Zendesk is a service-as-a-software (SaaS) that provides products for customer support, sales, marketing, and other forms of customer communication. It was founded in Copenhagen, Denmark in 2007 by three friends – Morten Primdahl, Alexander Aghassipour, and Mikkel Svane – with its headquarters now in San Francisco, USA.
This article looks at the direct and indirect competitors of Zendesk in the customer support tool market.
#1 Salesforce
- Founded: February 3, 1999
- Headquarters: Salesforce Tower, San Francisco, California, US
Need to Know
Salesforce is a SaaS company founded by Marc Benioff (former Oracle executive), Parker Harris, Dave Moellenhoff, and Frank Dominguez on February 13, 1999, in the United States of America. The cloud-based software company provides Customer Relationship Management (CRM) services and other enterprise applications for customer service, analytics, marketing automation, and application development.
The company has continued to grow in services and market share due to its acquisitions and partnership dealings. Over 60 acquisitions have been made between April 2006 to September 2021, and it has partnered with the likes of Facebook and Apple in efforts to improve its services.
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#2 Oracle
- Founded: June 16, 1997
- Headquarters: Austin, Texas, US
Need to Know
Oracle is an American computer technology corporation founded by Larry Ellison, Bob Miner, and Ed Oates in Santa Clara, California in 1997. Oracle started as a database management software company, and is currently providing a range of software and services; Human Capital Management (HCM) software, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software, Customer Relationship Management (CRM)software, Supply Chain Management (SCM) software, and Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) software. This has earned it the world’s second-largest software company based on its revenue and market capitalization.
In its 44 years of existence, Oracle has had a lot of controversies, lawsuits, and settlements. A 1990 ‘up-front’ sales strategy led to the laying off of 400 staffers – 10% of its workforce at the time – who found a loophole to increase their bonuses. This also led to an out-of-court settlement of class actions from its overstated earnings, and Oracle released a new earnings figure (a second report) for that same year.
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#3 Microsoft
- Founded: April 4, 1975
- Headquarters: One Microsoft Way, Redmond, Washington, US
Need to Know
Microsoft was founded by childhood friends, Bill Gates and Paul Allen on April 4, 1975, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA. This American international technology company is best known for its Microsoft operating systems, has a huge range of products, services, and industries; software development, computer hardware, social networking service, corporate venture capital, internet, cloud computing, and video games. It is considered one of the Big Fives in the information technology space in the United States of America; Google (Alphabet), Facebook (Meta), Amazon, and Apple are the other 4.
Microsoft was the 3rd U.S company traded publicly to hit 1 trillion dollars market capitalization, and has the third-highest global brand valuation (2020).
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#4 SAP
- Founded: 1972
- Headquarters: Dietmar-Hopp-Alle 16, Walldorf, Baden-Württmberg, Germany
Need to Know
SAP was founded in 1972 by Dietmar Hopp, Hans-Werner Hector, Hasso Plattner, Klaus Tschira, and Claus Wellenreuther, in Weinheim, Germany. This international software corporation according to its Wikipedia page is “the largest non-American software company by revenue, the world’s third-largest publicly-traded software company by revenue, and the largest German company by market capitalization.”
Part of its growth strategy is acquisition and partnerships; it has made 77 acquisitions (that have been made public by the company) across the world from 1991 to 2021.
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#5 Zoho
- Founded: 17 March 1996
- Headquarters: Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
Need to Know
Zoho was founded by Sridhar Vembu and Tony Thomas Together on the 17th of March 1996 in Indian. This web-based service provider has its global headquarters in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India, and its corporate headquarters in Pleasanton, California, USA. It also has physical operations presence in China, Japan, and Singapore.
It was renamed Zoho Corporation from Advent in 2009; after its most successful web-based tool, Zoho CRM, which was released in 2005. More tools have been added as time went on; Zoho Docs, Zoho Meeting, and other enterprise system managements (sales, marketing, customer service, human resources, email and collaboration, IT solution, etc.)
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#6 ServiceNow
- Founded: 2003
- Headquarters: Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
Need to Know
ServiceNow was founded by Fred Luddy, David Loo, Don Goodliffe, and Bow Ruggeri in 2003. It is a software company that provides cloud computing and IT service management services for enterprise digital workflow. Fred Buddy was the only employee from 2002 until mid-2005 now has an estimated 15,000 employees (2021).
The company has made 20 acquisitions (made public) from 2012 to 2021, it is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, and ranked number 1 on Forbes Magazine list – the world’s most innovative companies.
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#7 SugarCRM
- Founded: 2004
- Headquarters: Cupertino, California, US
Need to Know
SugarCRM was founded in 2004 by Clint Oram, John Roberts Jacob Taylor. It is a Customer Relationship Management focused software company and with several functionalities; Social CRM, marketing campaigns, collaboration, reporting, customer support, Mobile CRM, and salesforce automation.
The company’s name was conceived when co-founder John Roberts was cruising his bike – named sugar – in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
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#8 Appian
- Founded: 1999
- Headquarters: McLean, Virginia, US
Need to Know
Appian is an enterprise software and cloud computing company founded by Michael Beckley, Matt Calkins, Robert Kramer, and Marc Wilson in 1999. Its business market focuses are low-code development, case management, and business management with its platform as a service (PaaS). The company now has PaaS for Artificial Intelligence (Appian AI) and Robotic process automation (Appian RPA) capabilities.
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#9 Verint
- Founded: 2002
- Headquarters: Melville, New York, US
Need to Know
Verint started as a subsidiary of Comverse Technology – Comverse Infosys – that was founded by Jacob “Kobi” Alexander, Boaz Misholi, and Yechiam Yemini in 1999. The unit, Comverse Infosys, focused on the commercial call recording market when it was first founded; changed its name to Verint in 2002 and became fully independent of Comverse Technology by buying out Converse Technology’s stake in February 2013, and has since made 3 acquisitions.
The analytics company offers enterprise products and services – customer engagement management, business intelligence, surveillance, and security.
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#10 eGain
- Founded: 1997
- Headquarters: Sunnyvale, California, US
Need to Know
eGain is a cloud-based software founded by Ashutosh Roy and Gunjan Sinha in 1997 while they were still running their soon to be acquired (by Locos) internet search company, WhoWhere? The company’s service is a digital customer engagement suite of applications for customer service, analytics, and knowledge management for B2C companies.
The software suite is divided into 3 categories of apps; The Messaging Hub contains customer interaction channels (live chat, co-browse, email, secure email, social, and other popular messaging apps); The Knowledge Hub contains knowledge and AI reasoning that helps with the resolution of customer issues; The Analytics Hub contains apps that provide customer journey insight and issue resolution, as well as Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning technologies used to automate, learn, and predict customer engagement.
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#11 Creation
- Founded: 2011
- Headquarters: Boston, Massachusetts, US
Need to Know
Creatio formally called bpm’online CRM (changed in 2019) was co-founded by Katherine Kostereva in 2011. Its services include SaaS low-code solution for CRM and process management; sales force automation software (Sales Creatio), help desk software (Service Creatio), low-code platform (Studio Creatio), and a marketing automation tool (Marketing Cretio).
The tool is available on PC (macOS, Windows, and Linux), and mobile (iOS and Android). The platform’s framework is .NET, thus scripts and customization are in C# (backend) or Javascript (frontend) languages.