Help Scout Reviews

Pros

- extremely simple to use and understand as a user
- treats communications like human beings and provides a much more personal feel to communication (as opposed to making people feel like numbers)
- fantastic support team that's very responsive and solution focused
- solid API that allows you to bring in data from other apps so that you have a consolidated view of a client, beyond just their email history

Cons

- wish that the interface could be a little more customized for our specific needs
- really don't have any downsides to it - it's a great product

Pros

Help Scout is purpose-built for Support teams which is fantastic. The features, UI, and reporting align closely with how we run our support team which makes things a lot easier.

We're big on automation and building on top of our tools and have been very impressed both with the workflow capabilities as well as the API endpoints and integrations that are possible.

The team behind Help Scout does a terrific job of supporting us, they have been extremely responsive, down to earth, and accurate in their replies.

Cons

To deliver a really good and consistent experience, the support channels of email, chat, and phone are very discrete and can't be blended as easily together as say a tool like Intercom (where we were coming from).

While a short-term pain for us, I think delivering better in each of the channels ultimately made us a more mature team in the end.

Pros

It's reliable, and has most of the functions we need.

Cons

It feels like the ticketing system has now been abandoned as far as new development is concerned. There have been some minor improvements listed for their beacon /messaging widget but little of consequence. As far as I can only the email address passed to their widget is hashed, custom variables are not so bad actors can pass fake or malicious data to support agents. No UK or EU servers.

Pros

It has user friendly interface, multi-channel support and can integrate with other tools like slack .

Cons

It has very limited features.pricing is a bit Higher and has limited language support.

Pros

It was easy to get going and was the first app we used for customer service. It had integration with multiple other apps such as Mailchimp. Supports multiple users.

Cons

It was ticket-oriented, got us into working more with tickets than customers pretty quickly, not because HelpScout but because using tickets and emails for support.

There was no integration with our website, so this was a bummer.

Pros

Super easy to pick up and use and their support was great. They always responded promptly and did their best.

Cons

Compared to other products, it lacks a lot of features and some of what it does have is too simplified.

Pros

HelpScout was the first shared emailing system we implemented that worked flawlessly with our setup. It rivals all other methods that focus on a ticket number approach but makes the communication process simple for users to grasp and professional yet informal.

The best part of Help Scout for us was the shared inbox aspect and the ability to collaborate with others easily.

Cons

Help Scout is expensive. In my opinion, it is overpriced. They started at a great introductory rate and grandfathered those rates for early-stage users. I heard from many users when they increased their rates, all of whom got a personalized message from the [SENSITIVE CONTENT], promising our rates would stay the same.

Months later, they recanted on their promise and hiked our rates. It was not a great feeling being lied to, and my love for the company quickly disappeared.

Other shared email services can replace Help Scout, but this is your best bet if you're looking for a simple approach and are not worried about the price tag.

Pros

It has beautiful and easy-to-use UI and UX. It has been made by amazing professionals already in the customer care space. Help Scout can be brought on to any company scale and proves itself with metric improvements rapidly.

Cons

Help Scout's pricing plans are a little expensive, especially for small businesses or startups.

Pros

I liked how simple it was to use Help Scout. It had a simple, clean design that was easy to navigate, and the customer service representatives were extremely helpful and knowledgeable. It was also convenient that the help desk was open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, so I could get assistance whenever I needed it.

Cons

The lack of customization options was the least appealing aspect of Help Scout to me. The platform is quite limited in terms of customizing the look and feel of the customer service experience. Furthermore, the customer service representatives appeared to be unfamiliar with product and its features.

Pros

It is a very intuitive helpdesk solution, it almost work like a "normal" email inbox. Each mail is called "conversation" and can assign to a user. In each conversation user can make internal notes and tag other colleagues. HelpScout is also able to handle Chat and Voicememos out of the box. Additional addons are also available, you can even write your own addon.

Cons

You have to grasp the there are no ticket numbers. I also missing phone support, for instance VOIP integration. Prices are also quite high but the software is worth it.

Pros

They refer to support tickets as conversations, which might not seem like much at first but if you really think about how much you value your customers you will appreciate this verbiage.

They have offline/live chat support pop ups that they call "beacons" and you can have different ones depending on where a customer is at on the page. This was extremely helpful for me as I am selling software so having a beacon on the general website for pre-sales was a must but I also wanted a secondary beacon behind a paywall for premium support and their platform allows for this type of setup.

Lastly, most live chat companies only cater towards just that --- live chat. However, I wanted an all in one solution of live chat + a knowledge base. Help Scout has both available within their platform and it's super simple to setup.

Cons

The only thing I feel they could improve on is more features as far as layout and styling for the knowledge base. It was lacking in that sense but other than that I didn't see anything that I personally needed to be different.

Alternatives Considered

Pros

Help Scout is a focused, straightforward support mailbox product, and we've been using it to great effect since we switched over (from a shared inbox for support) a couple of years ago. We were happy with the pricing, and we use the custom sidebar add-ons to great effect. We've written our own sidebar app that gives our support team access to a ton of useful customer information and error logging without ever leaving the mailbox. When we've dealt with Help Scout support, they've also been great. Help Scout does exactly what we want.

Cons

Help Scout is a relatively slim and focused offering (although they are indeed adding new features all the time) this was actually a *selling point* for us, as we didn't want a super-complex tool for this but I am sure that for some users this could be problematic.

Pros

After having used Zendesk for a while, I was not happy with its and complexity. I wanted to have a support desk tool that made it look like it was regular mail to the customers. And HelpScout did exactly that. After having used the free version for more than 2 years, we are now on the Business plan. It was great that we could have used it without having to spend money on it, but it's soo good that it's definitely worth every penny. The Docs integration is perfect, as we use it in replies to customers, in the beacon for self-help and we now also embed the docs on our website through the API.

Cons

It would be great if we could set a custom threshold for the spam filter, as we have a bit too many false positives.

Pros

Help Scout allows customers to send requests to a centralized email address, rather than to an individual, helping ensure that someone on the customer service end will be able to reply promptly. On my team, I handle most customer service requests. However, if I happen to be out sick, on vacation, or in any way unavailable, I can rest assured that another qualified person on my team has access to--and is monitoring--Help Scout to ensure nothing slips through the cracks. Otherwise, a request might sit unanswered in my personal email inbox until I return. I also like that it's easy to store--and pull up-- information about the customer to see their history of past inquiries.

Cons

Automatic workflows are somewhat complicated to set up. I've found them unnecessary for the most part, but I'm sure they could be more useful for higher customer volumes.

Pros

Having used Zendesk for years, I was looking for a alternative option without breaking the bank. Help Scout has all the features i needed for my team, and more.

Help Scout looks/feels great. Everything is right where it needs to be. I can quickly show a new employee how to use it in minutes. Zendesk looks like a dinosaur in comparison, and had to train them for a few days before my employees got comfortable.

Cons

Not much to dislike. They have a lot of integrations built right in, and zapier fills in the blanks. The only thing I wish I had was the custom fields, which is in the PLUS feature, and I'd have to pay a bit more money for it. But can't complain about that.

Pros

1. The number 1 thing I love is that emails are "closed" once they are responded to. When I'm in my own email, I have a tendency to never delete messages. Then I think I need to sort into folders and so on, but that's a waste of time and messy. Help Scout automatically closes them when you've responded to it. But you can still search for it and find it. It's perfect! I get Zero in-box with Help Scout!
2. I also like that you can tag people (reassign) so my client can assign emails to me that she wants me to handle.
3. You can tag the emails, so once a week, she can go in and find a certain type of message to work on those all together.
4. You can write a common response and then save it to be reused.
5. You can write notes within message and tag the team member who you want to see the note, but the original sender of the message doesn't see the note.

Cons

I found it confusing at first because I didn't know where the closed messages were going, and I was nervous about closing messages, that they would disappear. But it just took some learning. My client who added me to her account was able to show me how it works. I'm not sure what the Help Scout training is like.

Pros

In my 20 years I've never come across such an elegant solution as Help Scout. Everything works good, looks good. Nice integration with E-commerce platform Woocommerce.

Cons

The messaging feature is over-priced. $50/month just for showing pop-up messages in your widget is a but too much!

Pros

I love all of the features that Help Scout offers. We're a growing CS department and it's scaled with us quite nicely. Our Developers are able to customize is for us and it's quite easy to use.

Cons

There are only a few things I don't like about HS. The main thing is that it would be nice to make article formatting easier to use with out HTML. And, it would awesome if they implemented a live chat feature, so we didn't have to use Intercom in addition to HS.

Pros

This product is great for a small business or startup who needs to set up a knowledge base. It is simple to deploy, and there is a free plan. The biggest advantage is that it is easy to use and low cost.
Plus, they are very Startup friendly company.

Cons

There is no chat feature in mobile app so you can't send and receive real-time messages when you are on phone.

Pros

- Easy interface
- Lower learning curve
- Continually improving
- Good customer support
- All cloud based

Cons

- Per-user costs can add up

Pros

This tool is very versatile and really snappy, I love how easy you can reply to incoming tickets and keep great analytics of it at the same time. We did the integration to Slack to keep it even easier and faster for our internal requests and products.

Cons

It can come pricey if you are really looking to have a low-cost alternative for your customer satisfaction portion but this should be no downer since when you pay for this platform you get a quick and efficient tool, just be mindful of the costs.

Pros

I liked the ability to create complex rule sets that auto-filter certain types of conversations to appropriate mailboxes. Without this, there would be a lot of noise experienced by our various internal users

Cons

Not significant, but would be great if users were given a more expansive toolkit for editing copy (fonts, sizes, etc).

Pros

* Simple to use with powerful features available if you need them
* Great documentation so little or no training needed for new staff
* Customer service from helpscout is brilliant with quick and helpful responses
* Two favourite features - 1) the ease with which you can move assign conversations back and forward between staff members 2) Save replies - saves so much time!

Cons

* A mobile app or mobile optimised web app is really needed

Pros

Very easy to use - was what we need in customer service inquiry software

Cons

Nothing yet but haven't used it for a long time

Alternatives Considered

Pros

Great reporting options
Easy to use
Awesome customer support team
Great search options
Easy to set up

Cons

Their help docs are often outdated. Also some of the features that stated were included ended up having a extra monthly charge.