A review of Help Scout support and helpdesk software solution
Help Scout is a cloud-based support and helpdesk software solution designed for small- to medium-sized businesses and large enterprise companies from various industries. This is the type of solution you use if you want your clients to have the best customer service experience possible.
Help Scout allows businesses and support teams to manage their customer relationships more effectively while elevating user-experience and the satisfaction customers get from their experience with the company.
How Help Scout Support and Helpdesk Solution Works
When you use Help Scout as your primary helpdesk solution, your customers won’t have to deal with iffy ticket portals or go through account logins and other time-consuming process just to get the help they need. Customer service, help desks and tech support should be simple and convenient for the client/customer. It shouldn’t be time-consuming.
With that said, Help Scout provides a clutter-free solution that allows your company’s help desk team to be more effective and accessible when providing support for your customers. Its features are ideal for small businesses with limited manpower and resources for providing adequate customer service.
However, the features and capabilities that come with Help Scout are also great for medium-sized and large enterprises looking to improve the quality of their customer service or the efficiency of their tech support teams.
Help Scout features an interface similar to a personal email. It doesn’t employ tickets, case numbers or clunky templates users have to manage. What the support and helpdesk software solution does instead allows your customer support team to create multiple mailboxes for every shared email address. This enables them to work and manage help requests across departments from a single account.
The software solution also comes with a reporting feature, which provides users the ability to keep track of team performance, identify trends and monitor customer satisfaction. Some of the notable features that come with Help Scout include:
- Help Desk function
- Real-time reporting
- Email integration
- Platform security and reliability
- Docs Knowledge Base
The benefits of Help Scout support and helpdesk software solution
One of the key advantages of using Help Scout is that it allows your customer support staff to communicate with clients in an easier, quicker and more personalized manner. By doing so, you are sending a message to your clientele about the value and the significance your company is putting into its customer service efforts.
No ticket numbers required
The software solution is designed specifically to eliminate the need for ticket numbers. Your customers shouldn’t have to wait for hours, if not days or even weeks, just to be able to find someone from your company to help them with their problem. Help Scout’s core value is to make customer service all about conversations and personalized support, not reducing customers to a set of numbers.
Easy to use
Help Scout has a very short learning curve. Users don’t have to be tech-savvy or need to undergo extensive training just to be able to take full advantage of the software solution. The system is designed so customers will have a more satisfying experience when trying to reach your support staff for help and it’s also designed so your support staff won’t have any trouble providing quality service.
From a support team’s perspective, this software solution provides the ideal platform where team members can collaborate and consult with each other when dealing with customer requests, concerns and issues.
Real-time reporting
Additionally, Help Scout also comes with real-time reporting, which helps managers and team leaders to get a better handle on the company’s support front. Reports can be view any time of day within Help Scout’s built-in dashboard. These reports are organized into four easy to understand metrics; Conversations, Productivity, Team and Happiness.
- Conversation Metrics – Show reports of conversations answered, number of customers entertained and so on.
- Productivity Metrics – Show the efficiency of the company’s help desk. Information about time spent on each customer, first response time and the length of time which issues are resolved are all found in this category.
- Team/User Metrics – Provide high-level insights and analysis into the metrics of each individual team member like the number of customer requests they’ve handled, number of issues resolved and the resolution time.
- Happiness Metrics – Show the level of customer satisfaction based on the feedback they provide after a request is handled or a problem is resolved.
Help Scout cost and pricing plans
Help Scout offers three subscription packages designed for small- to mid-sized businesses and enterprises. These packages are billed either monthly or annually. All subscriptions have a free 15-day trial.
Basic – $12 per user per month ($8/user/month when billed annually)
- Up to 10 users
- Unlimited messages and storage
- One mailbox
- One limited Docs knowledge base
- Reports with history of up to 30 days
- Saved replies
- Beacon
- Following
- @mentions
- 24 hours, six days a week support
- No Help Scout branding
- Android and iOS app
Standard – $20 per user per month ($15/user/month when billed annually)
- Unlimited users
- All Basic features
- Five mailboxes
- One Docs knowledge base
- Reports with full history
- Workflows
- Satisfaction ratings
- Office hours
- 50+ integrations
- API access
Plus – $35 per user per month ($27/user/month when billed annually)
- All Standard features
- Unlimited mailboxes
- Three Docs knowledge base
- Salesforce integration
- JIRA integration
- HubSpot integration
- SAML single sign-on
- Teams
- Custom fields
- HIPAA compliance
Help Scout – Is It a Worthy Choice?
Help Scout may look like your average help desk software solution, but it’s actually so much more. The cloud-based solution is packed with different features designed to make customer support more practical and efficient for the company and easier for the customer.
