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:
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
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
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
Pros
I would strongly recommend it to anyone with relatively basic support requirements, only because I haven't seen in action with teams of more than 3, or for teams that require deeper analytics.
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
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
Pros
Their system is very responsive, quick, simple, and easy to learn.
Cons
I'd say a better or more thorough live chat & phone integration would be great.
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.
Even after the fact when I signed up for their trial they started sending me helpful auto generated emails for tips and tricks on how to use their platform.
Pros
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.
Cons
The only thing I feel they could improve on is more features as far as layout and styling for the knowledge base.
Rating breakdown
Time used: Less than 6 months
Frequency of use: Daily
Likelihood to recommend
And creating support ticket form and knowledge base pages.
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
I definitely recommend any company or business that has a customer support component to it to use their software and platform to start.
Pros
It was straightforward and less confusing than Intercom. Escalating and de-escalating issues was pretty easy.
Cons
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.
Rating breakdown
Time used: Less than 6 months
Frequency of use: Daily
Likelihood to recommend
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)
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
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
Help Scout is a very user intuitive and helpful tool to keep all your customer support interactions gathered and managed in a single place.
Pros
Last but not least Help Scout features documentation pages which act as a knowledge base for supporting your users and thus eliminating support calls.
Cons
I would like to see more granular configurations made available in the aesthetic side of a knowledge base.
Rating breakdown
Time used: Free Trial
Frequency of use: Daily
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
Does not have live chat, but this is coming very, very soon.
Rating breakdown
Time used: Less than 6 months
Frequency of use: Daily
Likelihood to recommend
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 found HelpScout incredibly useful; it has increased our response time and productivity, and we are starting to build our internal Knowledge Base.
Pros
We have synced our main Mailbox queue to a private channel in Slack, so each time there's a new ticket is sent there, which is beneficial to keep track of incoming tickets.
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
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
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.
Pros
Some of the emails are automatically closed after they are replied to, you can tag people to assign emails to, you can add notes that only team members can see, and you're able to move messages from mailbox to mailbox within seconds.
Cons
A live chat functionality would help to eliminate the need for other apps.
Rating breakdown
Time used: Less than 6 months
Frequency of use: Daily
Likelihood to recommend
We started using it recently after moving from a competitor Has all the features we need, at around 30% of the cost Easy to use Allows us to put chat tools on sales pages so that customers can talk to humans or email questions Links to documents
Pros
Cheap compared to competitors Easy to use Ability to put onto specific pages at no extra cost Does exactly what we need Connects with our support email, so ppl can email outside of office hours Has a built in documentation site so people can 'self help' and look at faqs etc
Cons
Could benefit from further customization (Headlines etc) When linking to documentation offsite- links can break (We use an ad blocker so could be that)
Rating breakdown
Time used: Less than 6 months
Frequency of use: Daily
Likelihood to recommend
Overall we have had a good experience but I do think we have outgrown Help Scout as our company grows and other departments need visibility into Support data.
Pros
Also, if you don't want to communicate with your user with a real-time chat app, this help tool will help you to have a selling point too.
Cons
It's a good product, I don't have any serious request. Just one, they can add a suggested part to manage knowledgebase articles in their admin panel. Now, we have to manage them programmatically.
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
