Help Scout reviews

I like how transparent the experience is for the user and how easy it is to set up and use. I like the integration with the KB system to quickly insert a reference to the article.

Difficult to tell. I'm really enjoying everything on it, especially now that they added the live chat so I can stop using other software for that.
Maybe I'd love a more advanced system to manage the custom replies.
I'd appreciate if there's a better way to manage formatting inside the editor for the KB.

When I used to work at ActBlue as a support associate, I really liked Help Scout's ticketing system. It was straightforward and less confusing than Intercom. Escalating and de-escalating issues was pretty easy. Help Scout is a huge help for customer service, people oriented folks like me.

This is just a theory but I feel like Help Scout works better with certain email addresses than others. 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.

HelpScout provides an intuitive and user-friendly interface, making it easy for both support agents and customers to navigate and use the software.

HelpScout primarily focuses on email-based support, which may not meet the needs of organizations that require support across multiple channels like live chat, phone, or social media.

Provides analytics and reporting features that can help businesses track procurement performance and identify cost savings opportunities and provides a user-friendly interface that makes it easy to manage procurement activities.

Can be difficult to set up and configure, particularly for businesses with complex procurement workflows or legacy systems

Best features are internal notes and custom tags, traffic cop that stops the sending of your message of they've responded since you started writing, undo send, and able to see if surgery team member is working on that email already.

Also integrates mailchimp so you can see who is on your mailing list, and subscribe them if not.

Automated workflows based on custom parameters are incredibly useful, too!

Could have a more robust Zapier integration.

Tracked tickets extremely well. Also the canned responses worked well.

The beacon on our website didn't work that well. There were often conflict issues so we just turned it off, which is a shame because it's a major feature we had relied on. After marketing en email as a spammer, we would continue to get emails in the future from that same email address.

The customer support is phenomenal! The Help Scout team is personal, friendly, and fun- a pleasure to interact with any time I get the chance. But because the software is so seamless on its own, a rarely have to reach out for support. I most appreciate the reporting features that show conversation rates and customer happiness.

I would like to be able to export a list of customers I have spoke with over a set time period, so I would be able to automate outreach and followup. As of now, there is no established way to export lists or data.

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.

Help Scout is a focused, straightforward support mailbox product, and we've been using it to great effect since we switched over (from a shared inbox for support) a couple of years ago. We were happy with the pricing, and we use the custom sidebar add-ons to great effect. We've written our own sidebar app that gives our support team access to a ton of useful customer information and error logging without ever leaving the mailbox. When we've dealt with Help Scout support, they've also been great. Help Scout does exactly what we want.

Help Scout is a relatively slim and focused offering (although they are indeed adding new features all the time) this was actually a *selling point* for us, as we didn't want a super-complex tool for this but I am sure that for some users this could be problematic.

After having used Zendesk for a while, I was not happy with its and complexity. I wanted to have a support desk tool that made it look like it was regular mail to the customers. And HelpScout did exactly that. After having used the free version for more than 2 years, we are now on the Business plan. It was great that we could have used it without having to spend money on it, but it's soo good that it's definitely worth every penny. The Docs integration is perfect, as we use it in replies to customers, in the beacon for self-help and we now also embed the docs on our website through the API.

It would be great if we could set a custom threshold for the spam filter, as we have a bit too many false positives.

Help Scout allows customers to send requests to a centralized email address, rather than to an individual, helping ensure that someone on the customer service end will be able to reply promptly. On my team, I handle most customer service requests. 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. Otherwise, a request might sit unanswered in my personal email inbox until I return. I also like that it's easy to store--and pull up-- information about the customer to see their history of past inquiries.

Automatic workflows are somewhat complicated to set up. I've found them unnecessary for the most part, but I'm sure they could be more useful for higher customer volumes.

A clean UI that has obviously been well thought through. They iterate and add features routinely and are very proactive in communicating with their customers. For example, I had discovered a bug, which they confirmed and rolled out a fix within 48 hours.

There are small reminders and tips presented within the context of the app, which are very helpful (eg. helping the user in distinguishing between an internal comment and a customer reply - this is very useful).

Overall, there is great value for the money, I would strongly recommend Help Scout as a help desk/customer facing communication tool.

IMAP integration for outgoing e-mail archiving would be highly valued. Only Gmail is supported at this time.

Love seeing all message threads with the contact to the right when an email is open
Like being able to star certain boxes so they show up first
Love being able to have stored replies
Like being able to keep notes that you can see at a glance upon opening an email

Don't like that it sometimes takes a bit for the numbers to refresh in mailboxes, from time to time.
Don't like that you can't order or resize the starred mailboxes
Don't like that multiple addresses for the same person aren't flagged somehow

It's very easy to utilize with multiple members using at the same time. You can always see where other users are and leave comments to each other on specific messages.

When copying in a new email to an existing chain (or when the HelpScout email is adding to an existing chain), attachments are usually lost and have to be reattached.

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 liked the ability to create complex rule sets that auto-filter certain types of conversations to appropriate mailboxes. Without this, there would be a lot of noise experienced by our various internal users

Not significant, but would be great if users were given a more expansive toolkit for editing copy (fonts, sizes, etc).

Extremely intuitive and easy to use. Learning to use Help Scout takes very little time at all. I enjoy the overall UI and simplicity.

Reporting. As my company grows we have found that the reporting isn't as robust as we would like. It is pretty difficult to gain insight on particular customers who are reaching out and volume per account.

Implementation in our business was very easy because the compatibility testing is all done in the background. As a help desk software, Help Scout is at the top of the list when it comes to implemention & integration.

Sometimes it becomes evident the network struggles but rarely is it ever an issue. Additionally, many features feel pulled directly from other help desk softwares, but the features that set it apart are still present.