Help Scout Reviews

Pros

Helpscout is our principal platform, as the vast majority of our customers require either a knowledge base or live chat help for their enterprises. Therefore, we provided them with a Helpscout-based knowledge library and made live chat available to them.

Cons

The platform's interface, especially the inbox UI, has a lot of room for improvement, and there is now just one knowledgebase template/design available, which is disappointing.

Pros

I really like how Help Scout simplifies the process of reporting, sorting, and monitoring issues for our staff. All of our staff members are comfortable with Help Scout, which is why we've adopted it for internal and external help. The integrated nature of the Docs sites is another perk; I appreciate being able to rapidly link articles and check statistics about which sections of our help libraries are most popular.

Cons

For our rather modestly sized support staff, I can think of no significant drawbacks to using Help Scout. I'd like to see a couple additional features in Help Scout, but for our current level of assistance, it's perfect.

Pros

It's easy to search, tag people/teams, and assign tickets. It also integrates well with our CRM.

Cons

It's often hard to follow threads and be able to see the initial conversation. I don't love the recent updates and we often had technical issues of our webhook disabling.

Pros

The price was good, but now I see why they charge so little.

Cons

They are constantly making poor decisions when designing updates. The last six months have been update after update that has made the platform harder to use for my agents.

Applying Custom Fields, an action that previously took 1 click is now hidden behind a collapsed panels.

Adding links is no longer a simple cmd+K macro. They replaced this standard keyboard command with their own internal "Command Pallet," which serves no use to our team.

They still don't have SLA support.

Pros

Love that you can set up multiple mailboxes and have multiple emails routing in to one space. The ability to see when a customer has viewed an email is also particularly useful and the search option is perfect.

Cons

Keeps disconnecting from apps and support couldn't fix it. No desktop notifications which would be immensely helpful.

Pros

Help Scout has been a great help desk platform for our business. Outside managing customer queries, we've utilized their workflow and saved reply features to semi-automate and fully automate several key areas. This has saved a lot of time and allowed us to focus on the customer. We've also been able to build our customer query management process around Help Scout and use this across multiple teams. It's a straightforward and easy-to-use platform that is intuitive in some aspects.

Cons

While their workflow functionality is good, some areas are missing that would benefit this function. It would also be great if Help Scout had an internal SLA feature which was broad enough to cover various SLA scenarios.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Help Scout

Pros

Keeps all customer communications in one place - allow us to respond to customers in almost real time

Cons

You have to pay more for intergrations into a crm

Pros

Easy to manage inboxes, AI features and managing guides

Cons

Communication history gets lost sometimes and customer replies don't appear

Pros

It increases efficiency in handling support through email.

Cons

My favourite part is the customer service. They handle technical issues in a superb manner.

Pros

I like that it helps me save time and convenient.

Cons

I have trouble when I try to use the mobile app.

Pros

The most important feature about helpscout is the tags feature which allow you track tickets better. As well as saved replies and the super friendly user interface

Cons

Helpscout does know allow to add multiple email signatures within the same user and it forces the addition of multiple users.

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

Client of mine enjoing the one helo desk solution. Where he can solve all support task.

Cons

I haven't figured out any limitations yet. Nothing we're missing.

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

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

- 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 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

I like how transparent the experience is for the user and how easy it is to set up and use. I like the integration with the KB system to quickly insert a reference to the article.

Cons

Difficult to tell. I'm really enjoying everything on it, especially now that they added the live chat so I can stop using other software for that.
Maybe I'd love a more advanced system to manage the custom replies.
I'd appreciate if there's a better way to manage formatting inside the editor for the KB.

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

It's your best solution on the market if you are looking to interact with your customers only via email. Really easy to implement and the CS is really helpful too.

Cons

It's really difficult to spice things up for the customer. Limitations are set rather quickly when trying to customize Reports or being proactive with customers.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Choosing Help Scout

Switched From

Pros

The customer support is phenomenal! The Help Scout team is personal, friendly, and fun- a pleasure to interact with any time I get the chance. But because the software is so seamless on its own, a rarely have to reach out for support. I most appreciate the reporting features that show conversation rates and customer happiness.

Cons

I would like to be able to export a list of customers I have spoke with over a set time period, so I would be able to automate outreach and followup. As of now, there is no established way to export lists or data.

Pros

We love that it brings all the communication into one central place to help answer clients back.

Cons

We do not like how forwarding of emails work and they always drop the attachments.

Pros

First, Help Scout gets major brownie points for "eating their own dog food" -- they are all about the Customer Experience, and they live up to this philosophy by delivering not only a very easy to use and modern product, but answering support inquiries right away (and thoroughly), and publishing an extremely helpful and insightful industry blog. So when you buy into Help Scout, you're not just getting a great software product, but also getting a great organization running behind it.

Aside from that I love how Help Scout does itself in fact deliver a great customer experience to our customers. It gets out of the way. Customers are not aware that we use it, in fact they believe they are emailing directly with me. Transactions are fast and lightweight, there are not many bells and whistles to complicate the process and slow down the support workflow. Help Scout made the hard decision to not allow custom fields on tickets, and while this at first seemed limiting, it has in fact allowed us to handle the ticket queue much more quickly, due to much lower overhead.

For delivering quick and helpful email support, I can't imagine a much better way to bullseye the task than using Help Scout. We've been very satisfied with it.

Cons

The Docs section of the product is a little bit underdeveloped, but adequate. It would be nice in that area to have more cohesion the way you'd typically find in a generic content management system (e.g. Wordpress). For instance, currently it isn't possible to move an article from one collection to another -- you have to copy its contents, re-build it on the other side, and delete the original.

That is my main complaint. In spite of that we have a full internal and external knowledge base hosted with the Docs feature, and it is adequate for our needs, if not exceptional.

Pros

I like the fact that this software integrates with my CRM so I can see all support contacts in the contact record.

Cons

The solution is robust but the thing I like least about the software is the pricing. It's a tad steep.

Pros

This was the first customer service software we used as a team and it is really solid for being able to connect with customers through multiple points of contacts.

Cons

I really wish we could connect the entire customer journey within helpscout, it would allow our team to be more informed when dealing with customers.