ServiceNow is an all-encompassing solution that helps companies take their software stack to a new level and improve business results across the board.
The tool occupies an exciting space in the current SaaS landscape: itโs an entire suite of solutions that covers pretty much everything from IT support desks to HR administration and customer support. This last segment โ customer support and CRM โ is something for which ServiceNow is particularly famous.
Why do people choose ServiceNow?
ServiceNow has been very successful since its inception, and there are good reasons for this.
The company has even been named the global leader in the ITSM (IT Service Management) space in 2020.
Here are some reasons why.
- Itโs a powerful platform. Think about it: if youโre Deloitte, Volkswagen, or any kind of large enterprise, you need a single, complex system to manage potentially hundreds of agents, thousands of employees, and millions of customers. Knowing that you have a powerful companion with a robust infrastructure can be reassuring.
- Itโs cloud-based. Despite its complexity and the scope of its services, ServiceNow can be deployed using cloud services. This means no expensive servers, no hassles with on-premises deployment, and other complicated processes.
- Itโs more than a CRM. Depending on your needs, you can handpick the features and services you need to create a complete software solution for your company. You might need a good IT desk tool and an HR system along with your CRM tool โ ServiceNow can provide this and much more, albeit with a price increase.
Comparison of 5 alternatives to ServiceNow:
- LiveAgent
- Jira Service Desk
- Zendesk
- Zoho Desk
- SysAid
The following criteria were used to evaluate and compare each solution:
- Ease of use: This is among the most critical aspects of any business software solution for many users. Having a tool that your customer service representatives can quickly master and become proficient in can save lots of time and hassle, both in onboarding and daily tasks.
- User interface: Since this is a tool your team will be using daily, youโll want to make sure itโs pleasant to use and satisfying to look at. Many tools try to make customer engagement and the IT service management experience fun and satisfying, but not all succeed.
- Unique features and functionalities: Different teams are looking for different, specific features. The goal here was to discover the unique functionality that each of these tools offers and see how they can help you achieve your goals. Since ServiceNow offers many suites and services, its competitors have something to offer in terms of unique functionalities.
- Pricing and plans: Yes, Pricing and Plans are two different things here. Pricing simply refers to the general range youโll have to pay for these services โ whatโs their general price range? Plans refer to how each of these tools structures their offer and whatโs inside each plan โ precisely what it is that you get for your money?
- Customer support: Basically, you want a customer service management solution that offers you many means of getting in touch or learning about their features and interface. Here at LiveAgent, we find customer support incredibly important and believe that anyone thinking about buying these tools will also care about it.
With all that covered, letโs see what the best ServiceNow competitors have to offer.
LiveAgent
LiveAgent is one of the best ServiceNow alternatives, especially in the service desk space.
We are confident that we have created a mix of simplicity and robust features most modern businesses are looking for.
With LiveAgent, you get social media monitoring, ticketing, live chat, knowledge base support and even built-in call center software to manage your customer service interactions wherever they might happen. Your agents can handle all of this through a single, intuitive interface.
With color-coded labels and multiple tabs, your agents can easily keep track of all conversations and master the learning curve early on.
What makes it different from Servicenow?
First of all, LiveAgent is a streamlined tool that offers an intuitive, modern UI for customer service management.
With LiveAgent, you get one of the best (and fastest) live chat tools on the market that you can implement on your website in a matter of minutes and start customer service interactions quickly and easily. You also get an intuitive dashboard and an industry-leading ticketing solution that will be user-friendly for your agents and provide seamless customer experience.
LiveAgent also offers 24/7 support โ it is an absolute priority since we help our clients deliver the same to their users.
We are proud to say that our software comes at a very competitive price in todayโs market. Even our Free plan is packed with features that will likely satisfy small and medium businesses.
LiveAgent summary:
Get LiveAgent if you want:
- An intuitive, easy-to-use interface;
- A complete service desk solution with advanced features;
- Social media monitoring;
- A market-leading live chat widget;
- 24/7 customer support;
- Competitive pricing.
If you like everything youโve seen so far, start your 14-day free trial and discover LiveAgentโs best features.
Jira Service Management
Jira Service Management is a help desk solution that works as a ticketing system that lets users make service requests through software portals, phone calls, or emails. Itโs an upgrade over the Jira Service Desk โ it includes all of its capabilities plus a few more IT Service Management features.
The first thing to note about this solution is that itโs owned by Atlassian, which means that you can integrate it with any other Atlassian software to make it more powerful and effective. For example, you can leverage Atlassianโs collaboration platform, Confluence, to equip your team with a knowledge base to quickly resolve incoming requests.
From the UI perspective, Jiraโs Service Desk solution is attractive and comfortable โ it provides the standard structure of having your hierarchical menus on the left of the screen with content occupying most of the space on the right.
While using Jira Service Desk, some users might find the following two things deal-breakers. First, it doesnโt offer social media monitoring, so you canโt use it as a complete customer operations management solution. Second, while the Confluence integration does work as a kind of self-service portal, itโs not nearly as intuitive or straightforward as having a native knowledge base for your end-users. Also, you have to pay an additional subscription for this service.
What makes it different from ServiceNow?
Much like ServiceNow, Jiraโs Service Desk offers many add-ons that allow you to customize the tool to your liking and add many features.
The difference with Jira is that this is done through the Atlassian Marketplace that offers more than 1,000 apps, most of which are reasonably easy to install. For example, more than 30 apps allow you to connect your Service Desk to Googleโs service cloud alone. Some of these are entirely free, while others do come at an additional cost.
Another competitive advantage is that Jira is orders of magnitude cheaper than ServiceNow. Their Free plan allows for up to three agents, and many users find it quite packed with features. It provides for incident management, workflow automation through a drag-and-drop system, and solid reporting.
Jira Service Management summary:
Get Jira Service Management if you want:
- A solid, intuitive UI that will feel familiar;
- Thousands of apps and integrations to choose from;
- A solution filled with add-ons wholly tailored to your needs;
- A more affordable solution, free for up to 3 agents.
customer service cultureโ
Zendesk
Zendesk is one of the most popular software solutions in the data-driven customer service catalog. At its core, itโs a ticketing system that helps manage internal or external requests from your employees and customers through various channels. You can even easily convert Facebook timeline posts and Tweets into tickets your team can start resolving.
Zendeskโs user interface is minimalistic, and the screen has a low data density, making things relatively easy to follow. You donโt have to keep switching between windows and tabs to find everything you need. However, you might need to spend some time with the app to become familiar with the UI. Itโs not as heavy on labels as most help desk tools, so some users might find the entire experience a little disorienting at times.
Completing a ticket in Zendesk is easy and quick: you need to click Submit as Solved to, and youโll be redirected to the main ticket view to see the next ticket. You can find the tickets that were recently handled in the Recently Solved Tickets view. You can also see Pending Tickets and Recently Updated Tickets.
What makes it different from ServiceNow?
Zendesk is more focused on solving tickets and, as a result, offers a much simpler user interface. Since ServiceNow also covers other business processes, it underdelivers compared to Zendesk for traditional customer support and related categories.
That isnโt to say that Zendesk doesnโt offer a lot of advanced functionalities. If you go for one of the more expensive plans, Zendesk will give you a self-service portal, conversation routing based on agent skill, and integrated community forums.
At the same time, this is one of Zendeskโs most significant drawbacks โ to truly harness the potential of this platform, youโll have to invest in one of the more expensive plans, which can cost you up to $99 per month, per agent.
Zendesk summary:
Go with Zendesk if you need:
- A robust ticket management system thatโs easy to use;
- Lots of advanced functionalities at an additional cost;
- Advanced social media ticketing;
- Solid integration options.
Zoho Desk
Another familiar name in the customer support management industry, Zoho Desk is one of the best alternatives to ServiceNow.
As with many help desk solutions, ticket management is at the heart of Zoho Desk. The core of the UI is focused on your list of tickets. Other tabs on the dashboard are for customers and knowledge base articles.
However, although Zoho Desk does offer lots of features, its user experience leaves a lot to be desired. This doesnโt only refer to its bland and text-heavy UI and the general organization of data and processes.
Although the tool offers solid workflow management features, it doesnโt guide you through the process. You can select any ticket and click on โApply Macro.โ When you do, you get information that โmacros arenโt created yet,โ but thereโs no instruction on how to create one. Most other tools will include a few preset macros that you can edit, remove, or create new ones from scratch.
What makes it different from ServiceNow?
Zoho Desk is more suited to small and mid-sized businesses due to its competitive pricing and streamlined UI.
The tool is also incredibly customizable โ you can rearrange your menus, rename almost all components, set up individual views, and much more. Zoho Desk is an excellent option if youโre an experienced user and want a completely personalized experience. Conversely, less tech-savvy users will likely find Zoho Desk a little harder to navigate, and the confusing interface wonโt help either.
Another big reason you might opt for Zoho Desk is its excellent range of integrations with the rest of the Zoho apps that will help meet your business requirements in many different ways.
Zoho Desk summary:
Go with Zoho Desk if you need:
- Powerful integrations with other Zoho products;
- Great interface customization options;
- Simple but effective ticket management;
- Competitive pricing and a functional free plan.
Tired of searching?
Are you still looking for software that will help you improve your customer service? LiveAgent may be the solution for you!
SysAid
Unlike other solutions on this list, SysAid is strictly an asset management software solution not meant to be used as a customer-facing help desk.
SysAid takes IT to help desk management to an entirely new level with ticket automation, self-help portals, control capabilities for remote support, and access control. The asset management functions are handy, as they allow you to resolve issues faster with all the available asset records and data.
All of this could be a little better presented and structured. Even though the tool is aimed at tech-savvy people, itโs easy to see how the UI feels cluttered. Some users find it difficult to view, add, and understand the assets compared to other solutions, primarily since most of the UI revolves around helpdesk tickets.
Text line breaks and strange stripes in the buttons are awkward choices and make for a less attractive UI. Customization options donโt make up for this, and it feels like a better onboarding system is needed to make the tool more user-friendly.
What makes it different from ServiceNow?
One thing that many user reviews seem to mention is SysAidโs capability as a help desk solution. SysAid provides great asset visualization and allows your agents to be highly efficient in resolving issues either remotely or manually from the admin side.
Configuration management is made easy with the Workflow Designer โ an easy way to create and configure workflows across the entire organization.
Also, unlike with ServiceNow, deploying SysAid on-premises doesnโt come at such a high technical and financial cost.
SysAid summary:
Go with SysAid if you need:
- Advanced asset management and visualization features;
- Simple ticket automation functionality;
- Easily accessible company-wide knowledge base;
- Cloud or on-premises deployment.
Save more with LiveAgent
Compare various combinations of most used customer support software tools and find out what suits you best.
Final Word
Complex navigation panels, a high starting price, and an upfront cost are frequently identified as problems by users. Theyโre looking for tools that take little time to master and help them deliver top-notch service to their respective customer base.
With these top providers, you can choose from an easy-to-manage ticketing system, a quick live chat, or a reliable way to keep track of your social media interactions.
Want to see what makes LiveAgent so special?
Come and try all options and functions for yourself.
Frequently asked questions
Can ServiceNow replace SAP?
The two are comparable because SAP offers many ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) solutions to handle customer service, supply chain management, and other business functions. Depending on the specific suite of products and your business needs, you will likely replace SAP with ServiceNow. However, the SAP market is much more stable and developed, so it might be some time before ServiceNow can replace SAP as a market leader or anything close.
What makes ServiceNow different?
ServiceNow offers many service packages that range from project management and customer support to HR administration and IT help desk solutions. Itโs an all-encompassing solution preferred by many big names like Deloitte and Volkswagen due to its cloud-based nature and customization features. All of these come at a price, so most ServiceNow users are enterprises rather than small businesses.
Does ServiceNow have competitors?
Yes, ServiceNow has many competitors and alternatives, especially since it offers a wide range of services. LiveAgent is the top competitor in the customer service department, while SysAid is a worthy opponent for IT asset management.
Is Zendesk similar to ServiceNow?
Yes, in terms of the help desk service they offer. The tool also belongs to a group of more expensive customer support tools to get the best features. The UI, starting price, and the organizations they target all differ.
Zentap is a marketing solution and website builder aimed at real estate professionals. It offers services such as lead generation, automation of social posting, video content with branding, and Facebook page optimization. Zentap can also help build real estate websites and has integration with LiveAgent's ticketing system and live chat. Integration is easy; simply follow the guide provided. The benefits of integration include faster communication with prospective clients, and LiveAgent's live chat is one of the fastest available. A free trial of LiveAgent's services is available.
Zendesk's ticketing system is a well-rounded contender that offers much more than simple ticketing if you invest in it. It is a multi-channel, multilingual, and multi-brand platform with standard ticketing features like tags and merging tickets. Zendesk also provides reporting and analytics, access to the history of customer interactions, and native integrations with other software solutions. The interface is straightforward and easy to navigate, but some users may find it pricey. Overall, it is a reliable ticketing system with an elaborate startup guide.
Your customer communication management software at first glance.
The given text highlights the importance of effective customer communication for business success. The software offered allows tracking of all customer interactions from one dashboard, with no setup fee and 24/7 customer service. A 14-day free trial is available, and signing up with a company email provides a 30-day trial with no credit card required. The text contains repeated sections and promotes the LiveAgent subdomain with various free trial options.
Zen Planner Help Desk Contacts
Zen Planner provides an all-in-one software solution to help fitness businesses streamline their operations and engage members. They offer tools for member management, billing, customer relationship management, scheduling, and email marketing. Zen Planner offers customer support through phone, email, and knowledge base. They also provide training sessions and extensive online documentation. Legal contacts and social media support are also available.
