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About Help Scout
Help Scout is a dedicated customer support platform built for growing teams to deliver best-in-class customer service. When you sign up you get access to an entire suite of tools, all optimized specifically for customer support.
Help Scout's shared inbox includes features like private notes and @mentions to improve team collaboration, and collision detection helps reduce duplicate work by showing when an agent is actively working on a specific conversation. You can automate routine tasks like conversation sorting with workflows and get additional context with customer profiles.
If you’re looking to create a powerful customer knowledge base, Docs is right up your alley. The intuitive editor makes creating help center content a breeze, and built-in search functionality and organization features ensure customers can find the content they need. Docs-specific reports show which content is doing best and the most helpful areas for you to expand.
You also get access to Beacon, which offers live chat capabilities and proactive support options through an embeddable widget. Customers can search help documentation or submit a question to your support team right from the widget, helping them get answers when and where they need them most.
Help Scout also comes loaded with pre-built performance dashboards. Reports help you better understand individual and team performance, and you can create custom views to have a snapshot of the metrics most important to you.
Last, but certainly not least, you get access to Help Scout’s world-class support team who are available by email 24/6 to answer any questions you may have.
Help Scout pricing
Help Scout does not have a free version but does offer a free trial. Help Scout paid version starts at US$20.00/month.
Starting Price:
US$20.00/month
Free Version:
No
Free trial:
Yes
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Help Scout Reviews
Feature rating
5 reviews of 214
View all reviews
Greg
- Industry: Veterinary
- Company size: 11–50 Employees
- Used Daily for 1+ year
-
Review Source
Value for Money
5
Features
5
Ease of Use
5
Customer Support
5
5
Reviewed on 17/11/2016
Completely changed our business - for the better
Most companies using Help Desk software are in software development, tech or online commerce of some kind. We're in the boring, traditional business of veterinary medicine practice, and deal with hundreds of emails a day from clients and the rest of the outside world.
We're the only vet company I know of that uses a help desk, and we use Help Scout - and absolutely LOVE it. We did use Zendesk previously, but found that it's way too complicated and not very personal. Pet owners don't want to be given a ticket # and feel like they're speaking to a robot. Help Scout solved that immediately when we switched.
We have a lot of complex conversations via email that require multiple people being involved, communicating internal messages to each other about certain threads, etc. etc.
Help Scout is absolutely fantastic, because it's very elegant in it's simplicity - but tremendously powerful in it's capability.
On top of that, we've found their support team to be kick ass, highly responsive and always eager to try and figure out a solution to any issue we bring them.
We are very loyal Help Scout clients, and plan to be for a long time.
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
Laurène
- Industry: Computer Software
- Company size: 11–50 Employees
- Used Daily for 1+ year
-
Review Source
Value for Money
4
Features
4
Ease of Use
5
Customer Support
5
4
Reviewed on 5/9/2022
Help Scout is great for small teams looking for a simple and inexpensive shared inbox
Help Scout is a great option for small to medium teams who do not want and overly complicated and pricy Help Desk software. It lacks some nice-to-have features but it will still help you provide great customer service.
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.
Reasons for Choosing Help Scout
Gmail doesn't work well as a shared inbox.Switched From
GmailReasons 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.
David
- Industry: Information Technology & Services
- Company size: 2–10 Employees
- Used Daily for 2+ years
-
Review Source
Value for Money
3
Features
3
Ease of Use
5
Customer Support
3
3
Reviewed on 7/2/2022
Ticketing system feels abandoned
Day to day it works, but I think better products now exist.
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.
Verified Reviewer
- Industry: Internet
- Company size: 11–50 Employees
- Used Daily for 1+ year
-
Review Source
Value for Money
4
Features
4
Ease of Use
5
Customer Support
3
4
Reviewed on 24/6/2021
Great for starting with customer support
It was good, although we decided pretty quickly to move to Intercom.
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.
Sara
- Industry: Nonprofit Organisation Management
- Company size: 51–200 Employees
- Used Daily for 1-5 months
-
Review Source
Value for Money
4
Features
4
Ease of Use
4
Customer Support
4
4
Reviewed on 25/11/2020
Help Scout helps out
Help Scout helps out in a pinch. I definitely recommend any company or business that has a customer support component to it to use their software and platform to start.
Pros
When I used to work at ActBlue as a support associate, I really liked Help Scout's ticketing system. It was straightforward and less confusing than Intercom. Escalating and de-escalating issues was pretty easy. Help Scout is a huge help for customer service, people oriented folks like me.
Cons
This is just a theory but I feel like Help Scout works better with certain email addresses than others. For people who have older emails such as hotmail, aol, or yahoo - their messages don't come across so clearly, which makes helping our customers and clients a real challenge.
