HubSpot Service Hub vs. Zendesk: Which One is Best?

The only way to meet those high expectations is by using a connected, efficient customer service software.

If you’re comparing your options, you may be wondering how HubSpot Service Hub stacks up against Zendesk. Let’s compare the two platforms below to determine which is best for your needs.

HubSpot Service Hub: New & Improved Features

The relaunched HubSpot Service Hub builds on the foundation of features that HubSpot users already know and love, like chat, ticket pipelines, and automation. It includes enhancements to make existing tools even stronger, as well as brand new features that take the software to the next level.

[NEW] Custom Views

Help agents stay focused by giving them flexibility to create views in the inbox that will help them efficiently get their work done.

With Custom Views, you can:

• Create views based on ticket and conversation properties
• Use ‘and/or’ operators to expand or refine your view criteria
• View, edit, and delete views

[NEW] Mobile Inbox

Conversations Inbox in the HubSpot iOS app is getting a big update! We've built the new experience from the ground up to help customers stay productive on the go.

Updates made:

• All new design and improved inbox actions
• Improved collaboration tools
• @ mentions, comments, and email forwarding
• Agent collision and active visitor indicator
• Forward emails from the inbox
• Efficiency tools: insert snippets and knowledge base articles in replies on mobile
• Expanded integration with the mobile CRM allowing users to associate contacts to conversations

[NEW] Inbound Calling

Currently in beta, Inbound Calling will enable customers to receive inbound calls inside HubSpot, supporting HubSpot’s help desk functionality.

What will be included?

• Admins will be able to purchase a phone number from the calling settings page.
• Admins will be able to assign the number to a user with a paid Service or Sales seat
• Service Hub seat users can receive inbound calls on their personal device, and place outbound calls in HubSpot
• Inbound calls received on a HubSpot-purchased number will be logged in HubSpot and can be leveraged across the CRM Platform for reporting, automation, conversation intelligence, and more.

[NEW] Conversation APIs

To support channel proliferation and to ensure Conversations can scale with our customers, we're introducing a suite of APIs to unlock a customer value in Conversations across a variety of use cases.

These APIs will allow you to:

• Integrate new channels in HubSpot
• Retrieve information about your customer communication, and post new messages from outside of HubSpot
• Run complex routing logic
• Develop third party bots and automation
• Make bulk changes on assignments during HubSpot migrations or team restructuring

[NEW] Channel Switching

Channel switching helps users using the conversations Inbox to switch channels from Live Chat or Facebook Messenger to Email on a single thread while preserving conversation history both for the agent and for the end customer.

What’s included?

• Seamless switch from Live Chat / Facebook Messenger to Email
• Customers get full chat or messenger history over email. When an agent switches from chat to email, the customer gets a complete conversation history without losing context.

[NEW] Post Chat Feedback

Collecting feedback is vital to understanding the customer experience.

With Post Chat Feedback, support agents will now be able to collect customer satisfaction feedback on their chat conversations directly from within the chat once the conversation has closed.

[NEW] SLAs

Service Level Agreements and Working Hours are a core feature in a Modern Help Desk. We are launching the most requested functionality, and will launch more granular features over time.

Current functionality will include:

• Working hours
• Time to first response
• Time to close SLA
• Reporting
• Automation
• UI improvements to visualize SLAs

[NEW] Service Analytics

Uncover key insights with industry standard out-of-the-box reports that help you deliver service that is both efficient and authentic. Service analytics comes with the reports you need built in, so you can unlock insights fast and resolve customer problems even faster. For example, measure post-support survey scores, average ticket response time, and overall support volume.