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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    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

    Salesforce Agentforce Service

    Score8.5 out of 10
    N/AService Cloud is a customer service platform that helps businesses manage and resolve customer inquiries and issues. It provides tools for case management, knowledge base, omni-channel support, automation, and analytics, enabling companies to deliver exceptional customer service experiences.

    $25

    per month

    Pricing
    Help ScoutSalesforce Agentforce Service
    Editions & Modules
    Standard
    $30
    per month starts with 100 contacts
    Plus
    $90
    per month starts with 200 contacts
    Company
    Contact sales team
    Starter Suite
    $25
    per month
    Pro Suite
    $100
    per month per user
    Enterprise
    $165
    per month per user
    Unlimited
    $330
    per month per user
    Agentforce 1
    $550
    per month per user
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Help ScoutSalesforce Agentforce Service
    Free Trial
    YesYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    YesYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Help ScoutSalesforce Agentforce Service
    Considered Both Products
    Help Scout
    Chose Help Scout
    Help Scout is more reasonably priced compared to our other options.
    Incentivized
    Salesforce
    Chose Salesforce Agentforce Service
    We moved from Help Scout to Service Cloud for robust reporting and more automation. Previously we were having to manually fill in multiple custom fields in Help Scout in order to report on certain things such as tickets submitted by particular accounts.
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    100%
    Would buy again
    8 Answers
    91%
    Would buy again
    52 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    7 Answers
    88%
    Delivers good value for the price
    43 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    8 Answers
    93%
    Happy with the feature set
    53 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    No answers on this topic
    88%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    36 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    5 Answers
    87%
    Implementation went as expected
    39 Answers
    Features
    Help ScoutSalesforce Agentforce Service
    Incident and problem management
    Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Help Scout and Salesforce Agentforce Service
    Feature
    Help Scout
    8.7
    23 Ratings
    7% above category average
    Salesforce Agentforce Service
    7.9
    81 Ratings
    3% below category average
    Organize and prioritize service tickets9.123 Ratings8.179 Ratings
    Subscription-based notifications8.213 Ratings8.267 Ratings
    Ticket creation and submission8.121 Ratings8.779 Ratings
    Ticket response9.522 Ratings7.878 Ratings
    Expert directory00 Ratings7.857 Ratings
    ITSM collaboration and documentation00 Ratings6.862 Ratings
    Self Help Community
    Comparison of Self Help Community features of Help Scout and Salesforce Agentforce Service
    Feature
    Help Scout
    8.6
    21 Ratings
    9% above category average
    Salesforce Agentforce Service
    8.7
    76 Ratings
    10% above category average
    External knowledge base8.820 Ratings8.567 Ratings
    Internal knowledge base8.319 Ratings8.874 Ratings
    Multi-Channel Help
    Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Help Scout and Salesforce Agentforce Service
    Feature
    Help Scout
    8.6
    23 Ratings
    8% above category average
    Salesforce Agentforce Service
    7.9
    81 Ratings
    1% below category average
    Email support9.623 Ratings8.880 Ratings
    Help Desk CRM integration7.515 Ratings7.770 Ratings
    Customer portal00 Ratings7.758 Ratings
    IVR00 Ratings7.937 Ratings
    Social integration00 Ratings7.351 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Help ScoutSalesforce Agentforce Service
    Small Businesses
    Intercom
    Score7.5 out of 10
    Intercom
    Score7.5 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    LiveAgent
    Score8.7 out of 10
    LiveAgent
    Score8.7 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Front
    Score9.2 out of 10
    Front
    Score9.2 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Help ScoutSalesforce Agentforce Service
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.6
    (23 ratings)
    8.7
    (100 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    6.1
    (8 ratings)
    Usability
    9.4
    (6 ratings)
    8.2
    (22 ratings)
    Availability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.4
    (45 ratings)
    Performance
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.6
    (7 ratings)
    Support Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.0
    (20 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Online Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    -
    (0 ratings)
    5.0
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Help ScoutSalesforce Agentforce Service
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    I think Service Cloud is best suited for medium to large operations that require both proactive and reactive service. It’s a great fit for post-sales support. However, I wouldn’t recommend it for very small companies because it can be quite costly, and many of the features may go unused. Salesforce also performs best when you have a capable team managing it, so it’s important to consider your organization’s size and readiness before starting. Once you do, I recommend exploring other parts of the Salesforce ecosystem—Service Cloud works even better when integrated with Sales Cloud, since it allows better visibility across teams.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    • Email to case is an interesting piece of it. The threading is very strong, sometimes too strong, but it does very well at handling the incoming emails.
    • The omnichannel routing, using skill-based routing is really effective.
    • Pathing. So making the workflow and helping the team understand what it is that they're trying to do, what they have to accomplish, those step-by-step pieces. That's really helpful.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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?)
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    • We had a principle initially to try and use Omni as much as we can from the user experience perspective, but have found that fairly restrictive. It was very difficult to actually get the right customer experience and customer engagement going. So we're actually on a journey at the moment to replace all of our Omni with Lightning web components that gives us that flexibility. That's probably one area where we've had some challenges in terms of how we've used the product out of the box.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    Professional edition works best for a small company with lower call volumes and is very useful but as you grow exponetially I think it has limited ability to do all the things we want to - SLA management, defect, release management to name a few. Reports and dashboards being available in real time.
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    I had Salesforce experience prior to using Service Cloud which made it a little easier to learn and navigate, but overall my team (some who had no Salesforce experience) caught on very quickly and found Service Cloud to be easy to use.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    Help Scout
    No answers on this topic
    Salesforce
    Working on an application that caters to customer needs requires a platform that acts as a mediator between the actual person and the client. This mediator handles the customer and resolves many of their doubts, helps them map through the entire process, and automates the processes. Such a platform is Salesforce Service Cloud. For queries that cannot be serviced by the platform, it creates a separate ServiceNow ticket for us, and it is assigned.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Performance
    Help Scout
    No answers on this topic
    Salesforce
    The Salesforce Service Cloud generally has very good performance, however the overall new Lightning user experience can bring that down. For example, if you have too many tabs open, then it can take a while for the Lightning UI to load. This UI is probably not well equipped to handle loading of all of that information at once, but Users tend to leave their tabs open all day long. It can also be fickle depending on which browser you use, what extensions you have installed, and whether you've cleared your cache. This can be the downfall with any software as a service though, not just Salesforce
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Help Scout
    No answers on this topic
    Salesforce
    Salesforce offers support, although it generally gets routed to overseas support teams first, and once they are unable to help, it gets escalated up the chain to higher tiers. Frequently, the answer back from support is that there is no native solution, and we either have to turn to the AppExchange for some solution provided by another developer, or custom build our own solution.
    Read full review
    In-Person Training
    Help Scout
    No answers on this topic
    Salesforce
    Our in-person training was provided by our implementation partner and it was quite good. This was in part because we were already working with them and so it naturally leant itself to a good training relationship. And because they were building our customizations and configuring things, they could then provide training on those things naturally.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Online Training
    Help Scout
    No answers on this topic
    Salesforce
    Trailheads are great but it was often unclear what actually applied to our organization. This made it difficult to get a whole lot out of it. Part of it is that because the basic Salesforce features didn't quite work for us, we had to add customizations, which then nullified a lot of the training.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    Help Scout
    No answers on this topic
    Salesforce
    I would go through an implementation very differently knowing what I know now. It was difficult coming from systems we liked in post-sales service and having to adapt to the clunky and underwhelming feature set in Salesforce. I would trim back our expectations
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    We selected this product because we already had some competencies in Salesforce. We own a Salesforce partner with expertise in this area, and on top of that, Salesforce purchased it — it was originally called Velocity. When Salesforce decided to acquire it, that finalized the decision for us.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Scalability
    Help Scout
    No answers on this topic
    Salesforce
    The product has scaled up with our company growth just fine. No issues here other than slowness in clicking around and running reports
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Salesforce
    • We have cut our service team in half over the past 5 years due to the efficiency of the tool
    • The amount of direct inquiries to our technical team is less than 10% compared to the number support tickets that get entered in the system for them to work in a more organized manner
    • Responses are 100% more timely because tickets can be responded to by any individual in the queue or on the team, as opposed to direct emails to just one person
    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.

    Salesforce Agentforce Service Screenshots

    Screenshot of Workflows and OrchestrationScreenshot of Service CatalogScreenshot of Contact Center