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: October 2024).

SCSM vs. Zendesk

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Helped 814,649 peers since 2012

Categories and Ranking

SCSM

Ranking in Help Desk Software

15th

Ranking in IT Service Management (ITSM)

13th

Average Rating

7.0

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

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

Nov 24, 2022

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

Oct 17, 2023

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

"For our cloud-based deployment of SCSM, the Autopilot is the best feature."

"The call logging is the solution's most valuable feature. It's very easy to use."

"We've been in contact with Microsoft technical support mainly. After doing the research ourselves and troubleshooting, etc., if we can't find a permanent solution, we contact Microsoft to help us fix the issue. Sometimes the issue never gets fixed even by Microsoft. It can sometimes require us to reinstall the solution. However, these are very rare instances."

"The reporting is very good."

"The most valuable feature is the reporting of incidents."

"This solution is easy to use."

"SCSM is easy to learn because all of the material, including training videos, can be found online."

"The support from Microsoft is good and we also have local support on the ground in Nigeria."

More SCSM pros

"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."

"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."

"We rarely had issues with Zendesk."

"The initial setup is simple and straightforward."

"One of the most valuable features is that Zendesk gives you a lot of configurability, and a lot of leeway in terms of customizing the look and theme. Zendesk offers you the facility to design your own landing page, as well as the look and feel of the entire knowledge base. At the same time, they offer themes that you can simply purchase and implement. Either way, it can really be turned into the right look and feel of the knowledge base required by our company, which is very important—if you have a bland-looking page, most of the time, people will lose interest. Zendesk also allows you to test the customizations before you publish it. It gives you a sandbox location where you can test everything new that you're trying to create and publish, which is very interesting."

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

"I love how the tickets would auto-populate very quickly in Zendesk, especially when a call comes in."

"The feature to move over my customer experience team tickets for different specialists is very valuable for my team."

More Zendesk pros

Cons

"My company had planned a few months ago to apply SCSM over the cloud in order to provide updates, like regular updates, but it had to be put through a few tools from Microsoft on the cloud, which was not easy."

"I have found SCSM not adequate enough to carry out some functions."

"We have had some issues with the SCSM on-premise deployment version in the imaging aspects."

"Better integration with other services in Azure is needed because everything is moving from on-premises to the cloud, and as an integrator, we have to help our clients with the migration."

"It's not too hard to compile stuff but it is hard to manage the solution. Even the design itself makes it difficult for management."

"The patch management aspect of the solution should be improved. It's quite complicated and not user-friendly. If your systems are not patched properly, you are unable to pull reports."

"Once we had an issue with a desktop download that would not open."

"It crashes our client's computers. Sometimes they get blue screens. It would be useful if SCSM could check the upgrades or patches before we implemented them to see if they are going to crash a client's system. Or, if it does install, and the client's system crashes, it would be good if the solution could revert back somehow."

More SCSM cons

"They have something called Zendesk Explore, which isn't as good as what they had in place previously."

"As per me, there arent much significant issues or areas for improvement with Zendesk, as my usage of it is limited. I appreciate its ability to organize tickets effectively based on tags, allowing me to easily gather and analyze customer feedback and requests."

"It wasn't easy to set up so we're only using a third of all of the features,"

"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."

"The dashboard could be better."

"The price of the solution should be reduced."

"The data you get when logged in to Zendesk Support differs from the data you get when you programmatically query Zendesk Support through its API because of a sync time delay."

"It needs to improve in terms of its flexibility, price, and installation."

More Zendesk cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It comes free with the enterprise agreement that we have, but the expense really is in having to buy another product to sit on top of it to make it work properly. You wind up having to buy additional support and additional product with their own support and maintenance costs on top of that."

"It is an expensive solution."

"The price of the solution could be better. My organization has an enterprise annual license with Microsoft which provides us support."

"It is a lower price vs. other things on the market."

"The price should be lower."

"The license for SCSM is cheap."

"The pricing is reasonable."

"I would rate the pricing as two out of five."

More SCSM pricing and cost advice

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"The price is very competitive."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Government

28%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Computer Software Company

10%

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 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?

The platform is competitively priced.

What needs improvement with SCSM?

One customer uses another management tool, SiteScope, alongside SCSM. They might be looking for additional functionalities that SCSM could integrate. Thus, the product could include more features s...

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?

From what I hear, Zendesk's pricing is a little expensive. One of the reasons for shifting from Zendesk to Talkdesk was cost efficiency.

What needs improvement with Zendesk Support?

Sometimes, the calls do not record, and your conversation is cut midway. When you want to do a call calibration, you realize that the call is incomplete. Zendesk's stability on inbound calls could ...

ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus vs SCSM

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Product Reports

SCSM

Download SCSM product report

Download Zendesk product report

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

SCSM vs. Zendesk