Help Scout vs. Zoho Desk

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Help Scout
Score 9.0 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
Zoho Desk
Score 8.1 out of 10
N/A
Zoho Support is a Saas help desk / ticketing system aimed at SMBs. I competes most often with Zendesk, and Desk.com.
$9
per month per user
Pricing
Help ScoutZoho Desk
Editions & Modules
Standard
$30
per month starts with 100 contacts
Plus
$90
per month starts with 200 contacts
Company
Contact sales team
Free
$0
Express
$9
per month per user
Standard
$20
per month per user
Professional
$35
per month per user
Enterprise
$50
per month per user
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Help ScoutZoho Desk
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeRequired
Additional DetailsA discount is offered for yearly billing.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Help ScoutZoho Desk
Features
Help ScoutZoho Desk
Incident and problem management
Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Product A and Product B
Help Scout
8.5
23 Ratings
3% above category average
Zoho Desk
8.5
5 Ratings
3% above category average
Organize and prioritize service tickets9.023 Ratings8.95 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications7.713 Ratings7.34 Ratings
Ticket creation and submission7.921 Ratings8.75 Ratings
Ticket response9.322 Ratings8.75 Ratings
Expert directory00 Ratings7.34 Ratings
ITSM collaboration and documentation00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Self Help Community
Comparison of Self Help Community features of Product A and Product B
Help Scout
8.3
21 Ratings
3% above category average
Zoho Desk
9.3
5 Ratings
15% above category average
External knowledge base8.620 Ratings9.35 Ratings
Internal knowledge base8.019 Ratings9.35 Ratings
Multi-Channel Help
Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Product A and Product B
Help Scout
8.3
23 Ratings
4% above category average
Zoho Desk
6.9
5 Ratings
15% below category average
Email support9.423 Ratings6.45 Ratings
Help Desk CRM integration7.215 Ratings6.74 Ratings
Customer portal00 Ratings8.04 Ratings
Social integration00 Ratings6.43 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Help ScoutZoho Desk
Small Businesses
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
SysAid
SysAid
Score 8.9 out of 10
SysAid
SysAid
Score 8.9 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Help ScoutZoho Desk
Likelihood to Recommend
9.3
(23 ratings)
8.2
(24 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
7.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
9.4
(6 ratings)
8.0
(13 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.7
(12 ratings)
User Testimonials
Help ScoutZoho Desk
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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Zoho
Zoho Desk is a great customer service tool. It is very easy to track the ability to receive tickets and send responses in Zoho Desk. There are lots of options for customization. The knowledge base feature is very extensive and powerful. It makes creating internal and external FAQs easy.
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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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Zoho
  • It provides a simple widget code with a few clicks once you decide to integrate it with your website or application.
  • There is a very user friendly dedicated mobile application for Zoho Desk for Android and IOS devices.
  • You can easily track all of your tickets and agents from the dashboard interface.
  • You can insert tags with each ticket to group them into specific categories for analysis and troubleshooting.
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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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Zoho
  • The biggest drawback that I am facing while using the platform is that their ticketing system is not that great [in my opinion]. It does not give us the option to add sales tax and other charges in the invoices which leads to a big problem for us.
  • [I feel] its customer support needs improvement.
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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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Zoho
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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Zoho
I give [Zoho Desk] [an] overall usability score of 9. This is partly due to the search functionality needs improvement. There are several times where I am left unable to find a ticket and have to generate a new one. I am hoping in the future that they will make some changes!
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Support Rating
Help Scout
No answers on this topic
Zoho
As Zoho Support is based in a different timezone to ours it can be an issue that we cannot get an immediate response to an issue. But I will say that once their Support is in the office they are fairly good to respond. they have resolved almost all issues I have told them about, but Zoho have also made system changes and not communicated these beforehand which means we are faced with something new and cannot get support on this until their support team is in the office
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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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Zoho
We selected Zoho Desk as we needed a platform that was going to allow the business to grow through both usage and staffing numbers. We wanted something cost-effective but still offered standard features in an effective cloud-delivered solution but would still allow customization by our internal dev team, to derive better value from the service where it natively didn't do what we needed it to. FreeAgent was okay for a while, but Zoho Desk has allowed a vast improvement in our service offering to end customers.
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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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Zoho
  • Zoho Desk has created an organised sytem of support which alows me to help my customers more efficiently.
  • By saving resolutions as articles, Zoho Desk has provided a training resource for current customers and support staff as part of solving problems.
  • All new customers become part of a database of customers who continue to receive support and education from forums created by the articles and customer questions.
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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.

Zoho Desk Screenshots

Screenshot of Log and monitor phone conversations, convert them into new tickets, or attach them to existing ones. Convert social media interactions and live chat into tickets at the click of a button.Screenshot of Bring a Help Center directly into a website to strengthen self-service. Chat with Zia, an AI-powered conversation assistant. Customers can chat with Zia right from a mobile app or website. Zia processes their questions and suggests appropriate solutions from the Knowledge Base.Screenshot of With advanced process automation, internal processes can be setup within the help desk, implement them automatically, and make sure that all processes are followed precisely.Screenshot of Instant responses for instant happiness. Respond to customers the minute they reach out with Zoho Desk's embeddable chat widget. Customers can get in touch with agents instantly, right from the Help Center, so agents can respond and help them find answers faster.Screenshot of Monitor a team's performance, customize and schedule reports. Custom dashboards can be created.Screenshot of Zia brings together predictions across anomalies, sentiment, trending ticket tags, and more into a common dashboard for decision-makers to consume. They can drill down further into the details from the same dashboard to investigate further.