Help Scout vs. LiveChat

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Help Scout
Score 9.2 out of 10
N/A
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…
$30
per month starts with 100 contacts
LiveChat
Score 7.0 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
LiveChat serves as a customer service platform with live chat support, help desk and web analytics functionalities, with the goal of allowing users to provide 24/7 support to customers. The core feature of the software is its chat tool, where both service and sales team can answer customers' questions in real time. Online businesses can interact with customers on their website, to be more accessible. With LiveChat, users can identify people on the website and engage…
$25
per month per user
Pricing
Help ScoutLiveChat
Editions & Modules
Standard
$30
per month starts with 100 contacts
Plus
$90
per month starts with 200 contacts
Company
Contact sales team
Starter
$25
per month
Team
$59
per month per person
Business
$89
per month per person
Enterprise
Contact Sales
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Help ScoutLiveChat
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsDiscount available for annual billing.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Help ScoutLiveChat
Features
Help ScoutLiveChat
Incident and problem management
Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Product A and Product B
Help Scout
8.5
23 Ratings
4% above category average
LiveChat
-
Ratings
Organize and prioritize service tickets9.023 Ratings00 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications7.813 Ratings00 Ratings
Ticket creation and submission7.821 Ratings00 Ratings
Ticket response9.422 Ratings00 Ratings
Self Help Community
Comparison of Self Help Community features of Product A and Product B
Help Scout
8.4
21 Ratings
5% above category average
LiveChat
-
Ratings
External knowledge base8.620 Ratings00 Ratings
Internal knowledge base8.119 Ratings00 Ratings
Multi-Channel Help
Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Product A and Product B
Help Scout
8.4
23 Ratings
5% above category average
LiveChat
-
Ratings
Email support9.523 Ratings00 Ratings
Help Desk CRM integration7.215 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Help ScoutLiveChat
Small Businesses
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Gist
Gist
Score 9.5 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Genesys DX (discontinued)
Genesys DX (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
Enterprises
SysAid
SysAid
Score 8.9 out of 10
Genesys DX (discontinued)
Genesys DX (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Help ScoutLiveChat
Likelihood to Recommend
9.4
(23 ratings)
8.0
(44 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
7.0
(1 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
9.4
(6 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
7.3
(3 ratings)
User Testimonials
Help ScoutLiveChat
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
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Text
We needed a mechanism in place to make contact with visitors to our website easier. What we discovered is that it's an excellent tool for creating reports and dashboards that show how soon issues are handled. Our website can now be updated in real-time, and all of our internal teams are really excited to use this fantastic technology. I really recommend [LiveChat] to many friends and past colleagues.
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Pros
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.
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Text
  • The most important factor of Livechat is their own chat support, I had many requirement from the Sales Head, Support Head to implement features that I was unsure if the product could do. However, as I did the implementation one by one I constantly used the chat support which helped me step by step all the way.
  • The UX of the product is pretty simple and intuitive to use. There are quite a few features that we could easily plug and play. We tried going to the market to find a solution that could help us but they did not have as many out of the box features and simple to use
  • Their integration between LiveChat and Chatbot is pretty seamless and since both of them are from the same company, it's works pretty well.
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Cons
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?)
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Text
  • It has a limited amount of agents, so when you have many customer care employees during one shift it is hard to manage the quantity of active agents.
  • When system is overloaded and many customers are waiting in a queue it starts to works slowly (sometimes the program even lags) and you need to refresh the system to write a message.
  • Occasionally when you open a new tab, you might lose your current conversation.
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Likelihood to Renew
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.
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Text
No answers on this topic
Usability
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.
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Text
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Help Scout
No answers on this topic
Text
The only issues I have had with LiveChat are the technical glitches within the program. These are not common as in everyday occurrences but when the glitches do happen they tend to have very negative repercussions. This is due to chats with customers being dropped, this may be an internal server issue though and may not happen for everyone.
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Alternatives Considered
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.
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Text
Overall very similar in design, but LiveChat had a better interface, better reporting and analytic tools, better mobile support, and just an easier overall feel. The two products are very much alike in the vast majority of ways, but I ended up preferring this product overall. Price points were similar as well, as well as the allowed number of users.
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Return on Investment
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.
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Text
  • We have a small team so the overall impact is that it is easy for one or two employees to handle a large number of tickets without hiring more people. Plus, you can use this software remotely, save a ton on traveling to and from and office.
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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.

LiveChat Screenshots

Screenshot of Chat Widget and Agent AppScreenshot of Customer detailsScreenshot of Traffic sectionScreenshot of ReportsScreenshot of Team managementScreenshot of Chat Widget customization