SCSM vs Zendesk comparison

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SCSM

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 3, 2024

SCSM and Zendesk compete in the IT service management category. Zendesk often has the upper hand due to its focus on user-friendliness and multi-channel customer engagement capabilities.

Features: SCSM stands out with its integration with Microsoft products, advanced configuration management, and robust support for ITIL processes like incident and change management. Zendesk excels in ticket management, provides a highly customizable agent workflow, and offers extensive integration with SaaS applications and tools.

Room for Improvement: SCSM needs improvements in user-friendliness, reporting customization, and non-Microsoft product integration. Zendesk can improve its email handling, customization for reports, and make multi-brand management more intuitive.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SCSM requires intensive on-premises deployment but has good cloud integration options with Microsoft. Zendesk, with its cloud deployment, offers quick setup and scalability, with generally responsive support that may need enhancement in complex technical issues.

Pricing and ROI: SCSM offers competitive pricing within Microsoft's licensing agreements; however, ROI is best for those heavily invested in Microsoft's ecosystem. Zendesk's pricing involves per-agent fees, which can be costly, but delivers a strong ROI by enhancing customer satisfaction and efficiency.

To learn more, read our detailed SCSM vs. Zendesk Report (Updated: November 2024).

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SCSM vs. Zendesk

November 2024

Helped 816,406 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:

Customer Service

Sentiment score

6.7

SCSM support experiences vary with enterprise size, issue severity, and costs, leading many to seek alternative assistance.

No sentiment score available

Zendesk support is generally praised for responsiveness and efficiency, though some users prefer more personalized assistance over documentation.

Response times are slow, and engineers often lack the necessary product knowledge.

For more quotes and insights, download the SCSM report

UX Manager at a computer software company with 5,001-10,000 employees

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the Zendesk report

Room For Improvement

Sentiment score

4.9

Users seek enhancements in SCSM's interface, integration, stability, pricing, support, administration, and compliance for improved user experience.

Sentiment score

5.0

Zendesk struggles with performance, integration, customization, communication, mobile app delays, pricing, reporting, and training, affecting overall efficiency.

From an admin point of view, Intune has more features and is easier to manage compared to SCCM.

For more quotes and insights, download the SCSM report

UX Manager at a computer software company with 5,001-10,000 employees

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the Zendesk report

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score

7.3

SCSM offers scalable solutions for enterprises, integrating with SCOM, but may face resource limitations affecting performance.

Sentiment score

8.8

Zendesk is praised for scalability and customization but faces challenges with complex changes; some switch to alternatives like Salesforce.

From an admin point of view, Intune has more features and is easier to manage.

For more quotes and insights, download the SCSM report

UX Manager at a computer software company with 5,001-10,000 employees

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the Zendesk report

Setup Cost

Sentiment score

2.0

SCSM pricing is complex, with mixed user reviews, enterprise discounts, and potential extra costs for third-party integrations.

No sentiment score available

Enterprise buyers experience varying Zendesk pricing, from $70-$200 per agent, and should negotiate for features and value.

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the SCSM report

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the Zendesk report

Stability Issues

Sentiment score

8.7

Many users find SCSM stable, with improvements noted, despite some concerns about cloud transitions and reporting speed.

Sentiment score

6.2

Zendesk is largely reliable, though occasional hangs and misclassification issues highlight room for improvement in performance.

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the SCSM report

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the Zendesk report

Valuable Features

No sentiment score available

SCSM excels in integration, user-friendliness, ITIL support, incident management, reporting capabilities, and offers scalability and security enhancements.

Sentiment score

8.5

Zendesk offers comprehensive ticket management, integrations, analytics, and security, enhancing productivity and providing seamless, multi-channel support for businesses.

SCCM provides remote tool functionality, which is not in Intune.

For more quotes and insights, download the SCSM report

UX Manager at a computer software company with 5,001-10,000 employees

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the Zendesk report

Categories and Ranking

SCSM

Ranking in Help Desk Software

15th

Ranking in IT Service Management (ITSM)

13th

Average Rating

7.0

Reviews Sentiment

5.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Zendesk

Ranking in Help Desk Software

11th

Ranking in IT Service Management (ITSM)

9th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

CRM Customer Engagement Centers (5th), CRM (21st), Sales Force Automation (7th), Reporting (13th), Knowledge Management Software (2nd), Community Platforms (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Help Desk Software category, the mindshare of SCSM is 1.9%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zendesk is 4.2%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Help Desk Software

Featured Reviews

Hossam Hussein

Senior backend systems engineer at a mining and metals company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Helps us manage IT operations, including incident and service requests, but could be easier to create reports

The solution could be more simple. For example, it takes a lot of work to create reports. It runs on Microsoft SQL queries. Creating custom reports on ManageEngine takes less work from the administrator. Microsoft System Center Service Manager has a large infrastructure and a large number of servers. For production and creation, it needs about five servers. For comparison, ManageEngine just requires one server, and it includes everything out of the box. The setup process could be improved. In the next release, I would like to see a mobile application for users to open tickets. I would also like the ability to deploy the solution on the cloud.

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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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816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Government

24%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Computer Software Company

10%

Computer Software Company

22%

Educational Organization

10%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about SCSM?

The solution offers good productivity at a low price point.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SCSM?

We acquired SCSM for free with our Microsoft Endpoint Manager purchase, and we only paid for the integration process.

What needs improvement with SCSM?

The major issues with SCSM include its severe slowness, especially on the client side, and the lack of comprehensive reporting tools. It also lacks clear future development and improvement from Mic...

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 ...

ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus vs SCSM

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Compared 8% of the time

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Compared 5% of the time

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Product Reports

Download SCSM product report

SCSM

October 2024

Download Zendesk product report

October 2024

Also Known As

System Center Service Manager

Zendesk Support, Zendesk Guide, Zendesk Sell

Learn More

Microsoft

Overview

System Center Service Manager is a software product by Microsoft to allow organizations to manage incidents and problems. Microsoft states that the product is compliant with industry best practices such as the Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF) and in the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL). SCSM has integrated ITIL compliant fulfillment of service requests. Service requests are submitted by the end user in order to obtain information, access to a new application or the most common of all, password reset.

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

Fibabanka, UMC Health System

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