Face-off: ServiceNow vs. Zendesk for IT service management

IT service management (ITSM) software has evolved in several ways, such as moving to the cloud and moving beyond IT trouble tickets to manage a wider variety of internal and external customer-service tasks. In the future, service management could even become a key part of an organization’s digital transformation.

Today, two of the top ITSM suites are ServiceNow and Zendesk, according to reviews by users in the IT Central Station community.

Managers of ServiceNow installations said they like the options for customization but the price can get steep, according to reviews at IT Central Station. Zendesk administrators said the software is easy to use but not as powerful for ticketing as other products.

Either way, users urged their peers to streamline and document their own workflows before trying to implement these products. As one reviewer described the initial setup: “The complex part of it is [mapping] your processes; implementing the tool is the easy part.”

IT Central Station has produced an 11-page report that compares the two rival products, based on commentary written by enterprise users about the strengths and weaknesses of each product.

IT service management (ITSM) software has evolved in several ways, such as moving to the cloud and moving beyond IT trouble tickets to manage a wider variety of internal and external customer-service tasks. In the future, service management could even become a key part of an organization’s digital transformation.