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CA Service Management, with CA Service Desk Manager vs. Help Scout

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    CA Service Management

    Score5.4 out of 10
    N/ACA Service Management, including CA Desk Manager, is a fully-featured ITSM platform, now from Broadcom. It competes with BMC Remedy, ServiceNow, FrontRange ITSM, Cherwell Service Management etc. It is based on technology acquired by CA in 2010 with Nimsoft, and is now supported by Broadcom since the 2018 acquisition.N/A

    Help Scout

    Score9.3 out of 10
    N/AHelp Scout is help desk software. The vendor’s value proposition is that that their solution reduces time spent on training users because Help Scout is simple to use and set up and scales like any enterprise product. This solution includes multiple mailboxes to support as many email addresses as needed in order to work collaboratively across teams, and manage several products or brands from one account. Reports on conversation trends, team performance, productivity, and customer happiness are…

    $30

    per month starts with 100 contacts

    Pricing
    CA Service ManagementHelp Scout
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    Standard
    $30
    per month starts with 100 contacts
    Plus
    $90
    per month starts with 200 contacts
    Company
    Contact sales team
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    CA Service ManagementHelp Scout
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    CA Service ManagementHelp Scout
    Considered Both Products
    Broadcom
    No answer on this topic
    Help Scout
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Would buy again
    8 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    7 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    8 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation went as expected
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    5 Answers
    Features
    CA Service ManagementHelp Scout
    Incident and problem management
    Comparison of Incident and problem management features of CA Service Management, with CA Service Desk Manager and Help Scout
    Feature
    CA Service Management, with CA Service Desk Manager
    8.6
    6 Ratings
    5% above category average
    Help Scout
    8.7
    23 Ratings
    6% above category average
    Organize and prioritize service tickets9.76 Ratings9.123 Ratings
    Expert directory8.75 Ratings00 Ratings
    Service restoration8.46 Ratings00 Ratings
    Self-service tools8.66 Ratings00 Ratings
    Subscription-based notifications7.96 Ratings8.113 Ratings
    ITSM collaboration and documentation9.76 Ratings00 Ratings
    ITSM reports and dashboards7.55 Ratings00 Ratings
    Ticket creation and submission00 Ratings8.021 Ratings
    Ticket response00 Ratings9.522 Ratings
    ITSM asset management
    Comparison of ITSM asset management features of CA Service Management, with CA Service Desk Manager and Help Scout
    Feature
    CA Service Management, with CA Service Desk Manager
    9.2
    6 Ratings
    13% above category average
    Help Scout
    -
    Ratings
    Configuration mangement9.76 Ratings00 Ratings
    Asset management dashboard10.03 Ratings00 Ratings
    Policy and contract enforcement8.03 Ratings00 Ratings
    Change management
    Comparison of Change management features of CA Service Management, with CA Service Desk Manager and Help Scout
    Feature
    CA Service Management, with CA Service Desk Manager
    9.1
    6 Ratings
    7% above category average
    Help Scout
    -
    Ratings
    Change requests repository9.06 Ratings00 Ratings
    Change calendar8.64 Ratings00 Ratings
    Service-level management9.55 Ratings00 Ratings
    Self Help Community
    Comparison of Self Help Community features of CA Service Management, with CA Service Desk Manager and Help Scout
    Feature
    CA Service Management, with CA Service Desk Manager
    -
    Ratings
    Help Scout
    8.5
    21 Ratings
    6% above category average
    External knowledge base00 Ratings8.720 Ratings
    Internal knowledge base00 Ratings8.219 Ratings
    Multi-Channel Help
    Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of CA Service Management, with CA Service Desk Manager and Help Scout
    Feature
    CA Service Management, with CA Service Desk Manager
    -
    Ratings
    Help Scout
    8.5
    23 Ratings
    6% above category average
    Email support00 Ratings9.623 Ratings
    Help Desk CRM integration00 Ratings7.415 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    CA Service ManagementHelp Scout
    Small Businesses
    Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
    Score9 out of 10
    LiveAgent
    Score8.8 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
    Score9.2 out of 10
    LiveAgent
    Score8.8 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Ivanti ITSM
    Score6.4 out of 10
    Front
    Score9.2 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    CA Service ManagementHelp Scout
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.0
    (12 ratings)
    9.6
    (23 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    4.1
    (6 ratings)
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    Usability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.4
    (6 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    CA Service ManagementHelp Scout
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Broadcom
    It is a suitable tool for a large organization with extensive user needs. It is not for a small shop as it may be over-engineered for smaller organizations that don't have teams that can manage a solution of this size. It does have some significant hardware and configuration needs, but that should not deter customers from deploying it in-house. I've seen it deployed in the cloud as well as in-house; the downside to deploying it as a hosted solution is you're forever at the mercy of the vendor for customizations, and they cost an arm and a leg. The simplest things take a long time and cost much more money than necessary, so you can't truly get a custom solution and end up with mostly vanilla services (unless you have very deep pockets.)
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Help Scout
    Small businesses that want a conversational type of customer support experience. Nothing wrong with support tickets, but it does make you feel like a number. Also, we needed to get up and running quickly so the "inbox" feel of the dashboard was already familiar with the team so they could adopt the new software quickly.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Broadcom
    • A large community where, if help is needed, is usually very helpful and quick to respond.
    • Various sites with good information on various issues. If you have a problem, there's a good chance some else already had it and documented it.
    • Fairly easy installation of the product if recommendations are followed and prep-work is done.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Help Scout
    • 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).
    • The email newsletter.
    • They are super responsive. They are pretty rad and transparent: if something goes wrong on their end they are not afraid of admitting fault. Which leads me to trust them because I can believe them. I know that tells you very little about the product, but as leadership, that's something that I really need
    • Help Scout does exactly what it needs to (facilitate organized, efficient conversations between customers and support people) without getting in the way.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Broadcom
    • The right-click feature is disabled in this application and users are unable to copy and paste with mouse or touchpad.
    • The application also freezes quite a bit and a user will have to quite often close and reopen browser to get it functioning properly.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Help Scout
    • Trying to group tickets is a bit unflexible. You can create folders which can be part of a workflow (automatic trigger) but you can't create a folder based on tags. This needs to be improved because there's a need to create smarter segments and mix them.
    • Metrics are useful but there needs to be more details about them. You can drill down in some but others are still not very actionable or visible (ok, that number went down, but what was the cause? what's the criteria with what you measure that?)
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Broadcom
    While the concepts of Service Desk and EITM were solid. The user interface, tool capabilities, and integrations fell behind the rest of the industry. Too often it seemed like CA bought and rebranded products without fully integrated them with their other products. It was a coat of paint, without the parts under the hood being updated. The overhead for administration was too high and the reporting capabilities were absolutely amongst the worst I've seen.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Help Scout
    We are receiving feedback from the organizational level that they may want us to transition to a different solution to provide consistency across the company.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Broadcom
    No answers on this topic
    Help Scout
    Help Scout is a great solution for support teams. There are many articles and webinars to help you learn how to use Help Scout. There are also many features to help make your workflows easier and more efficient. I would readily recommend Help Scout to any small or medium-growing support teams.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    Broadcom
    We are too integrated with CA Service Desk Manager to disassociate anytime soon. We found the more we used the product the more we needed to customize it in order to better integrate with our business processes. There are other alternatives that have many built-in features that had we have foreseen our future requirements... would have chosen ServiceNow or Remedy as our "go-to" ticketing product.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Help Scout
    Only have minimal experience with G-Suite for a much smaller company. This worked well for that organization but did not have similar specialization functions that suite our larger organization very well. Help Scout's pricing makes sense, and continues to service our needs well. Minimal usage of other programs, but have no need to explore alternatives at this time.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    Broadcom
    • Having CA Service Desk Manager within the company has increased the satisfaction of customer service from 68% to 95%. Teams are getting better customer survey scores and making better efforts to meet their SLAs.
    • CA Mobile app has provided agility and collaboration among IT Users and Customers.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Help Scout
    • We are able to retain our customer base due to the outstanding customer service our Customer Experience department provides. Without an organized tool like Help Scout, this would not be possible. We pride ourselves in quick response times to customers and are able to do so by effectively routing tickets to the right agents.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    Help Scout Screenshots

    Screenshot of Build better relationships with your customers, and work together better as a teamScreenshot of Tools designed specifically for team collaboration on customer supportScreenshot of Docs Knowledge Base provides self-service that sets your customers up for successScreenshot of The conversation report can change the conversation with your customers from problems to praise by pinpointing what they write in about and when.Screenshot of Productivity Reports track your team's customer-helping velocity and identify sticking points to push through with even greater momentum.Screenshot of Happiness Reports are the closest you can get to your customer's true feelings without hiring a telepath.