Drift vs. Zendesk Answer Bot: Which One Does My Site Need?

I was recently certified in Drift Conversational Marketing and found that a lot of customers had questions about Drift vs. Zendesk - two of the most popular support software options on the market today. Namely, what Drift and Zendesk are, whether you can use both at once, and the main differences between them. So, to answer these questions and make it easier on anyone researching the topic, I decided to create a quick cheat sheet — or blog post — about this very topic.  

What is Drift?

Drift is a conversational marketing chatbot that meets potential customers where they are at in the buying journey. According to a recent Forrester study, the modern customer has completed 68% of their research independently online, before ever talking to someone on your sales team. They expect to be able to engage and buy on their terms and timeline. Furthermore, they want a buying experience that caters to their needs. Drift’s chatbot technology functionally puts customers first by conducting human conversations to align website visitors with what they need and route them quickly to the right person on your team.  

So how does it work? First and foremost, Drift is a chatbot that lives on your website. It’s a conversational tool that is designed to match your website visitors with relevant content, identify intent, and convert conversations into sales. Each conversation begins with a play that focuses on what page they are visiting, who they are, where did they come from, and why they are visiting your website.  

For example, if somebody visits your product comparison page, your bot can initiate a conversation by engaging them with a strong opener, understanding why they are visiting this page, and then recommending a next step. The recommendation may be something simple, like downloading a useful e-book (your chatbot can automate then send of content). The information collected can then be used to nurture this potential customer further. Perhaps they are ready to talk to someone in sales? Your bot can schedule meetings for your salespeople. 

One of the most appealing features of Drift is its ability to work after hours — it is, after all, a bot and not a real person. A lot of other bots will only operate during business hours. Outside of those hours it will disappear from the website. But Drift works 24/7 and can schedule meetings while you sleep. It’s also great at having conversations with people thanks to its ability to capture the human element and artificial intelligence that helps it learn from experience. This makes it easy to set up plays, provide information and resources based on where the customer is on the website, and easily book meetings. You can meet customers halfway, no matter where they are in their buying journey, while also eliminating barriers to help potential customers make a purchase.  

Can Our Customer Support Team Utilize Drift?

Not all visitors to your website are there to buy. Often, your current clients are stopping by to looks for support. Drift bots have many helpful skills that help automate support processes.  

If you already use Zendesk, Help Scout, HelpDocs, etc. for your Customer Support platform, Drift can integrate directly to scan your help articles for useful answers to their questions. When self-service is insufficient, Drift bots can create tickets and connect site visitors to an agent. 

What is Zendesk?

So, what is Zendesk Answer Bot, and how does it differ from Drift? As previously stated, Zendesk can integrate with Drift. This is not a “Sophie’s Choice” situation where you must choose between one or the other.  

To begin, I’ll provide a quick overview of the platform. Zendesk is an omnichannel customer experience platform that provides a centralized hub for support activities from every place your customers contact you at (email, webforms, phone, web chat, social, ect). 

As you can see, there are three main sections. On the left, you have customer information. Depending on how your system is designed, you may have different fields, but this is generally how it will appear. You’ll see an overview (in this case it’s a General issue) and additional details, like the order number (#1002). In the middle section, we will see the ticket. Here, the customer is looking for the status of her order, which is relatively straightforward. But the inquiries can range from simple solutions — like pulling tracking and fulfillment information from e-commerce platforms like Shopify or Magento — to answering complex questions about specific products or software. Finally, on the right-hand side, you’ll find the various integrated apps, like Shopify in this example. However, it doesn’t just have to be an e-commerce platform or app. CRMs, onboarding processes, or time tracking, can also integrate. 

Zendesk Answer Bot is an AI powered support bot that works as a personal assistant to your support teams. It assists website or help center visitors by finding answers to their questions in your Guide articles before they are ever connected to an agent. Answer Bot is also multilingual and works across channels to help your customers self-service.  

Ticketing

Phone calls, chat, email, a contact form, or social media inquiries all create Zendesk tickets. Pretty helpful if, say, you run an e-commerce site that markets and sells on all major social media platforms. These types of sites usually have thousands of inquiries each day from various purchasing platforms. Zendesk is a great way to manage them. 

Answer Bot can function by providing self-service on your website. It responds to customers immediately and leverages your Guide knowledge base to curate answers to your customers questions. Plus, it’s powered by AI so it learns from its mistakes and makes better suggestions over time. If it is unable to assist, then it quickly creates a ticket and connects to a live chat for an agent to assist. 

Your agents will love Answer Bot because it frees up their time by deflecting easy-to-answer questions and it’s extremely easy to implement with 73% of early adopters agreeing that Answer Bot was easy to startup.  

The main differences between Drift and Zendesk

The most important difference between Drift vs. Zendesk Answer Bot is the fact that Drift is designed for sales conversations and marketing conversions, while Answer Bot is designed for assisting your current customers with self-service. 

Drift captures the human element of conversation with Artificial Intelligence and playbooks that you write. Answer Bot does not work through plays, which means it is quick to implement, but it is most helpful when it has a robust knowledge base to search through.

Drift has a longer onboarding period and requires a sound marketing strategy to implement.  

Help! Which bot do I need?

If your priority in adding a chatbot is to convert more websites visits into buying conversations, Drift is a no-brainer. It can do what Zendesk Answer Bot does, but with all the tools to create an awesome buying experience from your website.  

If you are interested in beefing up your Zendesk Guide with a bot that can quickly return relevant results from your knowledge base, Zendesk Answer Bot is a proven way to help customers self-service quickly. 

—

Customer support is a must have, no matter the industry. But figuring out which software is the right one for you can be tricky. Luckily, we’re experts in the field, and you can feel free to email us at info@brainsell.net for a free consultation, to speak with an expert, or to get a demo of either of these pieces of software. 

Want to see Zendesk in action? Watch our webinar Transforming Customer Experience with Zendesk for a more in-depth look into how Zendesk works.

Source: https://www.brainsell.net/blog/2020/01/drift-vs-zendesk-answer-bot/

2023 Buyers Guide

Get Listed

Cloud Contact Center Solutions

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1.)

Premium Listing Call Center Studio Call Center Studio Call Center Studio is the world’s first call center built on Google and is one of the most secure and stable systems with some of the industry’s best reporting. It is one of the most full-featured enterprise grade systems (with the most calling features, one of the best call distribution, outbound dialing features and integrations—including IVR, AI Speech Recognition, blended inbound/outbound calling and includes Google’s new Dialogflow and Speech API. Call Center Studio is the absolute easiest to use (with a 10 minute setup), and is the price performance leader with lower equipment cost and less setup time.

2.)

Premium Listing iNextrix Technologies iCallify iCallify: intelligent call center software is one of the most popular products offered by iNextrix. iCallify is developed using cutting edge technologies as well as the predictive sphere of artificial intelligence. This call center software has some intelligent features along with the standard features available in other call center solutions. Thus, it is truly an intelligent call center software solution. This intelligent call center software is built to benefit all businesses, no matter what industry vertical they belong to. This call center software has features to empower different campaigns in different call centers and businesses.

3.)

Accordia Solution Accordia Solution CIS Accordia Solution is an innovative developer of seamlessly integrated cost-effective omnichannel Contact Center Solutions specifically targeted at the micro, small and medium operations.Our core business model involves the development and marketing of IP Telephony and IP Contact Center Solutions. We also strive to develop customer interaction solutions which include contact center and customer relationship management (CRM) that enhances Customer Experience Of The Future (CEOTF) and optimizes agent productivity. Our flagship product, the Accordia Customer Interaction Suites (CIS), offers comprehensive functionality by helping your business meet and exceed the level of service in line with... (read more)Accordia Solution is an innovative developer of seamlessly integrated cost-effective omnichannel Contact Center Solutions specifically targeted at the micro, small and medium operations.Our core business model involves the development and marketing of IP Telephony and IP Contact Center Solutions. We also strive to develop customer interaction solutions which include contact center and customer relationship management (CRM) that enhances Customer Experience Of The Future (CEOTF) and optimizes agent productivity. Our flagship product, the Accordia Customer Interaction Suites (CIS), offers comprehensive functionality by helping your business meet and exceed the level of service in line with the expectations of your customers while driving your employees' productivity and controlling your operational costs. Are you ready to provide exceptional customer experience?

4.)

Aculab Aculab Cloud CPaaS ACULAB Technologies is communication enabling company assisting our customers in all verticals with business and mission critical solutions to communicate securely and efficiently internally and for their customers and partners. We have a robust CPaaS (Communication Provider as a Service) supporting all methods of communications; sms, voice, data, etc. promoting fraud mitigation, improvement of identity and customer experience. We have a best of breed Voice & Face Recognition Biometrics Identity Solution and AMD- Answering Machine Detection. Key sectors are Contact Centre, IVR, Voice Broadcast, Conferencing, Healthcare, Finance, Insurance, Emergency Services and Defense/Government. www.aculab.com.

5.)	Adversus Dialer Adverus Dialer Adversus is a web-based dialer and practical CRM solution for telemarketing, fundraising, and appointment scheduling businesses.

6.)

Alcor Consulting, Inc. HoduCC/VoipCor Omnichannel contact center platform which can be deployed on-premise, private cloud or public cloud subscription. Our contact center provides all of the modern features expected in a full contact center solution. Includes voice, SMS, chat, email, and social media integration. Built-in integrations for all major CRM's (Plus a built-in CRM). Survey module and QA module are also available.

7.)

Allstream Contact Center Contact Center is a powerful tool that you can add to your unified communications (UC) solution to ensure you've always got the right resources available to both customers and employees, no matter the communication channel they're using — voice, email, web, chat or social. Contact Center’s enhanced call routing and workforce management tools can help increase employee productivity. And with the advanced reporting and forecasting tools, you’ll be able to properly staff your contact center and enhance your customer experience. It has everything you need to deliver superior customer and employee experience.

8.)

Alvaria Alvaria Cloud Alvaria Cloud is the only enterprise cloud contact center solution that allows you to adopt best-of-breed Customer Experience (CX) and Workforce Engagement Management (WEM) applications modularly. Start with one or more applications and then add applications with ease when ready for additional capabilities, as your needs change. With the Alvaria Cloud Platform, you have the advantage of knowing that all provisioning, security, user management and other administrative tasks are already configured and in place.

9.)

Alvaria Noble Contact Center Noble offers a modern communications platform for optimizing all customer interaction. Put Noble’s unified platform to work for you — building performance and productivity, improving the quality and effectiveness of customer contacts, and reducing costs. With the critical software technologies that contact centres need most, our solutions provide seamless integration to existing corporate environments, reduce your learning curve and protect your technology investments.

10.)

Amtelco Genesis Intelligent Series Genesis is the latest advancement in Amtelco’s long line of call center solutions. This call center technology is entirely software-based and virtualized, with cloud-based capability. Genesis provides skills-based automatic call distribution (ACD), built-in speech recognition, text-to-speech (TTS), and voice services to improve call routing and management.

11.)

Arise Virtual Solutions The Arise Platform Arise is a pioneer of on-demand customer management business process outsourcing solutions, headquartered in Florida. Through the cloud-based Arise Platform, Fortune 50 and other companies connect to Service Partners who deliver authentic, loyalty-building interactions with their customers. Delivering radical flexibility to meet even extreme contact volume fluctuations, the award-winning Arise Platform is an innovative alternative to the traditional contact center.

12.)

Astute Solutions Astute Agent Astute Agent gives your agents everything they need to work cases confidently and efficiently. This modern case management CRM is the preferred choice for Consumer Relations and Customer Care teams who support some of the world’s most prestigious brands. Astute Agent balances agent efficiency with customer experience. Here’s how: - Automated email responses Using natural language processing, Astute Agent reads incoming customer emails and automatically supplies a response to agents to review and send. - Auto-populated case fields AI capabilities automatically suggest reason codes, product codes, and other case information, saving agents minutes per case. - Time-saving case feat... (read more)Astute Agent gives your agents everything they need to work cases confidently and efficiently. This modern case management CRM is the preferred choice for Consumer Relations and Customer Care teams who support some of the world’s most prestigious brands. Astute Agent balances agent efficiency with customer experience. Here’s how: - Automated email responses Using natural language processing, Astute Agent reads incoming customer emails and automatically supplies a response to agents to review and send. - Auto-populated case fields AI capabilities automatically suggest reason codes, product codes, and other case information, saving agents minutes per case. - Time-saving case features Integrating all contact channels into one CRM interface, combined with time-saving features like field auto-complete, ensures agents can work cases quickly and effectively. - Customer profile and history Show agents relevant customer information, like location, loyalty status, and interaction history, right on the CRM case screen. - Next best actions With suggested next actions like case codes, responses, and enclosures, even your newest agents can work cases with confidence. - Built-in knowledge Astute’s integrated knowledge engine lets agents quickly find answers to any question – without having to leave the case workflow.

13.)

Britannic Technologies INBOX INBOX allows any digital interaction to be blended into single or multiple queues with zero service interruption with implementation. Organising them by business context with smart tagging and search filters, the events can be automatically prioritised and categorised. Automating the route to the correct agent or business orchestration rule. It also connects with all your social media channels, enabling you to respond and route accordingly in real-time. Customer sentiment is also indicated. Use it to measure trends across your business or by a single event so that your agents can easily prioritise responses.

14.)

Brook Trout Solutions CCaaS, SIP Trunking, SD WAN, Interconnectivity Brook Trout Solutions provides Technology Guide services to help Contact Centers find the best possible solution for their business. We represent the leaders for CCaaS, CPaaS, SD-WAN, SASE, SIP. We identify the best fit for our customers and help them manage the lifecycle of the customer engagement. We also have an excellent solution for mobile marketing and can raise call acceptance by more than 50% with a Next Generation caller ID for mobile phones. We solve problems and give our customers time back to run their business. Give us a call we have world class expertise and resources that can help you build an exceptional customer experience.

15.)

Call Tracking Metrics CallTrackingMetrics is the only contact center solution with marketing attribution software built in. Our powerful UCaaS platform lets you know upfront who is calling in, what campaigns they were referencing, and their previous history with your company. Partnering this data with tools to automate and streamline your team’s workflow frees you up to focus on truly delighting your customers. Conditionally direct calls, texts, chats and forms based on: • Actions the customer has taken on your website • Whether they’ve previously contacted your business • Which agent they last interacted with • Custom criteria unique to your business needs • The location nearest to your customer Say... (read more)CallTrackingMetrics is the only contact center solution with marketing attribution software built in. Our powerful UCaaS platform lets you know upfront who is calling in, what campaigns they were referencing, and their previous history with your company. Partnering this data with tools to automate and streamline your team’s workflow frees you up to focus on truly delighting your customers. Conditionally direct calls, texts, chats and forms based on: • Actions the customer has taken on your website • Whether they’ve previously contacted your business • Which agent they last interacted with • Custom criteria unique to your business needs • The location nearest to your customer Say goodbye to internal IT concerns, hardware costs, and service downtime with our cloud-based softphone. Everything your team needs to succeed and scale is on their computer or smartphone. Our UCaaS platform grows with you, with flexible month-to-month agreements and no price-per-head or user costs. You can manage remote staff, access virtual voicemail, and forward calls to any device around the world.

16.)

CallShaper CallShaper Welcome to CallShaper – Harnessing the Power of the Cloud for Greater Sales Efficiency For sales-based call centers, where margins are so tight, it’s all about closing. Thanks to CallShaper, inbound or outbound call center directors can have a dynamic, highly flexible platform that enables sales agents to focus on making the sale. Thanks to CallShaper’s flexibility, call center directors who are managing multiple vendors from multiple locations can have everything they need on one platform that offers 99.999% reliability. And when it comes to reporting, CallShaper has no equal in providing real-time transparency. With CallShaper, clients quickly find that they are better able to manage efficiencies at the sales rep level – and make more money!

17.)

Cloud Call Center Search From AI - WFO and everything in between! Cloud Call Center Search has spent hundreds of hours evaluating and vetting leading cloud software applications (Omni-Channel, Artificial Intelligence, Business Intelligence, Workforce Management and many others) and their actual use in the trenches with real-world clients. As a result, we understand the strengths and weaknesses of cloud-based call center software solutions. At NO charge, Cloud Call Center Search will match your organization with the cloud software providers that are the best fit to drive positive ROI in your customer experience, sales, and back-office operations.

18.)

Cloud IT Services GmbH Dialfire Dialfire offers you a complete call center solution that is simple and intuitive to use and adapts to your needs. It's completely cloud-based, saving you the hassle of setting up a phone system and installing software. In addition to predictive dialing and call blending of inbound calls, you can create personalized campaigns through an intuitive and easy-to-use interface. Features include automated workflows and full control over the agent screen. You can see the full list of features here:

19.)

Connex One Cloud contact centre technology with built in gamification tools, workforce optimiser, omni-channel, speech analytics, artificial intelligence, quality assurance, PCI-DSS payment platform, form builder and much more features. All seamlessly integrating with almost 100% of your inhouse applications & CRM systems - creating one powerful workflow platform. Increasing productivity, customer engagement, saving you cost. Available in opex model - pay per license per month. No binding contracts with NO cost for 24/7/365 support and full training with built in SLA.

20.)

Consilium Software Consilium AWS and Amazon Connect Offering Imagine a cloud-based contact center that can make customer engagement easy, deliver answers, assistance, and resolutions in a very personal manner, and in the context of your customers’ actions. Amazon Connect is a self-service, cloud-based contact center that provides a seamless omnichannel experience through a single unified platform for voice and chat. Contact center agents and managers don’t have to learn multiple tools, because Amazon Connect has the same contact routing, queuing, analytics, and management tools in a single UI across voice, chat, and mobile interface. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform, offering over 175 fully... (read more)Imagine a cloud-based contact center that can make customer engagement easy, deliver answers, assistance, and resolutions in a very personal manner, and in the context of your customers’ actions. Amazon Connect is a self-service, cloud-based contact center that provides a seamless omnichannel experience through a single unified platform for voice and chat. Contact center agents and managers don’t have to learn multiple tools, because Amazon Connect has the same contact routing, queuing, analytics, and management tools in a single UI across voice, chat, and mobile interface. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform, offering over 175 fully-featured services from data centers globally. Millions of customers including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies are using AWS to lower costs, become more agile, and innovate faster. As a member of the AWS Partner Network (APN), Consilium is focused on technical proficiencies and customer success in rapidly building and launching Amazon Connect based contact center solutions. With over 33 years of experience in the contact center industry, workforce management, Artificial Intelligence AI, and CRM platforms, Consilium is uniquely positioned to help clients blend the newest technologies and cloud adoption, which is the natural path at this stage of the COVID-19 crisis. We have helped some of the world’s leading enterprises migrate their contact centers to Amazon Connect and the AWS platform. Our consultants have experience in architecting and building large-scale solutions that are well-integrated into customer processes and high on user experience. Amazon Connect delivered by Consilium is an open platform that can easily integrate with multiple CRM's, workforce optimization (WFO), or workforce management (WFM) tools to provide conversation history and real-time context to agents so customers don’t have to repeat themselves, improving customer experience (CX) and reducing resolution time. Amazon Connect also leverages AI to transcribe calls and show caller sentiment in real-time to better understand trends and improve customer service. It’s all about delivering a stellar customer experience that imprints your company’s image on your customers’ minds, much like the rave reviews won by Amazon’s own customer service, which also runs on Amazon Connect globally. Benefits at a glance • Personalizing the customer experience Amazon Connect is AI-enabled by default, to automate interactions and provide real-time context to the agent, making customer and agent interactions more effective as the most relevant customer interaction history is presented to the agent. • Easy to Use Amazon Connect is so simple to set up and use, with only a few clicks, organizations can set up an omnichannel contact center and agents can begin talking and messaging with customers • Pay as you go As an on-demand service, you pay for Amazon Connect usage by the minute with no long-term commitments. • Omnichannel Experience Amazon Connect provides a seamless omnichannel experience through a single unified contact center for voice and chat. • Seamless 3rd-Party Integrations Amazon Connect provides built-in integrations with 3rd party CRM’s, workforce optimization (WFO), or workforce management (WFM) tools. • Cost-effective Amazon Connect is helping companies save up to 80% over traditional contact center solutions. With Amazon Connect there are no minimum monthly fees, long-term commitments, upfront license charges, and pricing is not based on peak capacity, agent seats, or maintenance. • Reliable Amazon Connect runs on Amazon Web Services proven infrastructure operating 42 Availability Zones within 16 geographic regions around the world.

 

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