Web-based help desk designed for better customer experience
4.7/5 (159 reviews)This design feature represents Help Scout’s core value: It’s about conversations, not ticket numbers. Customers don’t feel like they’re just a number or waiting in a long line. Instead of a corporate template, Help Scout’s email response layout is designed to be personal.
Help Scout offers Docs, a knowledge base that you can install in just a few clicks. Everyone on your support team can easily create step-by-step articles and tutorials to help customers 24/7 and keep support requests to a minimum.
Creating articles in Docs is simple. You can create them from scratch, or upload existing HTML, Markdown or text files. Links, images, videos, and file attachments are all supported. With a simple style guide, content can be formatted in many ways from top to bottom. Once installed, you can also upload your company’s logo and instantly get a website that looks good on any device.
Help Scout is equipped with real-time reporting, helping managers understand what’s happening on the support front, no matter the time of day. Viewed within the dashboard, Help Scout reports are categorized into four categories: Conversations, Productivity, Team, and Happiness.
Conversation metrics show the busiest time of day, conversations answered, number of customers, and more. Productivity focuses on the help desk’s efficiency metrics, such as time spent answering conversations, first response time, and resolution times. Team/User reports allow high-level insights into the metrics of each team member, such as the number of customers helped and the handle time. Happiness scores are derived from customer feedback to gauge the overall customer experience. Help Scout’s report filters (tag, folder, or conversation type) helps focus your reports on the data that you’re interested in.
Help Scout’s workflows function like Gmail filters or other email client rules. Workflows can both be manual or automatic. Automatic workflows are IF/THEN statements, where actions take place automatically when conditions are met, i.e., if a conversation has “billing” in the subject line, then it’ll be assigned to the appropriate person. The user can apply manual workflows at any time to a single conversation, or in bulk. Manual workflows require user action.
The “auto-reply” is a mailbox-specific feature that sends when new messages are generated, i.e., “Hey, we got your message and we’ll be in touch soon!” Everyone on the team can use Saved Replies (often called “canned responses”) to quickly answer common questions.
Whenever you work on a conversation in Help Scout, you see visual indicators that tell you if a colleague is working on the same task and what actions they’re currently performing, e.g., viewing or replying — a feature referred to as the Traffic Cop, which prevents duplicate replies from being sent. If someone has replied ahead of you, Traffic Cop allows you to review the updates and then gives you the option to send your pending reply as is, edit it, or discard it altogether.
Each message flagged by Traffic Cop is flagged in a Needs Attention folder located on the sidebar. Once the threads are addressed, the folder automatically disappears. Traffic Cop is on by default but, although not recommended, can be disabled upon request.
Most popular features of all Customer Service & Support apps
Requires iOS 11.0 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.
25 reviewers had the following to say about Help Scout's features:
Pros
- Multiple mailboxes are supported and easy to setup - Straightforward interface - Fast - Good stats - Easy to handle statuses and customize responses - Good mobile/tablet apps
Cons
- Merging tickets is a nightmare: hard to remember how to, requires the same customer email - Contacts management is convoluted and limited; no integration with external contact providers
Rating breakdown
Time used: Less than 6 months
Frequency of use: Daily
I’m so glad I started using helpscout, it’s easy to integrate with other apps we’re already using and our whole team loves it.
Pros
I know there are other task managers out there but helpscout is so easy to use and simple in tracking tickets, assigning and closing, it’s all I needed to stay organized with projects and small tasks for my team.
Cons
I wish I could get more details in the reporting. Maybe I have fully used it to the full potential but I would love to have full reports on each team member and how long each task took them, and be able to see this at a glance.
Rating breakdown
Time used: 6-12 months
Frequency of use: Daily
Likelihood to recommend
Help Scout is very satisfying to use, it helps manage support tickets efficiently and integrates well with other tools such as Slack.
Pros
I also love that it's easy to setup multi desk support, so that multiple people can serve a specific ticket.
Cons
One aspect that can be improved is the UI, it hasn't received significant upgrades for a while, but other than that it's very clean so maybe it hasn't really needed one.
Rating breakdown
Time used: 2+ years
Frequency of use: Monthly
Likelihood to recommend
And creating support ticket form and knowledge base pages.
It's amazing, and we love the mobile app for ease of communication within the team.
Pros
- Super simple user interface - Built in canned responses make collaborating with the team really easy - Ability to add notes between team members - Merge feature between tickets to streamline operations
Cons
- Load time can be slow when forwarding in emails - No real-time notification when a new ticket comes in (you have to constantly refresh the page)
Rating breakdown
Time used: 1-2 years
We've used a number of ticket systems and found Helpscout best meets our needs.
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.
Cons
A recycle bin for deleted guides would be useful and more control over the look and feel or the canned replies.
Rating breakdown
Time used: 2+ years
Frequency of use: Daily
Likelihood to recommend
We support a B2B SaaS platform in the Marketing Automation space and provide email support.
Pros
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.
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).
Rating breakdown
Time used: 6-12 months
Frequency of use: Daily
Likelihood to recommend
I've used this for customer service for a website development company and a professional women's organization and it's been amazing in both cases!
Pros
Very easy to use, has unlimited users, simple, has mobile apps, and everyone's signature can be uniform.
Cons
No app integrations, barely any help center, don't like the way the contact form looks, no phone or live chat support.
Rating breakdown
Time used: 6-12 months
Frequency of use: Weekly
Likelihood to recommend
Ease.
Pros
I even had non-coders building workflows to make email management easier.
Cons
There's a lot of integrations that aren't built in.
Rating breakdown
Time used: 2+ years
Frequency of use: Weekly
Likelihood to recommend
Better workflow, more satisfied customers due to quicker responses.
Pros
You can also see who is viewing or responding to cases in real time, to prevent duplicate responds or work.
Cons
Once new rules/workflows are put in place, it can be slightly slow to reprocess existing cases, which might just be due to the incredibly high number of cases we have logged.
Rating breakdown
Time used: Less than 6 months
Frequency of use: Daily
Likelihood to recommend
blog posts on Support, Marketing, and other related fields.
Pros
Super easy UI. I don't have to train newbies on using Help Scout for more than 10-15 minutes.
Cons
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.
Rating breakdown
Time used: 2+ years
Frequency of use: Daily
Likelihood to recommend
Recommendations to others considering Help Scout
Definitely. Review Zendesk and a couple other offerings, but Help Scout is fantastic for small and medium teams. Where Zendesk shines with their management level controls and granular options, they fail in the actual UI and "using it every day" area. Help Scout is the inverse.
CONS: - No real-time chat feature with other team members (notes works well but it would be great to chat with another team member, and capture this conversation without using a separate messaging client like SLACK)
Pros
I love the templates feature (though I'm sure that's standard amongst competitors).
Cons
They are working on a live chat feature, that will be nice when it launches.
Rating breakdown
Time used: 1-2 years
Frequency of use: Occasionally
Likelihood to recommend
And I like the fun congratulatory messages it gives anytime a folder is cleared out.
Pros
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.
Cons
Automatic workflows are somewhat complicated to set up.
Rating breakdown
Time used: 6-12 months
Frequency of use: Daily
Likelihood to recommend
Pros
We are mainly using Help Scout as a customer service tracking tool.
Cons
It does not integrate as smoothly with Salesforce as we would like and doesn't create smooth integration with our sales funnels.
Rating breakdown
Time used: 6-12 months
Frequency of use: Daily
Likelihood to recommend
Speedy communication with clients, great reports to categorize the requests that come in, very to near flawless functionality, and rarely an issue with Help Scout.
Pros
Easy to manage accounts, great for keeping records of a clients request, real-time request, great reports, easy to use and adapt.
Cons
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.
Rating breakdown
Time used: 1-2 years
Frequency of use: Daily
Likelihood to recommend
We used help scout in our team project for any questions or problems faced real time and got solutions real time !
Pros
The chat option is the best feature for real time support !
Cons
I used the free trial and the default setting seems pretty convenient and easy . The solutions for the customers queries are well answered to the point .
Rating breakdown
Time used: Free Trial
Frequency of use: Occasionally
Likelihood to recommend
The product is very well designed, easy and natural to use.
Pros
I like the integration with the KB system to quickly insert a reference to the article.
Cons
I'm really enjoying everything on it, especially now that they added the live chat so I can stop using other software for that.
Rating breakdown
Time used: 2+ years
Frequency of use: Daily
Likelihood to recommend
I've seen, used and implemented several CRM solutions in the past and helpscout just blew them all.
Pros
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!
Rating breakdown
Time used: 2+ years
Frequency of use: Daily
Likelihood to recommend
We found HelpScout incredibly useful; it has increased our response time and productivity, and we are starting to build our internal Knowledge Base.
Pros
We currently only use the ticketing/email feature in HelpScout, so setup and email configuration were complete in less than 10 minutes.
Cons
So far, the only complaint we had was the "next" feature, once you reply to a ticket, the next open ticket assigned to you would pop up immediately, and if you're not careful, you might respond the wrong thing to the customer!
Rating breakdown
Time used: Less than 6 months
Frequency of use: Daily
Likelihood to recommend
ditto pro's
Pros
Saved responses, tagging, automated workflows, docs (so useful I can't stress enough), reporting (we never use), great integrations and a customer support chatbot 2.0 (coming).
Cons
The customer support chatbot is a little useless currently - but they're 2.0 in production is exactly the fix we need.
Rating breakdown
Time used: Less than 6 months
Frequency of use: Daily
Likelihood to recommend
Pros
Their system is very responsive, quick, simple, and easy to learn.
Cons
Or use everyone's API to feed into your own system.
Rating breakdown
Time used: 2+ years
Likelihood to recommend
Recommendations to others considering Help Scout
Talk with them. They are real people. They'll tell you where they are good and if you need to look elsewhere for what you need. They do email really, really well. I am stoked that we get to use them.
Plus it has a nice API that our webmaster has used to give me information from our online store about past customer orders.
