Microsoft Power BI vs. Zendesk Explore

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Microsoft Power BI
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft Power BI is a visualization and data discovery tool from Microsoft. It allows users to convert data into visuals and graphics, visually explore and analyze data, collaborate on interactive dashboards and reports, and scale across their organization with built-in governance and security.N/A
Zendesk Explore
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
Zendesk offers Explore, a business intelligence and customer analytics tool which integrates with the Zendesk suite featuring ticket analytics, custom fields, dashboards, and other features. Zendesk is migrating customers of the BIME analytics product, which is approaching end of support, to Zendesk Explore in 2019.N/A
Pricing
Microsoft Power BIZendesk Explore
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Microsoft Power BIZendesk Explore
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Microsoft Power BIZendesk Explore
Considered Both Products
Microsoft Power BI
Chose Microsoft Power BI
All others apps are enablers and Microsoft Power BI is the visual that end user sees which often adds more value to the end user to make strategic decisions from this. All are equally great but Microsoft Power BI is the end result
Chose Microsoft Power BI
Microsoft Power BI vs. Tableau Power BI cheaper and works well with Microsoft tools. Tableau has better visuals but is costly. Microsoft Power BII vs. Looker Looker is good for big data, but Microsoft Power BI is easier to use. Microsoft Power BI vs. Qlik Qlik is fast for big …
Chose Microsoft Power BI
Microsoft Power BI provide a user friendly in many ways to analyse the data and visualization of the data .Stacking makes the works easier easily attach the table ,chart row and column through the various available tool ..it also reduces the work part and manpower mechanically …
Chose Microsoft Power BI
Microsoft Power BI is more flexible and it requires less effort in order to create a working environment. The results have an attractive and customizable display. The model is a star schema therefore it do not require specific database adaptation. Excel and csv files could be …
Chose Microsoft Power BI
Microsoft Power BI is free. If I didn't want to create a custom platform (i.e. my organization insisted on an existing platform that I *had* to use), I'd use Microsoft Power BI. For any start-up or SMB, I'd just use Claude & Grok to build it quickly, also for free. Would …
Chose Microsoft Power BI
Same need to be large scale.
Chose Microsoft Power BI
Microsoft Power BI is easier to learn, a lot of examples on YouTube, internet documentation books helps to the implementation and personalization of the dashboards easier to use than other platforms.
Chose Microsoft Power BI
While excel can be useful for a very quick data dump, Microsoft Power BI is able to bring that data to life, and show trends and the actual story of what is happening. Microsoft Power BI is the ultimate display tool, and allows us to share information quickly to the CORRECT …
Chose Microsoft Power BI
Compared to this tool, Microsoft Power BI doesn't involve heavy coding and provides user friendly interface to visualize data. Microsoft Power BI reports can be shared and published without exposing your source code. Also, the reports are interactive providing drill down …
Chose Microsoft Power BI
Power BI is much simple to use, and more modern than BusinessObjects, which has now been discontinued. It costs much less to license than Tableau which is perhaps more niche and designed better. It is also much more powerful for data analysis than excel, smartsheet, airtable, …
Chose Microsoft Power BI
Some of the strengths are 1. User-Friendliness 2. Self-Service BI (Caters to all levels of the employees 3. Cost-effective. 4. Easy integration with Microsoft Suits. 5. DAX Calculations 6. Familiar Interface like traditional Excel. 7. Easier Self-Service platform for …
Chose Microsoft Power BI
It's got a larger user base and seems better supported. Personally it feels like alot more work getting comparable results from Tableau. Microsoft Power BI will be WAY easier to work with all your various data sources, if you are working in an environment with M365 already. …
Chose Microsoft Power BI
After several years using Google Looker Studio and BigQuery, Microsoft Power BI is a step-up in terms of visualizations. It is also much more powerful, leading to less errors and has a more intuitive interface. Looker studio has a focus on google analytics whereas Microsoft …
Chose Microsoft Power BI
NA - did not use any other software, yet. Happy with the services and features provided by Microsoft Power BI which helps us navigate through the client requests on a daily basis while also providing actionable insights / solutions with maximum efficiency and that too in a …
Chose Microsoft Power BI
It's the most widely used tool in most organizations
Chose Microsoft Power BI
Each has a different function. I think Microsoft Power BI is easier to use than Tableau and cheaper but SQL and databricks have so much more versatility
Chose Microsoft Power BI
We use Microsoft Power BI in addition to other software.
Chose Microsoft Power BI
I prefer Power BI because of its affordability and fewer complicated tools than Tableau. It's easy to use and compatible with other Microsoft products, which are mostly used in the IT industry. It's not limited to only one platform like Looker Studio, which is mostly used in …
Chose Microsoft Power BI
Microsoft Power BI is more flexible and can also handle more complex reporting scenarios. While Microsoft Excel is a great tool for analyzing data building visuals is not what it is made for. It is complicated to create Excel reports that will be interactive as a use wants to …
Chose Microsoft Power BI
Qlik also builds dashboards upon your data. It's more expensive as Microsoft Power BI and needs as much training as Microsoft Power BI
Chose Microsoft Power BI
Being Microsoft environment it is extremely easy to interconnect the application with other Microsoft tools, such as power point or excel. On top of that, also communication through Microsoft teams is enabled which can result in very good collaboration and exchange of feedback …
Chose Microsoft Power BI
We actually chose both Power BI and Quantum Metric. We use them for different things, but they are very similar tools. Quantum does a good job of integrating with our website and app traffic, whereas we use Power BI for data analysis and importing data sets for further review. …
Chose Microsoft Power BI
We have used Microsoft Power BI for almost seven years. When looking for a reporting platform, remember that you are about to make a long-term choice. Moving reports to another system isn't easy. If you have, for example, more than 100 reports, the move to a different platform …
Zendesk Explore
Chose Zendesk Explore
Zendesk Explore stands out against Freshchat and Freshdesk for it's deeper analytics capabilities and seamless integration with Zendesk ecosystem. While Freshdesk offers reporting, it lacks on the same level of granular insights and customization that Zendesk Explore provides. …
Chose Zendesk Explore
I selected Zendesk Explore only to provide an easy and quick access for my managers and supervisors regading metrics and volume trends. Is not the most flexible nor complete data visualization tool, but works well for day-to-day follow ups.
You need to use another tool if you …
Chose Zendesk Explore
N/A - the company had already implemented Zendesk Explore when I was hired.
Chose Zendesk Explore
What's good with Zendesk Explore is that data is already provided since it's included in the package. We get the data from Zendesk Support and make a report in Zendesk Explore.

It provides suggested templates and report formats also which you don't get on the other platforms. …
Chose Zendesk Explore
Zendesk Explore is more user friendly and the software plus maintenance cost is less. The report section is more detailed and no lag while creating report for a large data source. The report segments and formats are editable which make it more convenient to make a report …
Chose Zendesk Explore
We tried other reporting and Zendesk Explore was by far the best as it was already implemented into our support system we were already using; Zendesk. The main selling point for us, is that all of the reports are customizable and that no coding knowledge is needed to build out …
Chose Zendesk Explore
Zendesk Explore is better than Freshservice Analytics. In Freshservice, even though the interface is more attractive, the functions are not as good as Zendesk Explore. Reports and dashboards are hard to build, and the materials to learn are not as good as the materials on …
Chose Zendesk Explore
For support data, we have only used Explore because it came with our ZenDesk membership. So I can't speak to other solutions! That said, it's awesome to have Knowledge Base and support data in one place.
Features
Microsoft Power BIZendesk Explore
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Microsoft Power BI
8.8
Ratings
8% above category average
Zendesk Explore
9.0
Ratings
10% above category average
Pixel Perfect reports8.50 Ratings7.10 Ratings
Customizable dashboards10.00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates8.00 Ratings9.90 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Microsoft Power BI
8.2
Ratings
2% above category average
Zendesk Explore
8.3
Ratings
3% above category average
Drill-down analysis7.00 Ratings9.50 Ratings
Formatting capabilities9.00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages8.00 Ratings4.80 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration9.00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
Microsoft Power BI
8.6
Ratings
3% above category average
Zendesk Explore
8.4
Ratings
1% above category average
Publish to Web8.00 Ratings6.90 Ratings
Publish to PDF9.00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Report Versioning9.00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling8.00 Ratings8.90 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers9.00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
Microsoft Power BI
8.7
Ratings
9% above category average
Zendesk Explore
7.2
Ratings
10% below category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)9.00 Ratings6.60 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization8.00 Ratings7.10 Ratings
Predictive Analytics9.00 Ratings5.50 Ratings
Pattern Recognition and Data Mining9.00 Ratings9.40 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
Microsoft Power BI
8.6
Ratings
1% above category average
Zendesk Explore
9.1
Ratings
7% above category average
Multi-User Support (named login)9.00 Ratings9.50 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model9.00 Ratings9.50 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)10.00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Report-Level Access Control7.00 Ratings8.60 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)8.30 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
Microsoft Power BI
8.0
Ratings
2% above category average
Zendesk Explore
7.8
Ratings
1% below category average
Responsive Design for Web Access8.00 Ratings6.10 Ratings
Mobile Application7.70 Ratings8.30 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile7.70 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of Product A and Product B
Microsoft Power BI
8.4
Ratings
7% above category average
Zendesk Explore
5.9
Ratings
28% below category average
REST API8.00 Ratings5.40 Ratings
Javascript API9.90 Ratings5.90 Ratings
iFrames8.00 Ratings5.50 Ratings
Java API8.00 Ratings5.60 Ratings
Themeable User Interface (UI)8.10 Ratings6.20 Ratings
Customizable Platform (Open Source)8.40 Ratings7.00 Ratings
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User Ratings
Microsoft Power BIZendesk Explore
Likelihood to Recommend
8.5
(0 ratings)
9.5
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
7.9
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Microsoft Power BIZendesk Explore
Likelihood to Recommend
Microsoft Power BI is great for sales tracking, financial reporting, and real-time operations monitoring. It integrates data from multiple sources, creating interactive dashboards for better decision-making. However, it's less ideal for real-time big data processing, offline access, or when deep customization is needed. It works best for structured reporting but struggles with highly complex data models.
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Compared to other analytics functions of other Ticket Management System, Zendesk Explore is the easiest to learn. Moreover, the learning curve is high. Once you pick up the fundamentals, you will be able to create all types of analytic reports. In addition, if you know basic coding or SQL, you can create your own metrics and attributes to capture extremely specific elements such as the tickets that contain a certain word or etc.
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Pros
  • It is great at taking in large amounts of data and housing it all.
  • Microsoft Power BI is so user friendly and it's dashboards are very easy on the eye.
  • The ease of sharing dashboards makes it great for use across a large company.
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  • As with most "suite" products, if you already use other Zendesk features (Chat, Talk, etc), then Zendesk Explore adds an extra facet to the customer experience. The more we know about our clientele, the better we can understand/anticipate their needs.
  • I like that we can get as in-depth as we feel is necessary. For example, is just one customer having an issue? Or are many experiencing a similar problem? We can better rack this type of trend using Explore.
  • Our team can dive deep into the data based on exactly what we're looking for. If the marketing team wants a certain kind of segment, we can give them that info. If we want to sort by date or another set of parameters, we can do that as well.
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Cons
  • It would be easier for users could Microsoft Power BI and Excel used the same programming languages.
  • Would like to see the online version of Microsoft Power BI be as powerful as the desktop version.
  • Publishing a Microsoft Power BI file online and then having to save the file is somewhat redundant.
  • Would like to export each page or chart as an image.
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  • More detailed pieces of training on where to find datasets/queries.
  • Have demo reports to do live trainings; instead of watching videos.
  • Have a key as to what all of the datasets mean.
  • Have a pop-up that analyzes the data "looks like your csat dropped this week!" etc...
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Likelihood to Renew
Microsoft Power BI is an excellent and scalable tool. It has a learning curve, but once you get past that, the sky is the limit and you can build from the most simple to the most complex dashboards. I have built everything from simple reports with only a few data points to complex reports with many pages and advanced filtering.
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No answers on this topic
Usability
Takes a little bit to get used to it. Not natively intuitive but fairly straight forward to pick up. Also docking it a few points because you can create a really clean, simple UI in Claude very quickly that's faster than building all of this yourself in Microsoft Power BI.
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I rate Zendesk Explore 8 out of 10 for it's overall usability because it offers powerful reporting and analytics with an easy to navigate interface and intuitive dashboards. It helps improve customer satisfaction by providing valuable insights into ticket handling, agent performance and customer satisfaction. Though the complex query builder can be challenging for non technical users.
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Support Rating
It is a fantastic tool, you can do almost everything related with data and reports, it is a perfect substitutive of Power Point and Excel with a high evolution and flexibility, and also it is very friendly and easy to share. I think all companies should have Power BI (or other BI tool) in their software package and if they are in the MS Suite, for sure Power BI should be the one due to all the benefits of the MS ecosystem.
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Zendesk Community is extremely useful for Zendesk Explore beginners. The live support provided by Zendesk will also help a lot. If you don't know anything you can ask live support right away. However, one drawback of Zendesk Community and Support is the creation of complex reports on Zendesk Explore. Zendesk Community and Support cannot really help you much if you are trying to build a complex report as they are not a complete expert on it as well.
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Implementation Rating
It was integrated with our erp easily and was accessible on cloud.
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No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
All others apps are enablers and Microsoft Power BI is the visual that end user sees which often adds more value to the end user to make strategic decisions from this. All are equally great but Microsoft Power BI is the end result
Read full review
Zendesk Explore stands out against Freshchat and Freshdesk for it's deeper analytics capabilities and seamless integration with Zendesk ecosystem. While Freshdesk offers reporting, it lacks on the same level of granular insights and customization that Zendesk Explore provides. Compared to Freshchat which focuses more on live chat and conversational analytics Zendesk Explore excels in historical trend analysis and comprehensive dashboarding. We choose Zendesk Explore for it's robust reporting and drill down capabilities.
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Return on Investment
  • We're still early in the adoption process at this company, but we've illustrated how bad data keeps us from being more productive. ~25% of a team's work week was dedicated to effectively cleaning up entries, but it was always seen as a normal to them.
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  • Positive impact of around 5 hours/week in Dashboard building and visualization
  • 10 hours from Product to review dashboards and find potential patterns
  • Enabler to find opportunities based on agents´ occupancy rates
Read full review
ScreenShots

Microsoft Power BI Screenshots

Screenshot of Microsoft Power BI - Turns insights into impact for business usersScreenshot of Power BI integrates easily with Microsoft 365Screenshot of Microsoft Power BI - AI-Powered CapabilitiesScreenshot of Microsoft Power BI - Copilot can be used to create reportsScreenshot of Microsoft Power BI - Data HubScreenshot of Microsoft Power BI - Scales as organizational needs grow