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

Reasons for Choosing Help Scout

Switched From

Reasons for Switching to Help Scout

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 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

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.

Pros

HelpScout is really simple to use & has a really clean interface and their customer service is A+++. I am someone who will stay with the company even if they don't have all the bells and whistles if they have excellent customer service, especially something like an email provider because it's hard to find really great customer service in email. I have been using it for over 10 years, & it also is like a database of all of my customer interactions. So I can type in the customers name at the top of the screen and it will pull up every email that they've ever sent in and every email that we've ever sent to them so it becomes this really powerful documentation tool.

Cons

It doesn't have a ticketing system. So it's not so it sometimes it can be easy to miss emails or to have customer service emails go unanswered if a lot of emails come in at once. And a ticketing system and a lot of other email platforms it will bump it up to the top for you if you haven't answered it in a set amount of days but help scout doesn't have a easy way to do that. Even though it does have a knowledge base it's just not as strong in terms of customer service portal as some of the other tools I've explored like fresh desk.

Pros

They are just committed to being really great at what they are. I appreciate the tools and new features they add and they seem to have a great design team.

Cons

I’d like more messaging features like ability to target specific users and more granular control on in app messages. Would love ability to run surveys and get feedback in app but also in knowledge base articles.

Pros

Help Scout is an effective customer support tool that has quality features.
It is simple to handle customer ticketing and help desk services using Help Scout.

Cons

To date, there is nothing irritating I have found about Help Scout.
Help Scout is incredible.

Pros

It automates the entire customer relations process. A customer relationship management platform, livechat, customer support tickets...

Cons

Too many functions can make it a little difficult for beginners to get to grips with the interface

Pros

Help Scout has been a reliable and accurate help-desk and customer service solution.
The features of Help Scout are superb.

Cons

I like the efficiency of Help Scout's features.
No complains at all.

Pros

A robust feature set provided by Help Scout is revolutionizing customer support administration. Its user-friendly interface enables seamless ticket administration, providing effective and well-organized customer contact. Teams can work together on client queries using the software's collaborative inbox, which leads to quicker responses and more customer satisfaction. Help Scout's automation features automate monotonous operations to give support workers more time. Additionally, it offers meaningful insights into customer service effectiveness through its extensive reporting and analytics. Businesses may quickly link their preferred products to Help Scout's vast integration possibilities and design a unique support environment. Overall, Help Scout improves efficiency, streamlines customer support processes, and improves the client experience.

Cons

There are some restrictions to take into account, despite the fact that Help Scout has several advantages. The absence of native phone and chat support tools, which may be essential for enterprises needing real-time client communication, is one downside. Furthermore, learning the sophisticated functions of Help Scout might have a steep learning curve for new users, demanding rigorous onboarding and training. Periodic bugs and poor system performance have been reported by certain users, which can reduce productivity. Last but not least, the pricing structure can be a problem for startups or small firms with tight funds. Help Scout is a top option for customer support management in spite of these shortcomings thanks to its total value and robust feature set.

Pros

Super easy UI. I don't have to train newbies on using Help Scout for more than 10-15 minutes. It's that simple to use.

VERY customer focused. It's not about a bunch of bells and whistles that are flashy fish hooks only intended to get bought by fishermen but not actually catch fish. Their product signs for the customer and the Support rep in it 8+ hours a day.

Cons

The lack of integrations. They just rolled out with a Salesforce integration, but lack integrations in other areas. Also, they're primarily focused on email so tracking chats and calls aren't that helpful...you would need to drop that data into Redshift, Gooddata, Domo, etc. to get much functionality in it. So unless you do that, you're stuck compiling a bunch in Google Sheets.

Caveat: if all you do is email and maybe chat, then this product is everything you need and more.

Pros

Provides analytics and reporting features that can help businesses track procurement performance and identify cost savings opportunities and provides a user-friendly interface that makes it easy to manage procurement activities.

Cons

Can be difficult to set up and configure, particularly for businesses with complex procurement workflows or legacy systems

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

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 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

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

Its ease of use, great search with keywords in the help guide area of clients. The ticketing system is great and integrates with Infusinsoft and Trello so we can transfer information between teams. The reporting is also useful for creating guides based on real search terms.

Cons

A recycle bin for deleted guides would be useful and more control over the look and feel or the canned replies.

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

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

The email newsletter.

Cons

How sometimes emails end up being responded to by multiple agents because they aren't automatically closed out.

Pros

Help Scout is so user friendly! In the past, we tried several ticketing systems but they didn't seem to fit in with our flow and organization. We heard about Help Scout, tried it, and simply fell in love! Help Scout is so easy to use and work together as a team.

Cons

The one thing I would really like to see in Help Scout is a Round Robin auto-assignment feature. You can do quite a bit with workflows but I wish there was a simple way to Round Robin auto-assign our incoming tickets.

Pros

I absolutely love the templates, and tagging features. Also the knowledge base was super easy to set up.

Cons

I would love to be able to create templates for subject lines!

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Help Scout

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

It's very easy to utilize with multiple members using at the same time. You can always see where other users are and leave comments to each other on specific messages.

Cons

When copying in a new email to an existing chain (or when the HelpScout email is adding to an existing chain), attachments are usually lost and have to be reattached.