Help Scout vs. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Help Scout
Score 7.9 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
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service
Score 6.6 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service is designed to create positive experiences through any channel and on any device to exceed customer expectations.
$50
per month per user
Pricing
Help ScoutMicrosoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service
Editions & Modules
Standard
$30
per month starts with 100 contacts
Plus
$90
per month starts with 200 contacts
Company
Contact sales team
Dynamics 365 Customer Service Professional
$50
per month per user
Add-In - Chat
$60
per month per user
Dynamics 365 Customer Service Enterprise
$105
per month per user
Dynamics 365 Customer Service Premium
$195
per month per user
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Help ScoutMicrosoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Help ScoutMicrosoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service
Features
Help ScoutMicrosoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service
Incident and problem management
Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Product A and Product B
Help Scout
8.8
Ratings
9% above category average
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service
8.5
Ratings
6% above category average
Organize and prioritize service tickets9.00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications10.00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Ticket creation and submission8.10 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Ticket response8.10 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Expert directory00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
ITSM collaboration and documentation00 Ratings3.00 Ratings
Self Help Community
Comparison of Self Help Community features of Product A and Product B
Help Scout
8.5
Ratings
8% above category average
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service
5.5
Ratings
35% below category average
External knowledge base9.00 Ratings3.00 Ratings
Internal knowledge base8.00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Multi-Channel Help
Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Product A and Product B
Help Scout
8.0
Ratings
3% above category average
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service
7.8
Ratings
0% above category average
Email support8.00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Help Desk CRM integration8.00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Customer portal00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
IVR00 Ratings5.00 Ratings
Social integration00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Help ScoutMicrosoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service
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 9.1 out of 10
SysAid
SysAid
Score 9.1 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Help ScoutMicrosoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service
Likelihood to Recommend
7.1
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
7.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Help ScoutMicrosoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
Read full review
With the constant changes included in the product, we can now use it for all the customer service scenarios / channels, for e.g. earlier for voice, we had to buy 3rd party CTI based tools, but now Voice Channel being available as the part of the product, that solves that thing. Also we see constantly new AI-driven features added to the product that could save lot of time of the agents while working on the cases like case summary, automate email generation, sentiment analysis etc.
Read full review
Pros
  • 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.
Read full review
  • Dynamic CS allows you to access a wider customer base and gain artificial intelligence-powered insights into numerous client interaction activities.
  • It assists in gaining deep insights into numerous data analyses performed on various customer interaction activities, as well as data visualization and customer satisfaction enhancement.
  • This product has been extremely beneficial to my firm since it allows us to communicate with customers via a variety of channels, including e-mail and social media.
  • Extensible, and Microsoft responds rapidly to market demand with new features. In terms of service, both Microsoft customer success and technical teams collaborate closely to ensure appropriate delivery.
  • A better way to track client interactions is SaaS-based cloud services. This software may also be linked to outlook.
Read full review
Cons
  • It is a bit slow sometimes, but not very often.
  • I've noticed more network errors with their server in the past year.
  • Small annoyance - they use a lot of lightbox popups and if you click outside the box all of your work is lost.
Read full review
  • It occasionally crashes or slow down, but it usually works great.
  • Costly.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
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.
Read full review
No answers on this topic
Usability
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.
Read full review
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service is generally very user-friendly, especially for those familiar with Microsoft products. The strength of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service is its integration with Outlook and Microsoft Office products like Word, Excel etc. and it user interface being similar to those products. This makes it easy for user to adopt to any new app.
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
This is tricky because there's helpdesk apps and chat apps (now Help Scout offers both). We first used just an email inbox (of course not scalable but we were very small), then we turned to Freshdesk, which was painful to use. It had some cool features but in general it was ugly, slow, using the interface was very non-intuitive and the prioritization was hard. I have to say this was more than a year ago, so probably they have changed, but anyway. Zendesk is very expensive considering the features are almost the same AND the chat app needs to be paid separately. As chat we used Tawk.to, it was functional but metrics were not that good and it was buggy at times. Comparing Help Scout with their competitors, at least for us, made it a no-brainer to hire them. The price was very attractive considering the amount of features, the great support and the quality of the app. I don't regret my decision at all because Help Scout, unlike other helpdesk companies, tries to have their app "smart" and not a big, corporate thing piled with features. It does what it needs, it's easy to use and helps you achieve your goals regarding support for your customers.
Read full review
Read full review
Return on Investment
  • 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.
Read full review
  • It has help us serve our customers better and get Support Contracts from them after we have designed / developed and deployed Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service based solutions for them
  • Ease of Routing it to appropriate customer support agent
  • Because of multiple channel support we now give our customers option to raise a ticket or connect with their preferred communication medium, be it email, SMS, Chat etc.
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.