Completely changed our business - for the better

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.

Pros

- 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

Cons

- 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

Great customer focused company to work with!

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.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Expensive, but good. There are alternatives if you're willing to sacrifice plug and play.

The alternatives to Help Scout are far and wide, but my recommendation for an option would be Free Scout. It is an open-source alternative to Help Scout that acts almost the same way. You need to know how to deploy the self-hosted service, or you can find companies willing to manage it for you. The downside is the setup takes a while, but the positive is that the cost is a small fraction of the amount we were paying to Help Scout.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

This was a great beginner software for a growing startup

Pros

This software is incredibly easy to use! The macro search function was amazing. It allowed our team to search both the title and the body for relevant content. Very simple solution for our start up company.

Cons

We needed more features, more integrations and more robust reporting as we began to grow as a company and support team.

Works well but lack of innovations caused us to move away

We used Helpscout to manage customer support. The system was competent but uninspiring. Rising expenses and other issues mentioned above caused us to break up with it.

Pros

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

Cons

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.