Our review of Helpscout

Choosing the right customer support software is vital for your business, but it’s easy to get lost among the many different programs available on the market.

Help Scout is the ideal platform for the uninitiated or for small structures, thanks to its ease of use. And the real plus point is its price/performance ratio, which is hard to beat.

But its many features are also perfectly suited to larger groups, thanks to a well-developed help desk, easy management of support tickets, high-quality reporting…

Find out all you need to know about Help Scout in this article!

My opinion of Help Scout in a nutshell

Benefits

• Ease of use and user experience. Customer support is excellent, available and responsive.
• One of the best value-for-money solutions. Plans range from $20 to $60 per month, while Zendesk, for example, offers plans from $49 to $99 per month.
• Particularly well-suited to small businesses, who can easily adapt the tool to their own needs for greater efficiency.

Disadvantages

• The mobile application is clearly not as polished as its competitors.
• Quite a few integrations available (Salesforce in particular), but fewer overall than other platforms.
• An easy-to-use platform, but the downside is the lack of customization options.

Help Scout: detailed features

At Help Scout, every feature has a purpose. And if customization is limited, it’s above all because the platform relies on its simplicity of access and use.

Managing support tickets

One of the first features of the Help Scout support center: shared inboxes. Each one contains e-mails, live chats and customer calls to which all agents have access.

This system facilitates communication, and above all avoids duplication thanks to Help Scout’s “collision detector”: it indicates in real time who else is consulting or replying to a message.

Several inbox availabilities:

• Saved answers : you can use pre-recorded answers to get up to speed quickly.
• Private notes : this lets you leave messages for other agents, asking for help or collaboration.
• Tags : tags can be added to messages to facilitate reporting.

The little extra: switching from the inbox to a one-to-one discussion with the customer is just a click away.

The management system is complemented by Help Scout’s automated workflows. Developed with AI based on “if-then” logic, they perform repetitive tasks and save you time: creating grouped e-mails, assigning conversations to agents, etc.

You can configure it to suit your needs: for example, as soon as a customer message contains the word “laptop”, the system directs it to your specialist for handling.

The Help Desk at Help Scout

Its main feature is a highly developed knowledge base designed to improve customer service. The articles are intended both for agents (advice on the relevant information to give) and customers (finding solutions on their own).

According to Help Scout, this feature reduces agent-customer conversations by 20%.

The database can be customized by any agent via the Help Scout message editor. Each company can create articles with customizable categories, related articles and keywords for search engine optimization (SEO).

Then embed your articles on any web page (including pop-over or sidebar locations). It’s also possible to make them accessible via Help Scout’s Beacon chatbot.

Live chat and automatic replies

The live chat option limits the volume of conversations your agents have to handle: your customers find an answer easily thanks to the Beacon tool.

Beacon checks that the chat window only appears if an agent is available. The tool can be customized with Self service or Ask first, to guide customers in the right direction. It’s the essential tool for improving your customer support service.

In addition, the in-app messaging option lets you send a message from any website, blog or application using a beacon, reducing your support requests.

Reporting at Help Scout

It’s a well-known fact that the success of customer service software is measured by its performance data. With Help Scout reports, your customer service managers have all the information they need at their fingertips: chats, e-mails, phone calls, knowledge base documents and customer satisfaction rates.

In addition, other options are available for reports on the most loyal customers, workflows, recorded responses and so on.

Customer reviews of Help Scout

Overall, customers really appreciate the software’s ease of use and well-designed interface. For those looking for advanced features and the ability to customize the platform further, opinions are more mixed, but still good.

Customer support at Help Scout

Customer support is available with all Help Scout plans. Their agents are available by email and chat 6 days a week, but there is no telephone support.

The support also provides access to online resources:

• Knowledge base : you can find articles in 8 different categories: getting started, account management, mobile applications and integrations, etc.

• Guides : discover detailed information on customer acquisition, support and retention.
• HelpU : you can attend live events, subscribe to “The Supportive” monthly video series and read articles written by customer service experts in “Humans of Support”.
• Newsletters : there are newsletters on customer support, growth and culture, product updates and more. You can choose the frequency (twice a week, weekly or monthly).
• Webinars : you can access live webinars and find archived ones on a variety of topics: customer experience, helpdesk use, brand image, etc.

Help Scout integrations

Help Scout offers over 75 integrations in 7 categories: analytics, communications, CRM software, e-commerce, marketing, support and utilities. Here you’ll find all the essentials, including Slack, WordPress and Mailchimp.

With the Plus plan, you also get HubSpot, Salesforce and Jira :

• With Hubspot and Salesforce, you can directly transfer your customer history data and related information.

• You can also create Jira incident tickets directly on Help Scout and synchronize the 2 applications in real time as they are resolved.

Help Scout rates

• Standard : $20/month/user – This plan already gives you access to the essentials: live chat, Beacon, automation, API, help desk, and the option of 2 mailboxes. Limited to 25 users.
• Plus: $35/month/user – Allows up to 5 email addresses, creation of teams, and access to advanced integrations (Salesforce, Hubspot, Jira, etc.). No user limit.
• Company: $60/month/user – Company plans are dedicated to teams with more than 25 employees. They provide additional security guarantees, SLAs, an unlimited number of mailboxes and a dedicated account manager.