Most companies using Help Desk software are in software development, tech or online commerce of some kind. We're in the boring, traditional business of veterinary medicine practice, and deal with hundreds of emails a day from clients and the rest of the outside world. We're the only vet company I know of that uses a help desk, and we use Help Scout - and absolutely LOVE it. We did use Zendesk previously, but found that it's way too complicated and not very personal. Pet owners don't want to be given a ticket # and feel like they're speaking to a robot. Help Scout solved that immediately when we switched. We have a lot of complex conversations via email that require multiple people being involved, communicating internal messages to each other about certain threads, etc. etc. Help Scout is absolutely fantastic, because it's very elegant in it's simplicity - but tremendously powerful in it's capability. On top of that, we've found their support team to be kick ass, highly responsive and always eager to try and figure out a solution to any issue we bring them. We are very loyal Help Scout clients, and plan to be for a long time.

- 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

Help Scout is a great option for small to medium teams who do not want and overly complicated and pricy Help Desk software. It lacks some nice-to-have features but it will still help you provide great customer service.

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.

Day to day it works, but I think better products now exist.

It's reliable, and has most of the functions we need.

It feels like the ticketing system has now been abandoned as far as new development is concerned. There have been some minor improvements listed for their beacon /messaging widget but little of consequence. As far as I can only the email address passed to their widget is hashed, custom variables are not so bad actors can pass fake or malicious data to support agents. No UK or EU servers.

Excellent. While there is some admittedly cool functionality that other CRMs offer at higher prices, they don't make sense for our current business needs and you really can't beat Helpscout when it comes to their customer service and help resources. It's excellent working with a team who really care what their customers and their customers' customers think.

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.

It was truly great: managing emails and knowledge base, getting reports, adding in-app tooltips - all of that worked flawlessly, and in rare occasions in which I had to contact their support, it was one of the best experiences as well. If I could choose the tool to handle customer support again, I would go for Help Scout - and I suggest you (aka the reader) to do just that!

It makes managing incoming cases feel good - I've tried and seen other tools used primarily for customer support, and none of them were comparable to Help Scout for me. In Help Scout the entire UI puts the focus on serving the customer right, being light on unnecessary noise. Might sound cheesy, but somehow lets you connect better with the person on the other side of the screen.

That I had to stop using it recently :( Other than that I didn't really find anything that I disliked there.

We support a B2B SaaS platform in the Marketing Automation space and provide email support. Help Scout executes very well against the challenges that we have.

Help Scout is purpose-built for Support teams which is fantastic. The features, UI, and reporting align closely with how we run our support team which makes things a lot easier. 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. The team behind Help Scout does a terrific job of supporting us, they have been extremely responsive, down to earth, and accurate in their replies.

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). While a short-term pain for us, I think delivering better in each of the channels ultimately made us a more mature team in the end.

It was good, although we decided pretty quickly to move to Intercom.

It was easy to get going and was the first app we used for customer service. It had integration with multiple other apps such as Mailchimp. Supports multiple users.

It was ticket-oriented, got us into working more with tickets than customers pretty quickly, not because HelpScout but because using tickets and emails for support. There was no integration with our website, so this was a bummer.

I have used Help Scout for over a decade now and I'm kind of loyal to it. I had multiple problems this year where I was almost going to stop using it but their customer service is so good and thorough in the way that they communicate that I decided to stay. Help Scout is really affordable and it's really simple and it does have limits but if you're just looking for a simple way to track your emails and to provide a chat option for your website and to create a knowledge base then it's a really great tool.

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.

I was given the chance to use Help Scout for monitoring consumer enquiries and support requests during my internship at the university's Department of Pharmaceutical Development and Research. The program succeeded in resolving client issues effectively and assuring prompt responses. We were able to deliver cogent and consistent client service because to its collaborative inbox function, which enabled easy communication among the support team. We were able to measure customer satisfaction numbers and pinpoint areas for improvement thanks to Help Scout's reporting and analytics features. Overall, Help Scout's user-friendly interface and extensive capabilities significantly improved the customer assistance experience inside our department.

A robust feature set provided by Help Scout is revolutionizing customer support administration. Its user-friendly interface enables seamless ticket administration, providing effective and well-organized customer contact. Teams can work together on client queries using the software's collaborative inbox, which leads to quicker responses and more customer satisfaction. Help Scout's automation features automate monotonous operations to give support workers more time. Additionally, it offers meaningful insights into customer service effectiveness through its extensive reporting and analytics. Businesses may quickly link their preferred products to Help Scout's vast integration possibilities and design a unique support environment. Overall, Help Scout improves efficiency, streamlines customer support processes, and improves the client experience.

There are some restrictions to take into account, despite the fact that Help Scout has several advantages. The absence of native phone and chat support tools, which may be essential for enterprises needing real-time client communication, is one downside. Furthermore, learning the sophisticated functions of Help Scout might have a steep learning curve for new users, demanding rigorous onboarding and training. Periodic bugs and poor system performance have been reported by certain users, which can reduce productivity. Last but not least, the pricing structure can be a problem for startups or small firms with tight funds. Help Scout is a top option for customer support management in spite of these shortcomings thanks to its total value and robust feature set.

It automates the entire customer relations process. A customer relationship management platform, livechat, customer support tickets...

Too many functions can make it a little difficult for beginners to get to grips with the interface

Whether it's pre-sales questions or general customer service, Help Scout was there from day 1. I was able to have them answer all of my pre-sales questions within a day or two, it mainly took so long because I wasn't sure of what all I needed but they kept responding question after question. 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. Since it was a new platform of course I was bound to get stuck at times, but I was able to reach out at all times and get a reply back promptly. They were even nice enough to extend my trial because I hadn't gone through all of the features in depth yet.

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 having a beacon on the general website for pre-sales was a must but I also wanted a secondary beacon behind a paywall for premium support and their platform allows for this type of setup. Lastly, most live chat companies only cater towards just that --- live chat. However, I wanted an all in one solution of live chat + a knowledge base. Help Scout has both available within their platform and it's super simple to setup.

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.

Help Scout helped us get a handle on our support workflow and as we've added to our support team, it's made that process painless. We use the custom sidebar apps to great effect.

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.

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.

When looking for customer service platforms, a lot of people will want it to feel human. Oddly, I love that it can be used to send confidential documents securely, and I don't have to interact. It's a great timesaver that way, especially when the people on the other end are using it for the same reason. Yes, you can add more personality and humanity, but in my case, I like being able to work uninterrupted, and no one ever has to say "have a nice day" because all we're doing is sending documents. If you're looking for something a little more personal -- it can absolutely be used that way. The notes and chat functions are helpful, and Help Scout is pretty adaptable to whatever your customer service philosophy entails.

-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.

Pretty good, the price increase is unfortunate, but it is a solid system.

The software is pretty easy to get setup and using, even if you need to transfer info from another system. It is a very streamlined ticketing system.

It likes to stop functioning from time to time. You will go to reassign a ticket to someone and it'll take 10 minutes. It usually clears up after a bit, but for them to have just done a price increase for this product with no real enhancements (at least none I've noticed) its odd that this is happening so frequently now. They also made some changes to the reporting which at least made our lives a little more difficult for the type of reporting we were doing.

We've been using Help Scout for ticket management for about three years. Prior to Help Scout we had used several others, most notably Zendesk. We found that Help Scout was the easiest for our team to use, while still providing a good set of features for customization. The support team at Help Scout has been fantastic as well; they've been very receptive to feature suggestions, quick to resolve what few issues we've encountered, and every contact with them has been a great experience. That last part is important; I personally deal with the support teams of a dozen or so vendors on a regular basis and sometimes the lack of attention to detail and reading comprehension in level 1 support is astounding. Very refreshing!

Easy to use.

No android app, but the web app is still quite functional on a small screen.

Help Scout is a powerful customer service software that offers a range of valuable features to businesses of all sizes. While there are some potential downsides, the strengths of the software are significant and can help businesses provide top-notch support to their customers.

It has beautiful and easy-to-use UI and UX. It has been made by amazing professionals already in the customer care space. Help Scout can be brought on to any company scale and proves itself with metric improvements rapidly.

Help Scout's pricing plans are a little expensive, especially for small businesses or startups.

1. The number 1 thing I love is that emails are "closed" once they are responded to. When I'm in my own email, I have a tendency to never delete messages. Then I think I need to sort into folders and so on, but that's a waste of time and messy. Help Scout automatically closes them when you've responded to it. But you can still search for it and find it. It's perfect! I get Zero in-box with Help Scout! 2. I also like that you can tag people (reassign) so my client can assign emails to me that she wants me to handle. 3. You can tag the emails, so once a week, she can go in and find a certain type of message to work on those all together. 4. You can write a common response and then save it to be reused. 5. You can write notes within message and tag the team member who you want to see the note, but the original sender of the message doesn't see the note.

I found it confusing at first because I didn't know where the closed messages were going, and I was nervous about closing messages, that they would disappear. But it just took some learning. My client who added me to her account was able to show me how it works. I'm not sure what the Help Scout training is like.

I've seen, used and implemented several CRM solutions in the past and helpscout just blew them all. I now use them with all my clients! Great security too and functional system. the BI features are well appreciated.

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!

We are a small business that has been steadily growing over the past two years. We began searching for a unified help desk service about 18 months ago. We tried another service first but found the cost and initial setup too daunting. We began a trial of Help Scout shortly thereafter. During our trial the Help Scout staff was eager and willing to offer assistance but I never felt pressured into committing to anything until I knew it was the right service for our company. They even extended our trial by two weeks because I had been so busy with other things I hadn't had enough time to test it out. In the beginning we only used the service to handle our e-mail and fax business. The fact that Help Scout integrates with our phone/fax service as well as our live chat service is awesome! Over the course of the next year we began utilizing more and more of the services and features Help Scout offered. We have found that the company has always been quick to respond when we had a question or needed assistance and was very open to any ideas or features we would like to see. They have implemented new features that have been invaluable in our day to day operations. We found the pricing structure to be very fair and flexible to suit our needs. The initial setup was very intuitive and only took a few hours before all of our services were up and running. I never felt pressured into paying for any services we didn't need. Overall we have been very happy with their flexibility and willingness to offer assistance when needed. We've very excited to try out some of the new features just implemented in the Help Scout Plus service and appreciate the offer to test it out before we commit to upgrading. Very happy customer!

Ease of use, overview of mailboxes and emails, time-saving shortcuts

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

Overall Ive been very happy with my experience.

I absolutely love the templates, and tagging features. Also the knowledge base was super easy to set up.

I would love to be able to create templates for subject lines!

HelpScout has become an essential, can't-do-without part of my workday with how savvy and helpful it is in organizing contact with our customers and giving us a handy module for FAQs to boot.

- 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)

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).

It was a great experience, definitely worth the investment since it allowed us to measure and create KPIs for the satisfaction of our internal service.

This tool is very versatile and really snappy, I love how easy you can reply to incoming tickets and keep great analytics of it at the same time. We did the integration to Slack to keep it even easier and faster for our internal requests and products.

It can come pricey if you are really looking to have a low-cost alternative for your customer satisfaction portion but this should be no downer since when you pay for this platform you get a quick and efficient tool, just be mindful of the costs.