NICE CXone vs Zendesk comparison

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NICE CXone

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 5, 2025

NICE CXone and Zendesk are competing products in the customer experience and support management space. Zendesk has the upper hand with its robust feature set, including extensive third-party integrations, while NICE CXone is noted for competitive pricing and customer support.

Features: NICE CXone provides powerful analytics, real-time reporting, and a comprehensive set of contact center utilities. Users highlight its omnichannel experience and flexibility in customizing system functions. Zendesk offers multi-channel support, extensive third-party integrations, and an intuitive design. Its ticket management and integration options like JIRA provide a broader suite of tools for customer interactions.

Room for Improvement: NICE CXone could enhance its user interface and expand integration capabilities with more enterprise tools. Users also suggest improvements in mobile app functionality and reporting customizations. For Zendesk, users wish for more streamlined customization processes, improved speed in their mobile app, and simplified security configurations.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: NICE CXone is straightforward to deploy with supportive onboarding processes, making integration smoother. Its customer service is highly responsive, noted for faster support response times. Zendesk provides a seamless setup experience, though it may require more customization time due to its versatile platform. Their customer service is also responsive, ensuring high-quality support.

Pricing and ROI: NICE CXone is known for cost-effectiveness and quick ROI, offering competitive prices and a robust value proposition. Zendesk's pricing is perceived as higher; however, it justifies the cost with comprehensive functionality and extensive capabilities, resulting in long-term value.

To learn more, read our detailed NICE CXone vs. Zendesk Report (Updated: January 2025).

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NICE CXone vs. Zendesk

January 2025

Helped 831,265 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

NICE CXone

Ranking in Knowledge Management Software

6th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

8.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Workforce Engagement Management (4th), IVR Systems (2nd), Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) (6th)

Zendesk

Ranking in Knowledge Management Software

2nd

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

CRM Customer Engagement Centers (5th), CRM (21st), Help Desk Software (10th), IT Service Management (ITSM) (8th), Sales Force Automation (7th), Reporting (13th), Community Platforms (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Knowledge Management Software category, the mindshare of NICE CXone is 4.9%, up from 3.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zendesk is 18.5%, down from 19.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Knowledge Management Software

Featured Reviews

James Arvidson

Managing Partner at CX Partners Inc

A software that enables centers to operate more efficiently, increase the quality of every customer interaction, create new pathways to profit, and ensure ongoing customer-centric business improvemen

One of the best aspects of CXone is its omnichannel experience. It treats all contacts, whether phone, chat, email, or SMS, through the same system, allowing for consistent reporting and a true omnichannel experience. The platform is very flexible. You can customize it to do almost anything as long as it's based on logic, which has been incredibly valuable. In terms of analytics, CXone offers consistent, accessible data across all channels. In the past, different systems like Avaya for phones or separate platforms for chat and email made it hard to compare performance across channels. With CXone, you get the same data points across all interactions, making decision-making much easier. It also allows for deeper reporting, like IVR reporting, where you can see what options people choose and create custom KPIs for better insight.

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Ahmed Nassar

Technical Consultant at Spectrum Group

Stable tool, making it reliable for handling tasks but difficult initial setup

It has a huge problem regarding the price. The price increases every year. Every year, they raise the price of the licenses, which makes a lot of limitations, and you have to pay more. So that's some conditions. Actually, most of the companies that use Zendesk need a customer experience or customer care department. However, Zendesk only works with chatbox or emailing services, but it can also use Genesys, VoIP, or voice sensors. Additionally, Zendesk needs the administration panels to be easier because it's a very complex panel. You need to search for a lot of things to do, like a small job. So you have to do a lot of setup regarding the integration, and it's a little bit challenging to integrate any software in the vendor.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"It has the ability to edit the HTML, as well as the WYSIWYG."

"Customer support is terrific. The team is personable, informed, and responsive."

"We are able to see the calls in queue and able to see if someone is available or not."

"inContact has helped our organization greatly by allowing us to see at a glance which agents are available to receive calls and those who are not, we are able to see why not."

"It's easier as a supervisor to do your job more efficiently. You can have multiple things open at once to watch everything, being able to take one look at a page and see everything you need rather then having to flip through multiple programs. This is such a time saver. I get a lot more done in my day due to being able to keep my opened programs down to a minimum."

"It is easy to look up and playback calls with this system as it categorizes the different types of calls that come through my call center. I like that inContact is always updating and continues to improve. The quality of its recorded calls is among the best that I have had experience with."

"I have found the ease of use of the ACD to be most valuable along with the inView dashboard."

"Being able to listen in on a call, which is exceptionally good with training."

"The most valuable feature is the trackability of incoming requests. The system keeps a comprehensive history of work requests, making it a useful tool for our internal processes."

"Its agility and simplicity are the most valuable features. This tool is very user-friendly."

"It has good management, the ability to sign tickets based on content, the multi-channel support, the self service portal, the integration with Salesforce, the setup process, and the product features as we are currently using them."

"It's a very stable tool, very powerful."

"What is cool about Zendesk Guide is how it works together with others Zendesk products. Especially with support and with the analytics. Put those together for a small or medium-sized company and it's a really powerful tool."

"The initial setup is simple and straightforward."

"Zendesk Support has a lot of good APIs."

"It is very easy to connect back and forth between the requester and the person fulfilling the ticket."

More Zendesk pros

Cons

"It is a hassle, if you are busy and caught up with something, that it will log you out."

"If you have hundreds of books, the initial download is slow."

"I would like to see inView be a built-in feature of CXone rather than a separate platform, but everything else is terrific."

"There are times when the data does not load and you have to keep hitting refresh. More colors and different layouts should be included in the next release."

"One of the biggest missing pieces is a link checker."

"inContact should offer a way to send faxes."

"MindTouch would greatly benefit by providing a GitHub pull request functionality to foster draft mode and open contribution writing."

"I have noticed that occasionally the dashboard will freeze and some things may get stuck for a while. For example, if I have a dashboard open that shows how many calls are in queue and how many are currently being handled by agents, sometimes a call that an agent is handling will get stuck on the dashboard after the agent ends the call and the dashboard will show that the call is still a live call. Our tech team has explained this to us as a ghost call. After some time (or maybe many screen refreshes) the call will go away like it has just ended."

More NICE CXone cons

"The price of the solution should be reduced."

"The solution could integrate better with QR codes from some websites such as Facebook."

"Zendesk Guide's customization could be improved. I would like it to be easier and maybe open-sourced, so that if you have a developer in your company, you can do it yourself. Right now, that isn't allowed, so you need to have it done via the integrator. Another improvement—this is nit-picking—is that it could be less easy to make changes. Some things are so easy that they sometimes look a little amateur-ish. Most of the templates are built-in so they can be used directly, so they are very simple."

"One of the drawbacks of Zendesk is that it doesn't provide a secure way for us to send data. So, we usually use a secure SharePoint folder link. We put that in the Zendesk ticket so that the requester has a secure way of getting to their data."

"The solution itself wasn't easy to set up."

"There is always a network issue with Zendesk. But we don’t know whether it is managed. The network issue is that when I call, it does not let us."

"Zendesk Guide could be improved by allowing us to put our assets in one location. What happens now for each article, for example, is we have to upload the images for that article to that location, so the image reuse is still not something that they have perfected. If they could allow us to update all the images in one location, and then pull the image from there, it would be easier when working on Multibrand projects. There are no Multibrand updates available—we have to update each brand manually. For my company, I have come up with an API tool which allows me to push the content to multiple brands together, but if you don't have something like that, you have to manually do it."

"You couldn't give administrative access to new hires."

More Zendesk cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We had a custom setup that cost us some money."

"There are different plans that are offered. We are using the entry-level plan. The overall price of the solution should be reduced. The price is too high."

"The price is very competitive."

"You have to pay extra for better support. So it's not only the license that you pay for, but you have to pay extra for the support as well."

"Zendesk's licensing is not cheap. For Enterprise, we are paying $200 per agent. It's a per-month cost, so it's pretty steep. There are some services you need to pay extra for. For example, with Zendesk Guide, we had to buy the most expensive offering in order to get Multibrand and everything. We also had to pay a lot of money for themes."

"From what I hear, Zendesk's pricing is a little expensive."

"We pay for the solution on a yearly basis and my understanding is that the cost is about $30,000. That's the cost for 24 to 25 agents."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

14%

Healthcare Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

22%

Educational Organization

11%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with NICE CXone?

One area where CXone could improve is in creating a more streamlined, user-friendly interface. While the interfaces are good, they can get a bit dated over time, though NICE is usually good about u...

What is your primary use case for NICE CXone?

I chose NICE CXone because it had the best return on investment and could scale effectively. After setting it up, I was so impressed that I went to work for NICE for three years, implementing their...

What advice do you have for others considering NICE CXone?

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

What do you like most about Zendesk Support?

I found the user experience with vendors on Zendesk to be straightforward, especially when it comes to understanding and searching for specific tickets. The search and navigation tools are easy to ...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zendesk Support?

I am not currently aware of the exact pricing, but since we are still using Zendesk, it appears to be at a reasonable price point.

What needs improvement with Zendesk Support?

Report generation is still slightly tricky and not very customizable as per my inquiries. It would be advantageous to have an AI layer that can analyze incoming requests and generate summaries, as ...

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Product Reports

Download NICE CXone product report

NICE CXone

January 2025

Download Zendesk product report

December 2024

Also Known As

NICE inContact, NICE CXone Workforce Optimization Pro, NICE CXOne WFO Pro, CXone Workforce Optimization, inContact Workforce Optimization, CallCopy cc: Discover, cc: Discover, VPI Empower, Brand Embassy

Zendesk Support, Zendesk Guide, Zendesk Sell

Learn More

NICE

Overview

NICE CXone (formerly NICE inContact) is an industry-leading cloud platform designed to optimize customer and employee experiences. The solution provides a comprehensive suite of capabilities including omnichannel routing, artificial intelligence, advanced analytics, workforce engagement, and robust integration. CXone helps connect systems, uncover insights, and empower teams to provide seamless, efficient, and personalized customer journeys. The regular enhancements emphasize driving innovation in CX technology while enabling flexibility and scalability.

The Summer 2023 Release of CXone introduced several key features and improvements designed to drive greater flexibility, insights, and operational efficiency for enterprises. Key new features include:

Integration Hub - Enables seamless integration with third-party apps to eliminate data silos.
Enhanced Supervisor Workspace - Provides real-time visibility and guidance across all interaction channels to improve coaching.
Application Analytics - Offers insights into agent performance and interactions to identify optimization opportunities.
Multi-Cloud Support - Allows deployment with Microsoft Azure, expanding environment options.

Other updates focus on analytics, virtual agent integration, multi-language support, streamlined workflows, and API expansion to improve experiences and accessibility.

CXone is valuable for IT leaders seeking robust, adaptable solutions to optimize complex CX operations, and business executives aiming to enhance efficiency, experiences and decision making through actionable data.

Zendesk Support is intuitive, and it's built with support agents in mind. Everything they need lives in a single, dynamic help desk interface so it's easy to be productive and manage customer interactions.

Sample Customers

MoneyGram, Honeywell, Radisson Hotel Group, AAA, New Balance, MattressFIRM, Teleflora, Best Buy

Mailchimp, Tesco, Vimeo, Instacart, Mediaocean, Slack, Uber