11 Key Zendesk Features Reviewed (+ Pros and Cons) 

Zendesk is one of the most recognized names in customer service software. It’s also one of the most misunderstood. 

Teams buy it expecting a plug-and-play helpdesk. But what they get is an enterprise platform that requires dedicated admins and months of setup. And a budget that grows every time you need something “basic”—like AI, quality assurance, or better support.

None of this makes Zendesk bad. It just makes it a specific tool for specific teams. 

So, after analyzing hundreds of user reviews, we’ve put together an honest breakdown of 11 key Zendesk features. Read what users love (and hate) about each, and how to tell if Zendesk is the right fit for you.

Table of Contents

• Zendesk Features: At a Glance
• 11 Key Features of Zendesk
  • 1. Omnichannel Ticketing System
  • 2. Messaging and Live Chat 
  • 3. Voice (Zendesk Talk)
  • 4. Help Center 
  • 5. AI-Powered Automation (AI Agents + Copilot) 
  • What Does Zendesk AI Actually Cost? 
  • 6. Quality Assurance and Workforce Management
  • 7. Reporting and Analytics (Zendesk Explore)
  • 8. Integrations
  • 9. ITSM (IT Service Management)
  • 10. Zendesk Sunshine & Sunshine Conversations
  • 11. Zendesk Sell (Sales CRM)
• How To Benefit The Most From Your Current Zendesk Subscription?
  • 1. Plan for Scale from Day One
  • 2. Optimize Your Knowledge Base with Team Ownership
  • 3. Track Macro Usage to Spot Automation Opportunities
• When Should You Consider Zendesk?
• When Should You Not Consider Zendesk?
• Explore Hiver: The Best Zendesk Alternative
• What ex-Zendesk customers say about Hiver? 
  • How itGenius Restored Human, Ticket-Free Communication After Leaving Zendesk
  • How Bynder Saved 198 Hours Monthly by Switching From Zendesk’s Transactional Ticketing
• Frequently Asked Questions

Zendesk Features: At a Glance

Here’s a quick look at Zendesk’s most important features:

Feature	What It Does	Tier Requirement	Best For
Ticketing System	Centralizes all customer queries into trackable tickets with SLAs, priorities, macros, and worflows	All plans (Support Team starts at $19/agent/month)	High-volume support teams needing structured workflows
Messaging & Live Chat	Real-time conversations across web, mobile, WhatsApp, and social channels	Suite Team ($55/agent/month) for full messaging	Teams wanting omnichannel real-time support
Voice (Zendesk Talk)	Integrated cloud-based phone support with IVR and call recording	Suite Team and above; advanced features on Professional	Contact centers needing phone + digital in one place
Help Center	Self-service knowledge base with FAQs, articles, and community forums	Basic KB on all Suite plans; multilingual/community on Pro+	Businesses wanting to deflect tickets through self-service
AI Agents & Copilot	Autonomous AI for ticket resolution + agent assist with suggestions	Advanced AI is a paid add-on ($50/agent/month for Copilot; $1.50+/resolution for AI Agents)	Enterprise teams with a budget for AI-driven automation
Quality Assurance (Zendesk QA)	Conversation scoring, agent performance tracking, and coaching tools	Paid add-on ($35/agent/month)	Teams focused on agent coaching and service quality
Reporting & Analytics (Explore)	Customizable dashboards, CSAT tracking, SLA reports	Basic on all plans; advanced on Professional+	Data-driven teams needing deep operational insights
Integrations	1,500+ apps, including Salesforce, Shopify, Slack, Jira	All plans; some integrations need higher tiers	Businesses with complex tech stacks needing connectivity
ITSM (IT Service Management)	Internal helpdesk for employee IT requests, incident management, and asset tracking	All Suite plans work best with Professional+	Organizations consolidating external support and internal IT
Zendesk Sunshine	Open data platform for custom objects + unified messaging API	Suite Professional+; Sunshine Conversations is an add-on	Enterprise teams building custom integrations or bots
Zendesk Sell (Sales CRM)	Standalone sales CRM for pipeline management, lead tracking, and outreach	Separate product (starts at $19/user/month)	Sales teams wanting CRM integrated with Zendesk Support

11 Key Features of Zendesk

Below is a detailed breakdown of Zendesk’s key features, along with their pros and cons.

1. Omnichannel Ticketing System

Zendesk’s ticketing system is the backbone of the platform and its most mature feature. It’s usually the first thing teams look at when they evaluate Zendesk. At its core, it turns every customer inquiry into a unique “ticket,” giving support teams a clear, structured way to track, prioritize, and close requests without anything slipping through the cracks.

What makes it powerful:

• Omnichannel support: Emails, chats, social DMs, and calls all appear in one place, so agents aren’t bouncing between tools.
• Agent Workspace: Agents work from a single interface (Agent Workspace) where they can view all tickets, customer history, past interactions, and relevant context without switching between multiple tabs or tools.
• Skill-based routing: Teams can automatically assign tickets to agents based on their expertise, language proficiency, or product specialization.
• Macros and workflows: Pre-defined replies and actions that let agents answer common questions, update fields/tags/assignees in bulk, and personalize messages.
• Custom views: Teams can create views like “High priority – unassigned” or “VIP customers – pending” to stay organized.
• SLAs: You can set response and resolution time targets by ticket priority, with automatic alerts when deadlines approach.
• Custom fields: Custom fields let you capture exactly the data you need (order ID, product type, issue category) right when a ticket comes in.
• Collision alerts: You can see when another agent is viewing or responding to the same ticket, preventing duplicate responses.
• Workforce management: You can track agent capacity, monitor active ticket assignments, and distribute workload evenly across the team to prevent burnout and balance productivity.

What users like: Automation, triggers, macros, and clear workflows save significant time and reduce manual effort.

What users dislike: The steep learning curve and dense configuration requirements often mean you need dedicated admins to manage the system properly.

2. Messaging and Live Chat

For teams that want real-time conversations with customers, Zendesk offers two chat experiences: Zendesk Live Chat and Zendesk Messaging. While both enable chat-based support, they’re built for different interaction styles.

Zendesk Live Chat

Zendesk Live Chat is designed for real-time, session-based conversations on your website or app. It focuses on helping agents respond instantly while a customer is online. Zendesk positions Live Chat around speed and agent efficiency, with features like:

• Live, synchronous conversations where agents and customers chat in real time
• AI-powered response assistance, including suggested replies and conversation summaries
• Triggers and proactive chat, allowing teams to start chats based on visitor behavior
• Agent productivity tools such as shortcuts, internal notes, and chat ratings
• Integration with Zendesk AI, where AI supports agents during live conversations rather than replacing them
  

Live Chat works best when customers expect immediate responses and are actively waiting for help. Once the session ends, the interaction typically concludes as well.

Zendesk Messaging

Zendesk Messaging is the newer experience. It’s designed for more flexible, asynchronous conversations, where customers don’t need to stay online, and conversations can continue over time. Instead of focusing on live sessions, Messaging emphasizes:

• Easier entry points for customers to start conversations
• Ongoing conversations that don’t require both sides to be online at the same time
• AI agents that can handle common requests like FAQs, refunds, or order status
• The ability to extend messaging experiences to social channels such as WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram.
• Analytics and quality monitoring through Zendesk dashboards and Zendesk QA
  

Zendesk positions Messaging as the future of chat within its platform, while Live Chat remains available for teams that prefer fast, agent-led, real-time interactions.

What users like about this: Users appreciate that messaging is conversational.

What users don’t like: Some users report CSAT drops, workflow disruptions, and technical bugs since they moved from chat to messaging.

3. Voice (Zendesk Talk)

Zendesk Talk is the platform’s built-in cloud phone solution and sits at the heart of its Zendesk contact center features. It’s designed for teams that want phone support without juggling a separate telephone vendor. Combined with chat, email, and messaging, these Zendesk contact center features let support teams run voice and digital channels from a single workspace instead of stitching together multiple tools.

What you get:

• Inbound and outbound calling: Handle support calls directly from the Agent Workspace.
• IVR (Interactive Voice Response): Route callers to the right team based on menu selections.
• Call recording and transcription: Review calls for QA, training, or compliance.
• Voicemail and callback requests: Customers can leave messages or request a callback instead of waiting on hold.
• Real-time dashboards: Monitor call queues, wait times, and agent availability.
• AI summaries: Agents get instant, AI-powered summaries and key insights from each call, so they can answer follow-up questions confidently while spending less time on wrap-up.

What users like about this: Users appreciate how Zendesk Talk improves customer service with easy ticket handling and excellent call quality, all without requiring extra software or installations.

What users don’t like: The biggest concern is pricing. Zendesk Talk can become expensive for small to medium-sized businesses.

4. Help Center

Zendesk offers powerful self-service options. Using the Help Center, you can create a branded, searchable repository of articles, FAQs, and guides that customers can access 24/7.

Core features:

• Knowledge in Agent Workspace: Zendesk supports self-service by letting agents search and access help center articles directly from the context panel while working on tickets. It also surfaces AI-powered article recommendations based on ticket content, which agents can link to responses in one click.
• Article editor: Create and organize content with a WYSIWYG editor; supports images, videos, and code blocks.
• Content hierarchy: Structure articles into categories and sections for easy navigation.
• Search functionality:  Customers can search across your entire knowledge base.
• Multilingual support: Translate articles into 40+ languages (available on higher tiers).
• Community forums (Zendesk Gather): Let customers ask questions, share solutions, and crowdsource answers from other users. Gather integrates with your knowledge base, so popular community threads can be promoted to official articles. 

What users like about this:  Users praise the fact that the knowledge base is easy to set up and customize. 

What users don’t like: Customers feel that the chatbots built on KB are too basic.

5. AI-Powered Automation (AI Agents + Copilot)

Zendesk has invested heavily in AI, and on paper, its capabilities are genuinely impressive. It offers autonomous bots that resolve tickets, agent copilots that draft responses, and a Resolution Learning Loop™ that gets smarter with every interaction. Unlike one-time AI deployments, this system ensures your automated resolution rate today becomes your baseline tomorrow and continues to improve.

The two main AI products of Zendesk include:

1. AI Agents (formerly “bots” and “Answer Bot”): These are autonomous agents that can resolve customer requests without human intervention. They can:

• Automatically categorize, prioritize, and route incoming tickets based on intent, sentiment, and urgency.
• Understand customer intent using natural language processing
• Pull information from your knowledge base to answer questions
• Resolve common queries (password resets, order status, FAQs) instantly without agent involvement, reducing ticket volume.
• Complete actions (like checking order status) via integrations
• Escalate to human agents when they can’t resolve an issue

2. Copilot (Agent Assist): Copilot helps human agents work faster by:

• Suggesting relevant macros and knowledge articles
• Auto-summarizing long ticket threads
• Drafting responses based on ticket context
• Detecting customer sentiment and intent

What users like: Zendesk AI provides real-time visibility into workloads and performance, with AI-powered features like sentiment analysis improving both agent responsiveness and customer satisfaction. 

What users dislike: Zendesk locks AI features behind expensive add-ons.

Item	Cost
Suite Professional (20 agents × $115/mo)	$2,300/month
AI Copilot add-on (20 agents × $50/mo)	$1,000/month
AI Agents Advanced resolutions (3,000 × $1.50)	$4,500/month
Total Monthly Cost	$7,800/month ($93,600/year)

6. Quality Assurance and Workforce Management

Quality assurance is often an afterthought in support, but Zendesk QA brings it front and center by using AI to review every interaction, not just a small sample.

What it does:

• Conversation scoring: Score agent interactions against customizable scorecards (tone, accuracy, policy adherence, resolution quality).
• AI-powered AutoQA: Automatically reviews 100% of conversations and spotlights outliers, churn risk, escalations, and policy violations.
• Coaching workflows: Let managers leave structured feedback tied to specific messages, share best-practice examples, and calibrate scoring across reviewers.
• Performance dashboards: Track trends by agent, team, channel, or topic, identify knowledge gaps, and measure the impact of coaching over time.
• Browser extension: Review tickets in the native UI while filling scorecards side by side, which makes audits much faster.​

What users like about this: Users like that Zendesk QA turns QA from a manual, sampling-based chore into an automated, always-on process, while still allowing detailed human reviews where it matters.

What users dislike: The main complaints are around performance and usability at scale.

7. Reporting and Analytics (Zendesk Explore)

Zendesk Explore is the platform’s dedicated analytics tool, and it’s genuinely powerful once you figure it out. It pulls data from all your Zendesk channels (tickets, chat, messaging, voice, etc.) and lets you view it in prebuilt dashboards or create custom reports so you can track performance, spot trends, and share insights across your team.

What you can track:

• Ticket metrics: Volume, first response time, resolution time, backlog, and reopens.
• Agent performance: Tickets handled, CSAT scores, average handle time.
• SLA compliance: How often you’re hitting (or missing) your service targets.
• Channel breakdown: Where tickets are coming from (email, chat, phone, social).
• Customer satisfaction: CSAT and NPS trends over time.

• Pre-built dashboards: Get started quickly with out-of-the-box reports for common metrics.
• Custom reports: Build your own reports with drag-and-drop query builders.
• Scheduled exports: Automate report delivery to stakeholders.
• Data export: Easily extract reports for advanced analysis.

What users like about this:  Users appreciate deep, flexible reporting across channels and teams.

As one user on G2 praised,

“Powerful Automation, Extensive Reporting and Analytics: With Zendesk Explore, businesses can track a huge range of metrics—from agent response times and customer satisfaction scores (CSAT) to the most common types of support requests.”

What users don’t like about this: Users complain that reporting is confusing to configure, hard to filter/search, and sometimes feels “overkill.”

As raised by one user on G2,

“The reporting side is also quite limited unless you pay for the higher tiers, and sometimes the interface still has that mix of old and new screens that don’t feel consistent.”

8. Integrations

Zendesk integrates well with the rest of your apps, which is a big part of its appeal for larger organizations with complex tech stacks. It has 1,500+ apps in the Zendesk Marketplace. 

Key integration categories include:

• CRM sync: Pull customer data from Salesforce or HubSpot directly into tickets.
• E-commerce: View Shopify or Magento order history, process refunds and cancellations, manage returns, and access real-time shipping and payment data.
• Collaboration: Get Slack or Teams notifications and create Jira issues directly from tickets.
• Telephony: Connect external phone systems like Amazon Connect if Zendesk Talk doesn’t meet your needs
• Custom integrations: Use Zendesk’s robust REST API to build bespoke connections with internal tools and systems

What users like about this: Teams appreciate the ability to connect their existing tech stack and centralize customer data, reducing context-switching and improving agent efficiency.

What users dislike: While the breadth of integrations is impressive, many native integrations suffer from bugs, data sync issues, and configuration problems that require ongoing troubleshooting. 

9. ITSM (IT Service Management)

Zendesk isn’t as specialized as dedicated ITSM platforms like ServiceNow or Jira Service Management. It lacks native ITIL workflows, change management modules, and deep asset management out of the box. But for organizations that want to consolidate external support and internal IT under one platform without managing two systems, it’s a pragmatic choice.

Zendesk ITSM features include request intake forms, SLAs, automated routing, and integrations with tools like Jira or asset databases, all built on the same ticketing engine used for customer support.

What you can do:

• Employee service portal: Create an internal help center where employees submit IT requests (hardware issues, software access, onboarding tasks).
• Incident and problem management: Track, prioritize, and resolve IT incidents using the same SLA policies and escalation workflows you’d use for customers.
• Asset tracking: Link devices, software licenses, or equipment to employee profiles for visibility during troubleshooting.
• Automation: Use triggers, macros, and webhooks to auto-route requests (e.g., “password reset” goes to IT Tier 1, “VPN issue” goes to the Network team).
• API integrations: Connect Zendesk to existing ITSM tools, CRMs, or internal systems via REST APIs.

What users like: Fast setup for IT teams, plus strong integration capabilities.

What users don’t like: Licensing costs and reporting complexity remain pain points.

10. Zendesk Sunshine & Sunshine Conversations

Zendesk Sunshine is Zendesk’s open, flexible data platform that sits underneath Support, letting you model and connect customer data from any external system. Instead of being limited to standard fields, you can create custom objects (like contracts, subscriptions, or devices) and attach them directly to users and tickets, so agents see richer context inside the workspace.

Sunshine Conversations extends this to messaging. It provides a unified API that pulls conversations from channels like WhatsApp, Instagram, SMS, web chat, and your mobile app into a single programmable layer. This is especially useful for teams building custom bots, complex workflows, or orchestrating conversations across multiple systems without losing the thread.

What users like about this: Sunshine unlocks deep customization for teams that want to build highly tailored experiences.

What users don’t like about this: Sunshine’s flexibility comes with complexity and cost.

11. Zendesk Sell (Sales CRM)

Zendesk Sell is Zendesk’s standalone sales CRM. It’s separate from the customer service suite but designed to integrate with it. It helps sales teams manage leads, track deals, and automate outreach.

Key capabilities:

• Pipeline management: Visual sales pipelines with drag-and-drop deal stages
• Email integration: Sync with Gmail/Outlook, track opens and clicks
• Lead scoring: Prioritize prospects based on engagement
• Mobile app: Full CRM access on iOS/Android for field sales
• Support integration: Pull customer support history into sales conversations for context

What users like: Teams already using Zendesk Support appreciate Sell for being comprehensive and helping them keep all client context in one place.

One user on Capterra put it this way,

“Really comprehensive. I found myself adding things to client profiles, interactions, and deals just to fill in and use all the features! Really fantastic for keeping everything related to a client and their deals organized.”

What users don’t like: Despite being part of the Zendesk family, Sell often feels disconnected from the rest of the Suite, like a bolted-on product rather than a native feature.

As one user on G2shared,

“When Zendesk acquired Base CRM and integrated it as Zendesk Sell, we were thrilled, as we were Base CRM’s customers. However, several years later, Zendesk has failed to fully incorporate Sell as part of the Suite and solutions provided. It feels as if Sell lives in another place, which has caused a little trouble on our side.”

How To Benefit The Most From Your Current Zendesk Subscription?

Zendesk is powerful, but it’s also complex enough that most teams never tap into its full potential. Here are a few tips from Zendesk power users to help you get maximum benefit.

1. Plan for Scale from Day One

The biggest mistake teams make is building workflows that work today but break tomorrow. So before adding automations, triggers, or custom fields, consider how they’ll perform at 10x the volume. This becomes especially important if you’re a new user because the early structure you set becomes very hard to unwind later.

As shared by one user on Reddit:

2. Optimize Your Knowledge Base with Team Ownership

Knowledge bases become cluttered and outdated fast without clear accountability. So it becomes important to keep them clean and useful. 

One Reddit user suggests assigning ownership by product area rather than by individual writers. When someone is responsible for “Billing” or “Integrations” as a whole, they naturally keep it clean because they see the full picture. Random articles belong to teams, not individuals. He also suggests using AI to spot duplicate articles, find conflicting info, and summarize huge docs into something more maintainable.

Another user suggests leveraging analytics and Knowledge Centered Support (KCS),

3. Track Macro Usage to Spot Automation Opportunities

Zendesk tracks which macros your agents use most frequently. You can use this data to identify repetitive work that should be automated. If your team is manually applying the same macro dozens of times per week, it’s a clear signal that customers are asking the same question repeatedly. That question should either be answered by AI, deflected with self-service content, or handled with a trigger instead of manual agent effort.

One user on Reddit also highlights this: 

When Should You Consider Zendesk?

Zendesk makes sense if:

• You’re a large organization (500+ employees) with complex support needs, multiple teams, and the budget to invest in proper implementation.
• You need enterprise-grade integrations with tools like Salesforce, Oracle, or SAP.
• You have dedicated admins who can manage configuration, workflows, and ongoing optimization.
• You’re prepared for a 3-6 month implementation with training, customization, and change management.

When Should You Not Consider Zendesk?

Zendesk may not be the right fit if:

• You’re a small or mid-sized team looking for something simple that works out of the box.
• You don’t have technical resources for setup and ongoing administration.
• Budget is a concern because Zendesk’s pricing adds up fast, especially with add-ons for AI, QA, and advanced features.
• You value fast implementation as Zendesk requires significant setup time; if you need to be live in days (not months), it’s not ideal.
• You don’t want to pay extra for Premium support.

If you checked more than a couple of boxes in the list above, Zendesk probably isn’t the right fit. Many teams reach a point where Zendesk’s power becomes more burden than benefit. That’s where simpler, purpose-built alternatives come in.

Explore Hiver: The Best Zendesk Alternative

Zendesk is powerful, but it’s also heavy, complex, and priced like an enterprise platform. Hiver takes a different approach: it gives you everything you actually need to run a modern, AI-powered support team, without the admin overhead or the “ticket number” experience.

What you get with Hiver:

• Intuitive interface: Your team can set Hiver up in under 15 minutes and start handling conversations in hours.
• Omnichannel support: Manage email, live chat, SMS, WhatsApp, voice, and social media from one place.
• Built-in AI on all paid plans: AI Copilot, AI Agents, and AI Insights come included—not locked behind expensive add-ons.
• Self-service options: A knowledge base and customer portal help deflect repeat tickets before they reach your team.
• Team collaboration: Assign ownership, @mention teammates, and add internal notes to keep context visible without forwarding threads.
• Free plan: Hiver offers a free plan with unlimited users.
• 24/7 support: Email and live chat support included even on the Free plan.

What ex-Zendesk customers say about Hiver?

When teams outgrow Zendesk (or realize it’s overkill for their needs), they start looking for alternatives that are simpler, faster to deploy, and more cost-effective. Hiver keeps coming up, particularly for teams where email is the primary support channel.

Here’s what happened when real companies made the switch: 

How itGenius Restored Human, Ticket-Free Communication After Leaving Zendesk

itGenius, #1 SMB Google Cloud Partner in Australia, tried Zendesk to manage customer conversations but quickly hit a wall. They noticed that the platform was expensive, clunky, and overloaded with features they didn’t need. Worse, customers complained about feeling like “just a number” thanks to Zendesk’s impersonal ticketing system with auto-responses and ticket numbers.

itGenius moved to Hiver to bring back natural, human conversations. The transition was painless, required zero training, and allowed the team to manage 100+ daily emails efficiently while maintaining personal relationships with customers. 

“Zendesk was expensive, clunky, and had a whole lot of features we just didn’t need. We also had a lot of feedback from people about being treated ‘like a number.’ You know that auto-response, ‘here’s your ticket, now sit back, and we’ll get to your email?’ Turns out people don’t like that.”

— Scott Gellatly, General Manager, itGenius

How Bynder Saved 198 Hours Monthly by Switching From Zendesk’s Transactional Ticketing

Bynder, a global leader in AI-powered digital asset management serving brands like Spotify, Puma, and Five Guys, struggled with disconnected systems. Their Customer Success team juggled Zendesk, Gmail, and Salesforce just to respond to customers, wasting time and losing context. CSMs spent 10-60 minutes per shift manually assigning emails, conversations went untracked, and managers had zero visibility into workloads or SLAs.

Bynder moved to Hiver to unify its workflows on a single platform. Hiver’s Salesforce integration automates routing based on account ownership, eliminating manual distribution. SLA policies, tags, and real-time dashboards gave managers complete visibility. CSMs finally have time to focus on customers instead of chasing processes. As a result, they are able to save 50% faster first-response times.

Zendesk worked for ticketing, but it never fit how a Customer Success team operates. We needed a system built for relationships, not requests.”

— Wes Gibson, Revenue Operations Manager, Bynder

If Zendesk feels overwhelming or you’re tired of paying extra for basic things like AI, better support, or more agents, you can consider taking a look at Hiver. To see how it feels in your own environment, you can start a free trial and evaluate it with your existing team and processes.

Check out Hiver for free!

Frequently Asked Questions