Help Scout Features

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.

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.

-Extremely easy to set up, add employees to, and use on a daily basis without hassle. -Love the option to assign communications and update the status of them. -Simple, straightforward design. -Did I mention is was easy? Almost no training required.

-It would be nice to have more customization options. The simplicity is of appeal here, but the limitations are noticeable.

- Keeping un-answered emails bolded even after you've read it once, - "Traffic Cop" for keeping egg off your face in case you send an email before reading a follow-up email from the customer - Intuitive inbox and Doc-editing interfaces - Ability to tag email addresses and assign conversations to a particular team member - "Show original" option to see the email in its original formatting, in case HelpScout's interface isn't able to accommodate - Quick customer service response times, to fix problems in a pinch - about 20 other things :-)

Pretty minor, really: - Sometimes the inbox counts don't always update automatically (between 30 seconds and a few mins, depending on the day) - I honestly can't think of any others (seriously, it's that good)

ease of use, works on mobile, customer support. Overall it helps me stay on top of all our customer requests.

None! There is not a lot to say here. My only gripe was before there was no mobile app but now there is and its brilliant

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

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

It's a great app for handling incoming emails - it gives you a lot of options on how to handle them, and it's easy to set up and to manage (even with a lot of mailboxes connected).

The chat is just not working that great, it was old-fashioned, hard to implement, and just overall not a great experience for both customer and the support agent. Also, the analytics UX/UI could be improved.

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...

Read more

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.

They are super responsive. They are pretty rad and transparent: if something goes wrong on their end they are not afraid of admitting fault. Which leads me to trusting them because I can believe them. I know that tells you very little of the product, but as leadership that's something that I really need. Other environments—blameshifting—I cannot stand and can't trust, believe, or hope that they'll hold true to their promise. We're leaving another vendor for that reason. Their system is very responsive, quick, simple, and easy to learn. There aren't too many bells and whistles which simplifies my life when onboarding new teammates. Their docs are well written and engaging.

The vendor is great! I'd say a better or more thorough live chat & phone integration would be great. We communicate with customers via email, phone, live chat, and Twitter. It's hard when all these are fairly decentralized. Help Scout *does* have a live chat integration (which we use) and we can forward VMs to Help Scout (which is great). But if you're looking for tracking call length, live chat length, or some of the other nifty metrics in one central place, you'll need to use Excel or a Google Sheet. Or use everyone's API to feed into your own system.

Initial setup is straightforward. We currently only use the ticketing/email feature in HelpScout, so setup and email configuration were complete in less than 10 minutes. The interface is clean, direct, and getting used to the layout is quick. 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...

Read more

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!

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.

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.

Easy to manage accounts, great for keeping records of a clients request, real-time request, great reports, easy to use and adapt. Honestly, I would recommend Help Scout, is a great ticking tool that has helped me reach-out to clients and keep communication rolling with them efficiently.

I like the software when used on a computer, but the app for a mobile device does lack functionality. I would like to have the same options as I have on the computer. 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.

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.

The messaging feature is over-priced. $50/month just for showing pop-up messages in your widget is a but too much!

I love all of the features that Help Scout offers. We're a growing CS department and it's scaled with us quite nicely. Our Developers are able to customize is for us and it's quite easy to use.

There are only a few things I don't like about HS. The main thing is that it would be nice to make article formatting easier to use with out HTML. And, it would awesome if they implemented a live chat feature, so we didn't have to use Intercom in addition to HS.

Help Scout allows my team to handle client requests collaboratively and efficiently. The UI makes it easy to view my pending cases, as well as my teammate's cases making it easy to take it over if someone is out of the office.

I have no cons for Help Scout. All the features and functionality was incredibly well thought out, and it is amazing how helpful it has been for my team.

I use helpscout as a simple task management platform for a small team. 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.

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.

It was incredibly easy to set up. We migrated out of Zendesk to use Help Scout, and my team's eyes lit up from how intuitive it is to use. I even had non-coders building workflows to make email management easier. The best is when I asked their support about integrations and other fancy- and they told me that it's not in their vision. They want to build the best email support desk, period. And it's really really good!

There's a lot of integrations that aren't built in. Which, it's not a game breaker. Do you REALLY need your toaster talking to Help Scout?

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.

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.

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.

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.

Help Scout does what it's supposed to do and it's very good at it. No doubt about that. It's the very main reason why many companies trust Help Scout for their customer support management. You can create automations, saved replies, a knowledgebase, and a chat widget (they call it Beacon). Everything works as it's supposed to and we never had any issues so far. It's really easy to set up automations...

Read more

I found another software that has more features than this app and the pricing is also good. I wish Help Scout will have a feature where you can snooze or schedule an email or reply, and the ability to create embeddable forms. Also, I wish you can connect your social media accounts so you will be able to easily monitor your social media audiences when they message you or when they comment on your posts. These are available on the other software I found and it is a great alternative to this software.

I no longer get an email about an email that is about a forward of an email which was originally about an email that was about an email that was forwarded regarding an email that was sent. Exactly..we have all had the pleasure of deciphering the shortened email snippet, forwards and the references to email threads that are broken but with Help Scout I now see it all..and see when..and where ..and...

Read more

This is only a tough question and one I would suggest come first when reviewing since after listing all the things i love and enjoy it helps me block out the uglier bits and pieces.. Besides some of the android app glitches that are more annoying than crisis creating I am still hard pressed to find many cons about using HS this past 2 years. has had a "negative" impact on my work communications besides the timeline busting myself for something

- 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

- 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

Their entire philosophy is centered around customer satisfaction and success. This mirrors our own approach and it's great seeing that in action. They are also great at handling questions and service requests, and I love all the support and information resources they offer.

I wish the reporting functions were better and more detailed. Sometimes when something wasn't functioning in a way that worked for it, their response was suggesting a work around that would require a service plan upgrade when I figured out a work around that could work at our current level, but that is a very minor gripe.

They refer to support tickets as conversations, which might not seem like much at first but if you really think about how much you value your customers you will appreciate this verbiage. 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. This was extremely helpful for me as I am selling software so...

Read more

The only thing I feel they could improve on is more features as far as layout and styling for the knowledge base. It was lacking in that sense but other than that I didn't see anything that I personally needed to be different.

HelpScout was the first shared emailing system we implemented that worked flawlessly with our setup. It rivals all other methods that focus on a ticket number approach but makes the communication process simple for users to grasp and professional yet informal. The best part of Help Scout for us was the shared inbox aspect and the ability to collaborate with others easily.

Help Scout is expensive. In my opinion, it is overpriced. They started at a great introductory rate and grandfathered those rates for early-stage users. I heard from many users when they increased their rates, all of whom got a personalized message from the [SENSITIVE CONTENT], promising our rates would stay the same. Months later, they recanted on their promise and hiked our rates. It was not a great feeling being lied to, and my love for the company quickly disappeared. Other shared email services can replace Help Scout, but this is your best bet if you're looking for a simple approach and are not worried about the price tag.