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Help Scout Reviews: 4.4/5 — Solid Choice
| Capabilities |
API
|
|---|---|
| Segment |
Small Business
Mid Market
Enterprise
|
| Deployment | Cloud / SaaS / Web-Based, Mobile Android, Mobile iPad, Mobile iPhone |
| Support | 24/7 (Live rep), Chat, Email/Help Desk, FAQs/Forum, Knowledge Base, Phone Support |
| Training | Documentation |
| Languages | English |
Compare Help Scout with other popular tools in the same category.
HIPAA compliance automatically included is a good thing
Integration is very minimal, especially compared to Zendesk
Ease, not much
I really liked that Help Scout required the use of the physical telephone rather than getting calls on the computer as well as having the canned messages for emails. That was helpful
There was a high volume of calls that our company never received
We solved customer inquiries and requests in our CS department
I think that all Helpscout integration, Design and the UI are very user friendly
Help Scout recently announced a new integration with messenger, which is great news for their users. However, I find it disappointing that this integration is only available for their Pro and Plus plans. In a market where most ticketing and support services offer real-time chat with customers across all plans, it feels unfair to limit such a useful feature to the most expensive tiers. As a customer, I believe that access to real-time chat should be a basic requirement for any support service. It's frustrating to see that Help Scout is putting such a critical feature behind a paywall, and it makes me question their commitment to customer satisfaction. While Help Scout may still be a reliable choice for some businesses, I hope they will reconsider their pricing model and make this integration available to all users. Until then, I will be exploring other options that offer better value for my money
Support ticketing and costumer's services
The GUI is very simple to use and SSO is nice. This isn't a bad tool for very small IT departments and it's a great way for someone new to IT to learn how to ticket. I will have to applaud them on a decent mobile app.
There is a noticeable lack of power. Out of all the ticketing services I've used, I liked this the least. Reassigning tickets seemed to be much more cumbersome than needed.
If you need a ticketing system to track work, this will be fine. If you need something more, I'd look into Zendesk
I liked and appreciated the ease of use of saved replies in my daily workflow easily including saved images, for over 5 years
The crippling of saved replies, now when you save a reply, all images are stripped from the reply, now you must create a new process for creating a saved reply adding more work to what was a simple process.
Crippling the saved replies section of the application has ruined a very useful prooduct.
The UI is clean and pretty straightforward.
The support staff is very disappointing. Pre-sales is non-existent. So if you have questions good luck trying to get them actually answered. I sent several inquiries about trying to speak with someone about my very specific use case. And only got generic canned responses. I attempted to sign up for their "demo." They indicated they would do a Q&A at the end. It felt like this was a pre-recorded webinar. When I attempted to ask my questions. I did get a response! That said they would email me and point me in the right direction. Again, didn't answer my questions.
We are trying to provide basic support and a knowledge base for our customers.
I am being forced to give HS a 1 for recommending or my review will not go through. It's a 0 truly. We moved from Google Mail to Help Scout, so as a result upon first using it -- it was amazing. The basic features of being able to see if someone else is on a ticket, ability to assign. It's a wonderful glorified gmail. At the end of the day, the CS team can answer emails and get the queue down to zero.
Where to begin ... The system is slow. The volume of emails we deal with (which is not great by standards of comparison to other SaaS companies) is to high for the infrastructure of HS servers. As told to us by their CS team. The workflow mechanisms do not functional accurated 25% of the time. Tags ... don't get me started. You have tags but but anyone can easily remove or create new ones. Permissions levels for team members ... yes, there are some. But why have them everyone can either do it all or do nothing. No logging either on who changes what. Oh ... and their support. Having known two of the top mgmt level people in this company for their support department, it's no wonder. The people themselves in support (on the front lines) are kind and really try. But their processes and policies ... don't expect a human answer because you are 99% of the time going to receive a can response. And if you dare to say you are frustrated, or angry, prepare for your email to go unanswered. Their reports -- 0% accuracy. Anyone that really digs into them will find a number of instances of double counting. And while we can ignore the reports (as we had to build our own reporting system) their constant promise that a Help Center Doc report is coming ... more lies. You can ask your visitors to rate your Help Center articles but you can never see a report on those ratings. They live in HS's database never to be seen but always to be promised that one day (if you are lucky) a report will come.
The reason we moved to HS was due to a hire into a senior management role. There were other help desk software's being looked at but this new hire had experience and "relationships" with HS. Never choose any software based on this.
That we can email customers back. That we can have multiple team members and out of office replies.
The UI is so miserable. It's clunky, not pretty to look at, not sleek and I really wish we could have a good gamifying experience so that it's a pleasure to respond to customers.
Responding to customers.
The way their features are easy to use and they keep their design minimal.
- Filled with bugs so often emails are sent to the wrong email/customer. - Support hardly reads your question but only respond with pre-defined reply. - They keep changing pricing often - They shift responsibility a lot. (ios app bugs: its apple's fault. Problem with notification: its Safari's responsibility. Problems with receiving email: Gmails to blame).
Customer communication
The way emails were stored as conversations, the searching of mails was fairly easy.
Purchased a lifeteime deal from app sumo $75 per quarter, this was changed recently to $60 per month. So price was $300 a year now is $720 a year. Do not sell that which you are not prepared to honor.
None closed down and moved to "lifetime free" account with another provider and also get more features
That it has a free trial. Otherwise, it's awful.
- Hundreds of bugs never get fixed. Bad support
I realized the benefits of zendesk.