Help 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…
$20
per user/per month
Issuetrak
Score 7.0 out of 10
N/A
Issuetrak is help desk ticketing software that optimizes team workflows, automates requests, and expedites solutions. From managing IT help desk tickets, to processing product line change requests, its features allow organizations from any industry to track issues, measure data, and scale their support operation.
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.
If someone is looking for a ticket management system or something to keep track of records in a cloud environment, IssueTrak is well suited to handle this need. It's a very simple and basic approach and after using it for 10 years, it is still just as easy to find what I'm looking for on previous tickets from years ago. The setup can get a little bit of a challenge and if you have a need to segregate users/employees into their own areas for workflow, it can be a little daunting trying to get it just right. Where I feel that IssueTrak falls short is if you need to keep track of CUSTOM FIELDS (fields that you input as searchable and trackable information) in the Dashboard area, where you spend most of your time looking to see what your workload and flow are like, is very limited, requiring you to dig a little further for what you want to see. Also, no ability to input physical addresses / GPS coordinates to be displayed on some sort of real-time map is also missing and could really boost what IssueTrak has to offer.
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.
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?)
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.
IssueTrak is good at what it does, but we really needed some expanded functionality out of it that just hasn't organically happened. Having a 'real-time' update of Dashboards and tickets is a piece that is lacking, especially as our organization continues to grow. A lot of times you go to update a ticket and find out it has been altered/closed before you even hit the submit button. Being able to make charts/graphs of custom fields for Dashboard is a feature (that I feel) is long overdue. Also, the ability to capture address information / GPS coordinates to be displayed on a live map is also a feature we really wanted to see.
It is simple and intuitive. I haven't run into difficulty using any of the features that I have wanted to use. Additional help in the form of documentation or support is available as needed, and their response times are pretty good :)
They were always very good at getting a timely answer to any questions I had and in cases where I actually needed support to step in and help, they always delivered. I was very happy with the support I received from them.
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.
IssueTrak shines for basic ticket management and the format in which they display all the information is very well done. I'd highly recommend it to someone that is looking at trying to track information at a ground level (just starting out). While other solutions are not perfect by any means, we just find that it is lacking some key features that we had hoped would have been implemented over the years (IE: More flexibility with Dashboard reporting and custom fields, a way visually look at addresses and GPS coordinates on a display map, more of a real-time approach with data and completion, etc.) This need caused us to look at some other solutions that may fit the bill a little better in the future.
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.
Made tracking individual service changes, adds, deletions, and trouble-ticket very easy to manage.
We migrated from a paper-based work order system to completely digital and online, thus cutting down on a lot of unneeded printouts.
Was able to actually validate and see the performance of users and what they were contributing to the department on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis in terms of work performance.
