Help Scout

Avantages

- Multiple mailboxes are supported and easy to setup
- Straightforward interface
- Fast
- Good stats
- Easy to handle statuses and customize responses
- Good mobile/tablet apps

Inconvénients

- 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

Avantages

First of all, Help Scout does exactly what it needs to (facilitate organized, efficient conversations between customers and support people) without getting in the way. The UI is great (especially since 2015) and the workflows are easy to learn and relatively powerful. Keyboard shortcuts are killer. But most of all, I love that Help Scout doesn't feel "heavy" or "dated". It feels modern, fast, and clean. And the support people are just plain awesome. Oh, and did I mention their blog posts?

Inconvénients

Like many companies, they had to grow to keep up with their customer base - which is awesome! But some of their new hires weren't the greatest at support (ironic, eh?). Also, they've had a fair share of downtime recently, though they've been excellent at communicating and building confidence even through these rough times.

Avantages

After taking over mid-stage with a company that just launched their paid service with ALL kinds of customer service & payment issues, Help Scout was a saving grace and helped get a handle on each issue.

Inconvénients

I honestly cannot come up with a con maybe other than a better integration with Infusionsoft however that may not have anything to do with them it may be restrictions by Infusionsoft.

Avantages

I'm a huge fan of Help Scout. Everything works fluidly as it is supposed to, of course! Reassigning is a breeze, replying is a breeze, and definitely not getting those ridiculous forward of forwards mentioned by another reviewer is priceless. I have never had any glitches and I feel like Help Scout goes out of its way to NOT waste my time. Yay!

Avantages

Great reporting options
Easy to use
Awesome customer support team
Great search options
Easy to set up

Inconvénients

Their help docs are often outdated. Also some of the features that stated were included ended up having a extra monthly charge.

Avantages

A very Nice clean board that is very functional
Have used it for multiple aspects of the business and it does a solid job of it all

Inconvénients

Moving away from this as it is not as robust as some of the other boards out there.
Conversation flows sometimes don't make sense

Avantages

Besides the fact I can assign emails to my teammates or other inboxes of other departments - the tagging and automated triggers make my life so much easier!

Inconvénients

I think this is kind of irrelevant, but the fact I can't change the font and the color of the text is sometimes a problem.

Avantages

Very easy to use - was what we need in customer service inquiry software

Inconvénients

Nothing yet but haven't used it for a long time

Avantages

We are mainly using Help Scout as a customer service tracking tool. It has allowed us to move out of gmail to better track conversations with clients and track how quickly we are responding to customer issues.

Inconvénients

It does not integrate as smoothly with Salesforce as we would like and doesn't create smooth integration with our sales funnels.

Avantages

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!

Inconvénients

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?

Avantages

As a small startup I have been doing support from my email inbox for a long time. Help Scout has saved me from this! I can now search through support requests and understand the metrics/ trends behind them.

Inconvénients

I would like to see more in terms of visualization. You can tag certain requests with things, but I wish this process was more automated.

Avantages

Easy to set up and by far the least expensive support software I have used. Great for small operators!

Inconvénients

Not as many bells and whistles as some of the others. Couldn't get it to work with my CRM, so had to switch to something else that cost me more. :(

Avantages

I like how it is like an email box that everyone in that department has access to.

Inconvénients

At first it takes time to learn. I didn't like closing something out because I didn't want others to miss it. So I started leaving those pending.

Avantages

I love how easy it is to have questions or errors come in and then be able to pass them along to the proper person or department for review and execution.

Inconvénients

The overall process of assigning to someone and the buttons could better display what does what.

Avantages

In contrast to other CS tools, HelpScout is still fairly simple in its offerings and that's a good thing when you're a small company that doesn't need 326 different features. It's simple, easy to use and affordable.

Inconvénients

I would like the design of the page support agents see when they handle tickets to feel a bit more modern, or offer a few customisations.

Avantages

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

Inconvénients

Could benefit from further customization (Headlines etc)
When linking to documentation offsite- links can break (We use an ad blocker so could be that)

Avantages

I like this product because you can easily tag and separate different emails. It also has analytics that helps you with KPIs.

Inconvénients

I hate its search because it is ridiculously stupid. You can't find what you need, keywords don't work etc. Basically, it is useless.

Avantages

It is your best solution on the market if you are looking to interact with your customers via email only. Really easy to do and CS is also very useful.

Inconvénients

It's hard to spice up the customers. Limits are set pretty quickly when trying to personalize reports or be proactive with clients.

Avantages

HelpScout is extremely easy to set up, and makes managing our support queue much easier than it used to be.

Inconvénients

Honestly, not too many complaints about Help Scout. It's a little bit expensive, but not prohibitively so.

Avantages

This improved communication with our group and made having two locations much easier. Documentation is also clear.

Inconvénients

The phone application is probably the least favorite part of helpscout. I'm able to use the desktop most of the time so I don't use it all the time.

Avantages

I thought the website design was clean and attractive.

Inconvénients

I only used it in training, but I didn't like the way the knowledge base was. I thought it was a much easier experience searching for my training materials in Dropbox.

Avantages

Application design is dead simple and great.
Everything is easy to use, clean, you really need it if you're providing support.

Inconvénients

This system is for managing tickets and supports, but since we had no tickets, our usage was not so frequent and were invited on a regular base to connect elsewhat we are going to be ousted from the free plan, so we decided to move to freshdesk.

Avantages

Pretty clever program, could be used very efficiently, and offers very useful functionality for the money

Inconvénients

There is not a lot you can do with this software, it's kind of limited, even though it does it's job very well

Avantages

I find it makes it easy to email about issues with their account or using the software.

Inconvénients

The dashboard isn't clear at all. I don't like it.

Avantages

Assigning co-workers and keeping everyone in the know has never been easier. Everything you need to know is in one location. There is no more who sent what from where.

Inconvénients

Would be great if you could link the search bar to your g-mail

Avantages

Help Scout is fast and efficient. Everything works smoothly 95% of the time, and for the other 5% their support team is on it, making you aware of slow down + new features. I could not imagine running a support team of any type without Help Scout.

Inconvénients

I have to stretch to think of a negative, but I have wished that we could get reports on the click-through rates for emails. Some mass email features would be nice as well.

Avantages

Great for email management when using a shared email.
Easy to use
Great for small business

Inconvénients

BCC limit of 50

Avantages

It's a simple, slick layout without a lot of bloat. I've used Help Scout primarily for email support, but they also support public facing and private document databases.

Inconvénients

It has a couple of oddities in hotkeys and text editor blips, but they're negligible. I've yet to run into anything that's a real headache.

Avantages

Cute prompts for cycling through work flow- nice feel and intuitive. Great overall ease of use and design!

Inconvénients

My employer switched due to pricing but no issues otherwise.

Avantages

Very easy for a team of 3-4 to manage incoming support tickets. Reporting is equally easy and makes it manageable to track progress over time.

Inconvénients

The "knowledgebase" sites you can build with Help Scout simply aren't up to par with competitors. If you care more about your knowledgebase articles than your support inbox, I'd go with a different solution.

Avantages

It is a very user friendly and easy to use software. You can add all channels at one place and easily handle them.

Inconvénients

Sometimes you may miss a conversation if its a little older (Page 2,3 etc). Any unattended conversation shows as bold but if the conversation is 2 3 pages behind, you may not go that back to see and may miss them.

Avantages

There are so many great features within Help Scout that choosing only one reason why I like it is hard! The new reporting features have to be my favorite. I manage the conversations that come in through HelpScout for my company, and being able to view the different reports is invaluable. Especially with the new Happiness Reports, we are able to meet our clients needs in a non-intrusive way.

Inconvénients

My company has been using HelpScout for the past year, and there have only been a couple times where we have run into issues. The biggest issue for me was not being able to change a customer for a particular conversation. We have employees that frequently email in requests from clients, so they would be stuck as the customer not our actual client. I reached out to support and they took note of my request, and later last year they fixed the issue!

Avantages

It is a convenient way to organise support tasks although there really aren't any special features with it. You can attach documents and create new notes but nothing much else.

Inconvénients

When you reply to a note, the default option is to close the note. This is silly. If I reply to a note, I want that response to be sent to a relevant person. This has caught me out once or twice.

Avantages

A simple and intuitive support mailbox for managing customer support without getting lost in a complicated system; it comes with a set of features for customisation and minimal training required. 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.

Inconvénients

A live chat functionality would help to eliminate the need for other apps. Having all these functionalities in one platform would be good. I understand that may be on the way.

Avantages

- Easy interface that allows me to quickly move through my open tickets.
- Quick assignment to other workers.
- Beautiful saved reply search feature makes it simple to answer frequently asked questions.

Inconvénients

The only real problem I've had is that the attachment system gets stuck whenever I try to upload by dragging files into the window. Otherwise, HelpScout is brilliant.

Avantages

It works much more like an inbox.
Logical ticketing system.
Set up one inbox that could be managed by multiple people (Even their FREE plan has this!)

Avantages

We no longer lose track of unread messages! Assigned messages help clear the main inbox for others. The traffic cop feature and being able to see who is already in a message alleviates the issue of multiple responses to one customer. The HelpScout blogs have been insightful and extremely beneficial in the growth of our customer service practices.

Inconvénients

From time to time, the messages we've sent have ended up in a SPAM inbox for vendors and customers due to filters.

Avantages

Helpscout is so easy and intuitive to use. I love that there are saved replies so I can easily communicate, with consistent solid messaging, concerns over similar issues to my customer base.

Inconvénients

I have yet to find something I dislike about Help Scout, no joke!

Avantages

Help Scout makes lost messages a thing of the past. We frequently forgot to mark messages unread when they were not dealt with and lost track of customer issues because of it. We love the assigned messages option and being able to maintain multiple users at one email address.

Inconvénients

Would love to see a mobile app - I could definitely be much more productive if I didn't have to always have a computer to help customers or 'close' junk emails.

Avantages

Easy to create multiple mailboxes for each email address, which makes it easier to work across platforms and manage several clients from a single account.
Love the expedite responses feature.

Inconvénients

Live chat-when team is not online to chat no help is provided to customer-it is better if relevant help documents could be shared.

Avantages

From the apps I've tested, Helpscout has the best and simples UX. Easy to set up and use out of the box. It's just, well, simple.

Inconvénients

Love the team at Helpscout. Only thing I was missing was tighter integration/native IM/phone support tools.