What counts as a conversation when you pay per resolution?
A conversation is a whole thread with one customer, not each message: if they write five times about the same thing, it is still one. What varies between vendors is when that thread gets cut and what counts as resolved, and those two definitions decide your invoice far more than the unit price on the website.
Short answer
A conversation is a whole thread with one customer, not each message: if they write five times about the same thing, it is still one. What varies between vendors is when that thread gets cut and what counts as resolved, and those two definitions decide your invoice far more than the unit price on the website.
In detail
The three definitions to ask about
How much silence closes a conversation — some cut it at 24 hours, some leave it open seven days — whether a customer returning the next day about the same matter opens a new one, and whether the conversation where the agent failed and handed over to a person counts. With the same thousand conversations a month, the gap between the most aggressive answers and the most reasonable can be double.
Per resolution or per conversation
Not the same thing. Charging per conversation also bills the ones the agent could not close; charging per resolution only bills when the case closed with no human involved. The second aligns the vendor interest with yours: no resolution, no charge. The first rewards the system answering a lot, which is not the same as resolving.
Comparing it with what you pay today
The price per conversation says nothing on its own. Set beside the real cost of a ticket — the time of the person handling it, including the context hunt and the interruption — it decides. For a €30,000 gross profile and fifteen real minutes per question, each ticket runs about €5.75, and that is the figure to compare against.
The question that rules a vendor out
"Show me the invoice of a customer like me." Whoever charges clearly shows it; whoever has fine print does not. It is faster than reading three pages of terms.
Terms that come up here
Other questions in this thread
What happens if I go over my plan conversation limit?
It depends on a decision the vendor makes and that is worth knowing before signing: either the agent stops answering, or it keeps answering and the excess gets billed. The first turns a volume spike into a customer service problem; the second, into an unexpected invoice. Neither is bad, but knowing which applies to you changes which plan you buy.
Is Freshdesk cheaper than Zendesk?
On the per-seat rate yes, nearly always, and the gap is noticeable on the entry plans. But the saving narrows as soon as you move into the higher plans of either, and it disappears entirely if what pushed you to switch was the cost of the AI, because there both charge separately and on a similar model.
Is Intercom more expensive than Zendesk?
It depends on how many people answer and how much you use the AI, which is why the comparisons circulating contradict each other. Intercom charges per seat plus per resolution of the automated agent; Zendesk charges per seat plus its AI module separately. With a small team and high automated volume, Intercom usually comes out dearer; with a large team and little AI, it inverts.
Where this question comes from
Intake pricing →