratings00 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration8.5165 Ratings00 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
Tableau Desktop
8.3
166 Ratings
1% above category average
Zendesk Chat
-
Ratings
Publish to Web8.0155 Ratings00 Ratings
Publish to PDF8.0154 Ratings00 Ratings
Report Versioning8.3120 Ratings00 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling8.5128 Ratings00 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers8.878 Ratings00 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
Tableau Desktop
8.3
164 Ratings
4% above category average
Zendesk Chat
-
Ratings
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)8.5162 Ratings00 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization8.5156 Ratings00 Ratings
Predictive Analytics8.6131 Ratings00 Ratings
Pattern Recognition and Data Mining7.57 Ratings00 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
Tableau Desktop
9.0
149 Ratings
6% above category average
Zendesk Chat
-
Ratings
Multi-User Support (named login)9.0145 Ratings00 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model9.0125 Ratings00 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)8.7136 Ratings00 Ratings
Report-Level Access Control9.010 Ratings00 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)9.283 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
Tableau Desktop
7.9
141 Ratings
2% above category average
Zendesk Chat
-
Ratings
Responsive Design for Web Access8.7130 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile Application7.4101 Ratings00 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile7.4122 Ratings00 Ratings
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of Product A and Product B
Tableau Desktop
7.7
67 Ratings
0% below category average
Zendesk Chat
-
Ratings
REST API8.259 Ratings00 Ratings
Javascript API7.653 Ratings00 Ratings
iFrames6.751 Ratings00 Ratings
Java API8.148 Ratings00 Ratings
Themeable User Interface (UI)7.254 Ratings00 Ratings
Customizable Platform (Open Source)8.148 Ratings00 Ratings
Chat Analytics and Reports
Comparison of Chat Analytics and Reports features of Product A and Product B
Tableau Desktop
-
Ratings
Zendesk Chat
8.4
5 Ratings
3% below category average
Chat history and transcripts00 Ratings8.05 Ratings
Chat reporting00 Ratings8.65 Ratings
Chat and web analytics00 Ratings8.54 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Tableau DesktopZendesk Chat
Small Businesses
Yellowfin
Yellowfin
Score 8.7 out of 10
Gist
Gist
Score 9.5 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Reveal
Reveal
Score 10.0 out of 10
Genesys DX (discontinued)
Genesys DX (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Kyvos Semantic Layer
Kyvos Semantic Layer
Score 9.5 out of 10
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Genesys DX (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
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User Ratings
Tableau DesktopZendesk Chat
Likelihood to Recommend
8.8
(203 ratings)
8.6
(23 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
7.5
(41 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
8.3
(73 ratings)
7.0
(5 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(11 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
8.0
(10 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
1.0
(57 ratings)
8.4
(3 ratings)
In-Person Training
9.4
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
8.0
(5 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.0
(34 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
7.0
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.0
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Tableau DesktopZendesk Chat
Likelihood to Recommend
Tableau
The best scenario is definitely to collect data from several sources and create dedicated dashboards for specific recipients. However, I miss the possibility of explaining these reports in more detail. Sometimes, we order a report, and after half a year, we don't remember the meaning of some data (I know it's our fault as an organization, but the tool could force better practices).
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Zendesk
Zendesk Chat is suited for all the support teams that provide real-time assistance. Like if someone wants to block the debit/credit card, it is a high-priority case that needs real-time assistance. Whereas issues like close my account, and invoice request doesn't need real-time assistance, where Zendesk tickets support will be perfect.
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Pros
Tableau
  • An excellent tool for data visualization, it presents information in an appealing visual format—an exceptional platform for storing and analyzing data in any size organization.
  • Through interactive parameters, it enables real-time interaction with the user and is easy to learn and get support from the community.
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Zendesk
  • Extremely fluid chat interface allows for easy communication.
  • It can be used directly on a website page or as a widget.
  • Allows the end user to translate the chat into their own native language.
  • Notifies you with pending chats via on-screen notifications and sound effects.
Read full review
Cons
Tableau
  • Pricing should be more user-friendly and usage-driven
  • Making edits to the production reports is fairly tough and has a vast scope of additional capabilities
  • Tableau Desktop should be able to differentiate itself from the Tableau server else there is no major meaning of two different products being offered
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Zendesk
  • Linking with a telephone, so the agent is only working on 1 channel at a time
  • More simplified way to create and use templates
  • Link users who may have provided us a new/different email from what we have on file for them
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Likelihood to Renew
Tableau
Our use of Tableau Desktop is still fairly low, and will continue over time. The only real concern is around cost of the licenses, and I have mentioned this to Tableau and fully expect the development of more sensible models for our industry. This will remove any impediment to expansion of our use.
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Zendesk
Due to staffing issues, we have temporarily stopped offering chat as an available channel. We're also interested in the best ways to integrate chat with our FAQs and AI to provide quick responses, either during off-hours or prior to speaking with a live agent. I've also found that reporting is rather limited where some of the interesting and useful data made available and visible during the chat cannot be pulled post-chat; it would be great to pull a high-level report so we can analyze this data.
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Usability
Tableau
Tableau Desktop has proven to be a lifesaver in many situations. Once we've completed the initial setup, it's simple to use. It has all of the features we need to quickly and efficiently synthesize our data. Tableau Desktop has advanced capabilities to improve our company's data structure and enable self-service for our employees.
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Zendesk
As mentioned previously, it's a clunky product that lacks user-friendliness. It feels old and behind the times compared to other products we have used. The inability to have a wrap-up time before a new chat comes in is also a big issue for our team.
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Reliability and Availability
Tableau
When used as a stand-alone tool, Tableau Desktop has unlimited uptime, which is always nice. When used in conjunction with Tableau Server, this tool has as much uptime as your server admins are willing to give it. All in all, I've never had an issue with Tableau's availability.
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Zendesk
No answers on this topic
Performance
Tableau
Tableau Desktop's performance is solid. You can really dig into a large dataset in the form of a spreadsheet, and it exhibits similarly good performance when accessing a moderately sized Oracle database. I noticed that with Tableau Desktop 9.3, the performance using a spreadsheet started to slow around 75K rows by about 60 columns. This was easily remedied by creating an extract and pushing it to Tableau Server, where performance went to lightning fast
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Zendesk
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Tableau
Tableau support has been extremely responsive and willing to help with all of our requests. They have assisted with creating advanced analysis and many different types of custom icons, data formatting, formulas, and actions embedded into graphs. Tableau offers a weekly presentation of features and assists with internal company projects.
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Zendesk
Getting assistance and/or troubleshooting anything with Zendesk can be quite frustrating. In my years of experience with Zednesk, I have almost never found the answer to my question without going through multiple articles, ultimately getting frustrated and reaching out to our contact for more assistance. So for a consumer, the support is not as relieving as Zendesk Chat is to our customers in getting the questions answered by us.
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In-Person Training
Tableau
It is admittedly hard to train a group of people with disparate levels of ability coming in, but the software is so easy to use that this is not a huge problem; anyone who can follow simple instructions can catch up pretty quickly.
Read full review
Zendesk
No answers on this topic
Online Training
Tableau
I think the training was good overall, but it was maybe stating the obvious things that a tech savvy young engineer would be able to pick up themselves too. However, the example work books were good and Tableau web community has helped me with many problems
Read full review
Zendesk
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Tableau
Again, training is the key and the company provides a lot of example videos that will help users discover use cases that will greatly assist their creation of original visualizations. As with any new software tool, productivity will decline for a period. In the case of Tableau, the decline period is short and the later gains are well worth it.
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Zendesk
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Tableau
I have used Power BI as well, the pricing is better, and also training costs or certifications are not that high. Since there is python integration in Power BI where I can use data cleaning and visualizing libraries and also some machine learning models. I can import my python scripts and create a visualization on processed data.
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Zendesk
Zendesk Chat is far more user friendly than some of the other competitors on the market. It has a very all the features that you require to ensure your customers are contacted in 'real time'. Its main tools include a live chat interface for quick communication, customisable chat widgets to fit your brand, mobile responsiveness for all devices, and canned responses for common questions. The platform can also start chats based on visitor actions, like time on a page or exit intent. A real must for any leading company
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Scalability
Tableau
Tableau Desktop's scaleability is really limited to the scale of your back-end data systems. If you want to pull down an extract and work quickly in-memory, in my application it scaled to a few tens of millions of rows using the in-memory engine. But it's really only limited by your back-end data store if you have or are willing to invest in an optimized SQL store or purpose-built query engine like Veritca or Netezza or something similar.
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Zendesk
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Tableau
  • Tableau was acquired years ago, and has provided good value with the content created.
  • Ongoing maintenance costs for the platform, both to maintain desktop and server licensing has made the continuing value questionable when compared to other offerings in the marketplace.
  • Users have largely been satisfied with the content, but not with the overall performance. This is due to a combination of factors including the performance of the Tableau engines as well as development deficiencies.
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Zendesk
  • Positive impact - Compared to our old system, this newly updated system provides features and functionality that has increased our agent productivity and provided customer insight like we've never had before. This has resulted in fewer hold times and higher customer satisfaction.
  • Negative impact - Our reporting team still struggles with obtaining the right information from time to time with the chats. This leads to loss of productivity and more resources dedicated to reporting.
  • Positive impact - Due to Zopim's embed, we are able to more successfully place them on the appropriate self-service portals and pages, reaching a larger audience, and being more readily available to answer our client's questions. This has resulted in an increase in our self-service portal usage, driving down the phone and email support channels, which in turn reduces support costs.
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ScreenShots

Zendesk Chat Screenshots

Screenshot of How Zopim Chat Widget looks on the website.Screenshot of This is how the chat window looks like to your visitorsScreenshot of This is a screenshot of the visitor list.Screenshot of