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 great for our 4-person Customer Success Team. We have been using it for over a year and it helps us provide high-quality customer support. It is easy to use, our customers like it because our emails look just like normal emails. Their support team is great, we always get quick and relevant answers.

Cons

I think the reporting feature could really be improved, and we would appreciate a few more features to improve the daily management of support tickets.

Alternatives Considered

Intercom and Zendesk Suite

Reasons for Choosing Help Scout

Gmail doesn't work well as a shared inbox.

Switched From

Gmail

Reasons for Switching to Help Scout

Help Scout looks more like a regular inbox and not an overly automated ticketing system. It is very easy to setup and use. It is also cheaper.

Pros

Ease of use
Knowledgebase was easy to implement
Ticket system works as it should

Cons

Our business needed customer management and HelpScout was not a good solution for that.

Alternatives Considered

Zendesk Suite

Reasons for Choosing Help Scout

Intercom is another ticket system that works well if that is what you need but we needed more in our CS system.

Switched From

Intercom

Reasons for Switching to Help Scout

Ease of use and set up.

Pros

I like the best that their initial installation requires little to no help. I was able to quickly set up the entire platform in no time, which is very unlike other help desk services that are difficult to set up and require a lot of permissions and time. They have managed to solve a problem with attention to detail and made their UI very intuitive in that respect. Their performance and response time for most of the tasks is excellent. It made my life easier, and I was able to track, organize and categorize all customer issues very easily. Moreover, the learning curve was very low for a CRM, and I was able to pick up most of their features within days, instead of weeks as compared to other market platforms.

Cons

There are a few minor issues that made my daily work a hassle, like providing a bigger picture of all the chat supports of the last 3 months or providing a birds-eye view like reports, and dashboards. They do generate reports, but those have not been so effective for me.

Pros

Their entire philosophy is centered around customer satisfaction and success. This mirrors our own approach and it's great seeing that in action. They are also great at handling questions and service requests, and I love all the support and information resources they offer.

Cons

I wish the reporting functions were better and more detailed. Sometimes when something wasn't functioning in a way that worked for it, their response was suggesting a work around that would require a service plan upgrade when I figured out a work around that could work at our current level, but that is a very minor gripe.

Alternatives Considered

Zendesk Suite

Reasons for Switching to Help Scout

At one point we considered switching to Zendesk, but at our current business size and needs, Helpdesk was clearly a better fit for our team.

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

This software allows extremely easy and efficient collaboration between administrators. The ticketing and email system can be configured many different ways and you can even integrate single sign-on.

Cons

There weren't too many things I don't like about this software. The only issue I have is that its report generator does not allow you to create reports for tickets cleared for each individual admin during a time period.

Alternatives Considered

Zendesk Suite

Reasons for Switching to Help Scout

Help Scout was much cheaper and more closely aligned with our needs as a company.

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

Tracked tickets extremely well. Also the canned responses worked well.

Cons

The beacon on our website didn't work that well. There were often conflict issues so we just turned it off, which is a shame because it's a major feature we had relied on. After marketing en email as a spammer, we would continue to get emails in the future from that same email address.

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

Freshdesk, Crisp, Intercom and Zendesk Suite

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

The software is pretty easy to get setup and using, even if you need to transfer info from another system. It is a very streamlined ticketing system.

Cons

It likes to stop functioning from time to time. You will go to reassign a ticket to someone and it'll take 10 minutes. It usually clears up after a bit, but for them to have just done a price increase for this product with no real enhancements (at least none I've noticed) its odd that this is happening so frequently now. They also made some changes to the reporting which at least made our lives a little more difficult for the type of reporting we were doing.

Pros

Easy to manage accounts, great for keeping records of a clients request, real-time request, great reports, easy to use and adapt. Honestly, I would recommend Help Scout, is a great ticking tool that has helped me reach-out to clients and keep communication rolling with them efficiently.

Cons

I like the software when used on a computer, but the app for a mobile device does lack functionality. I would like to have the same options as I have on the computer. I don't want to be completely demanding so I won't request the high-end gadgets, but the option to see whos working on a ticket on the app will help a lot.

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

Implementation in our business was very easy because the compatibility testing is all done in the background. As a help desk software, Help Scout is at the top of the list when it comes to implemention & integration.

Cons

Sometimes it becomes evident the network struggles but rarely is it ever an issue. Additionally, many features feel pulled directly from other help desk softwares, but the features that set it apart are still present.

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.