Customer support has become the forefront of business operations in recent years. It is now recognized as an effective growth lever and is integral to a business’s growth. 

But back when Zendesk first came around in 2007, customer support was synonymous with ticket resolution. The founders of Zendesk created a solution that would help businesses streamline their ticketing process and help automate CX functions such as reporting. They supported businesses in various industries to achieve success with their helpdesk software.

Gorgias solved a very similar problem when it was founded in 2015. The team behind Gorgias recognized the need for verticalization and chose to cater specifically to the needs of the eCommerce industry, narrowing their scope to provide dedicated solutions.

With the increasing number of businesses on eCommerce platforms such as Shopify and Zendesk, Gorgias emerged as an excellent solution for small and medium-sized businesses looking to streamline their CX operations with help desk tools.

As over 60% of Richpanel users have previously used Gorgias or Zendesk, our team has some insight into each of the helpdesk software: 

Key Features: Gorgias & Zendesk

Multichannel Support: 

Both Zendesk and Gorgias successfully solved the issues they set out to address. Gorgias and Zendesk have created a multichannel helpdesk that reduces operation hassles and allows agents to respond to tickets on social media, live chat, and even email from a single window. 

Macros: 

Both Zendesk and Gorgias support presaved or canned responses that help answer redundant queries such as “where is my order?”. It helps automate responses to recurring questions and helps reduce the agent’s load. 

Mobile App:

If you’re a CX leader or agent who wants to stay on top of things even when travelling, Zendesk and Gorgias have the perfect solution for you. They both have a mobile app version that allows you to access the customer conversations, reports and all customer support operations on the go. 

Collaborative Features:

Both Zendesk and Gorgias have a team-centric approach and allow for agent collaboration with features like reminders and collision detection. Whether you want to remind yourself about a folllowup or pass on certain information about the customer for future reference, both Zendesk and Gorgias allows you to create reminders for the same. 

Both Zendesk and Gorgias also support collision detection, where the software doesn’t allow two agents to reply to the same conversation. It helps avoid confusion and make sure agents are aware that someone else is on the ticket when they approach it. 

They are both great ticketing systems with deep integrations with eCommerce platforms such as Shopify and also integrate well with all ecommerce apps in your tech stack whether it is a Returnly, Jira, Salesforce etc.

And while there are many similarities in their approach towards customer support, Gorgias and Zendesk are different from one another in many ways.

Read Also: Complete Guide on Ecommerce Customer Service

Gorgias Vs Zendesk: Differences

Gorgias is part of a comprehensive e-commerce tech stack that includes various apps for CRM, return management, etc. It extends to eCommerce platforms like Shopify and provides added functionality for business owners looking to solve specific problems with their customer support operations. 

Zendesk:

Zendesk has some amazing features. Not only does it support multichannel customer service, it also allows agents to reach out to their customers with email to provide updates. This helps create a sense of consistency and form a bond with your customers. 

Zendesk also has one of the most robust reporting systems in any helpdesk software. It is highly customization to suit the needs of an ecommerce company, but it also allows you to filter the results with multiple parameters if you want to observe metrics over a specific time period etc. 

Zendesk caters to a larger audience. It is highly customizable and can be tuned to the needs of any industry, right from healthcare to eCommerce. By doing so, it enjoys a larger market share than most helpdesk software but loses out on the details of specific verticals.

Zendesk’s generalized approach is its difficulty in setting it up. The options can be overwhelming for businesses looking to solve simple issues like multichannel support.

However, Zendesk is part of a comprehensive family of tools with which it enjoys deep integrations. With additional tools like Zendesk Guide, the company aims to offer a 360 solution for customer service teams. Learn more on Best Zendesk Alternatives

Gorgias:

Gorgias on the other hand plays to very different strengths. Their aim was to introduce automation in a way that does not affect the quality of conversations with the customers. 

Gorgias relies on features like sentiment analysis and IVR to achieve this goal. The sentiment analysis feature studies the customers’ messages and identifies their tone or mood. This helps prioritize angry custoemrs or even offer better discounts or freebies for customers that seem frustrated. 

The IVR feature allows you to automate the phone support. It allows you to tap into the potential of a new channel without increasing costs significasntly. What’s more? It allows you to add a 24X7 support channel to your customer support service. 

Although Zendesk and Gorgias were created a decade apart, their approach to customer service and helpdesk solutions almost mirrored each other. They aim to provide a platform upon which customer service operations are established. 

But as we shift towards a more customer-centric market, companies need stronger relationships with their customers in order to scale. Customer support was recognized as an important factor in increasing customer satisfaction and brand loyalty. Looking at customer support as an omnipresent ticketing system is not enough. 

Customer support plays an immense role in customer satisfaction and revenue growth. But as the business scales, scaling customer support is seen as a hurdle rather than an opportunity. Businesses scurry to keep up with the increasing number of tickets, often neglecting the quality of conversations in the process. 

Apart from this, Gorgias and Zendesk have robust reporting tools. But since they are designed with the goal of ticket resolution and not customer service, the reporting tools do little to add value to the CX operations. 

Gorgias and Zendesk have a class-center structure at the core and measure success in terms of time taken to resolve a query. It neglects the complexity of the issues and pressurizes agents to deflect queries or provide fast solutions. It forces agents to treat customers like tickets and not conversations. 

Traditional helpdesk have further propagated the age-old idea that customer support is only meant to extinguish fires. This is why helpdesk software like Gorgias and Zendesk is not future-proof. And if you still subscribe to these traditional customer service methods, your business might not be too. Learn more on Top Gorgias Alternatives for your Ecommerce Customer Support

To Elaborate, 

One of the most significant challenges customer support leaders and business owners face is the high churn rates of support agents. Yet, none of the traditional helpdesk software solves the agent experience. 

In 2010, a Forrester survey concluded that most customer support leaders think self-service is the most important channel going forward. Yet, neither Gorgias nor Zendesk is able to tap into its potential. 

In addition, marketplaces like Amazon have pioneered customer support for online businesses and raised the bar for other independent players. Amazon’s my account section is highly personalized and empowers a customer to track their shipment, view order history, and take actions like cancellations or changing their delivery address without contacting a support agent. 

Not only does this provide quick and effective solutions for customers with simple queries, but it also reduces ticket volume by eliminating redundancy. This is a win-win for both the customer and the support teams. 

Choose Right Customer Support for your Business

Richpanel is customer support software that lay equal emphasis on customer expectations and agent experience as well. We’ve designed a user-friendly interface that mimics giants like Amazon and Uber on the customer front, and LinkedIn or Facebook on the backend. 

This not only streamlines CX operations but also solves every pain that a growing eCommerce business would have with regard to customer support. Richpanel has helped its clients reduce ticket volumes by 40-70% without compromising on the quality of customer service. It has actively helped increase CSAT scores, and facilitated agents to have more meaningful conversations. 

Not only did Richpanel impact the bottom-line revenue of these clients, but it also allowed them to track the impact of CX on their revenue, giving its users a better metric to measure success.  Learn More - Richpanel vs Gorgias

If you’re looking for Ecommerce customer support software that goes toe-to-toe with trends and customer expectations- look no further than Richpanel. Book your demo today!

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