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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Help Scout

    Score7.9 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

    Oracle Service

    Score5.1 out of 10
    N/AOracle Service is the help desk and customer experience management platform from Oracle. The technology was developed and supported by RightNow Technologies as RightNow CX for cloud-based call center automation, until that company's acquisition by Oracle in 2011 for about $1.5 billion.N/A
    Pricing
    Help ScoutOracle Service
    Editions & Modules
    Standard
    $30
    per month starts with 100 contacts
    Plus
    $90
    per month starts with 200 contacts
    Company
    Contact sales team
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Help ScoutOracle 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 ScoutOracle Service
    Considered Both Products
    Help Scout
    No answer on this topic
    Oracle
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    100%
    Would buy again
    5 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Delivers good value for the price
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    5 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation went as expected
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Features
    Help ScoutOracle Service
    Incident and problem management
    Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Help Scout and Oracle Service
    Feature
    Help Scout
    8.8
    19 Ratings
    9% above category average
    Oracle Service
    7.5
    78 Ratings
    7% below category average
    Organize and prioritize service tickets9.019 Ratings7.073 Ratings
    Subscription-based notifications10.010 Ratings7.057 Ratings
    Ticket creation and submission8.118 Ratings9.074 Ratings
    Ticket response8.119 Ratings8.074 Ratings
    Expert directory00 Ratings7.553 Ratings
    ITSM collaboration and documentation00 Ratings6.750 Ratings
    Self Help Community
    Comparison of Self Help Community features of Help Scout and Oracle Service
    Feature
    Help Scout
    8.5
    17 Ratings
    8% above category average
    Oracle Service
    7.3
    74 Ratings
    7% below category average
    External knowledge base9.016 Ratings6.865 Ratings
    Internal knowledge base8.015 Ratings7.774 Ratings
    Multi-Channel Help
    Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Help Scout and Oracle Service
    Feature
    Help Scout
    8.0
    19 Ratings
    3% above category average
    Oracle Service
    7.2
    76 Ratings
    8% below category average
    Email support8.019 Ratings7.874 Ratings
    Help Desk CRM integration8.011 Ratings8.654 Ratings
    Customer portal00 Ratings7.569 Ratings
    IVR00 Ratings7.635 Ratings
    Social integration00 Ratings4.746 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Help ScoutOracle Service
    Small Businesses
    LiveAgent
    Score9.7 out of 10
    Help Scout
    Score7.9 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    LiveAgent
    Score9.7 out of 10
    LiveAgent
    Score9.7 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Front
    Score7.1 out of 10
    Front
    Score7.1 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Help ScoutOracle Service
    Likelihood to Recommend
    7.1
    (19 ratings)
    5.1
    (89 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    10.0
    (9 ratings)
    Usability
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    10.0
    (5 ratings)
    Availability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Performance
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Support Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (7 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (4 ratings)
    Configurability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    -
    (0 ratings)
    5.0
    (11 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Help ScoutOracle 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
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    Oracle
    Oracle Right (Oracle Service Cloud) was an important evolution in the group's ombudsman channel management processes. We brought the Oracle Service Cloud to digitize the processes for capturing and managing the group's ombudsman channel, no longer operating manually (MS Excel).

    Oracle Service Cloud (Right Now) brought about an important evolution in the management processes of the group's ombudsman channel, where activities that were performed manually, repetitively and with risk of errors, are now operated by the Right Now platform itself, whether by API, or by automation of the tool.
    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
    Oracle
    • We can access the best-in-class features for cross-channel contact center management amd field service management.
    • It provides a great way to mobilize agents and boost collaboration within the office which in turn improves the overall customer experience.
    • Automation of back of the office repetitive tasks leading to a faster way of addressing customer concerns.
    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
    Oracle
    • Oracle Service Cloud needs a better built in integration with Oracle Social Cloud or it needs to build in more Social network capabilities.
    • SMS is handle via a third party application but could be built in as part of the product.
    • The knowledge foundation product needs a better way to handle multiple languages. Currently you have to purchase an additional interface for each language. You can purchase the more expensive Knowledge Advance which does have a better language feature.
    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
    Oracle
    Although RightNow is extremely flexible, the flexibility comes with a price. It is often not intuitive which settings you need to change (and under which menus these setting are buried) to enable the system to do what you want. Also, sometimes the system can do things you need, but you don't initially realize it. When RightNow sells a system to a new customer, I think it should come with X hours of consulting time with a RightNow expert. The customer should be able to consult with this expert over the next year to get advice concerning how to configure the system to achieve desired needs. Often RightNow Support would just answer "no" when I asked if I could do something, but then I would find another way to achieve my goals after talking with other companies using RightNow.
    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
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    Oracle
    The learning curve is fairly steep; but for something that has this much capability, it's nearly impossible to make it "easy". The layout and organization are at least reasonably intuitive. The hardest part-- the "weakest link"-- is the portal development (where you can build help centers and other end-user pages.) The capabilities there are significant, but the learning curve for that part is especially steep and it takes a fair amount of expertise to be able to update it.
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    Help Scout
    No answers on this topic
    Oracle
    We have never had issues with downtime or it not being available. Upgrades and maintenance also happens in weekends or at night.
    Incentivized
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    Performance
    Help Scout
    No answers on this topic
    Oracle
    We use a lot of tabs and fields on our incident workspace, which should slow the system down, but it's still quite fast, and we continue to optimize whatever is possible.
    Incentivized
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    Support Rating
    Help Scout
    No answers on this topic
    Oracle
    Technicians seem to be assessed based solely on how quickly they close the issues. I've had to reopen requests multiple times because they didn't actually solve my problem. Also, when the issue has even a moderate amount of complexity, the technicians often instruct me to "open another SR" to handle the other issue. I'm the customer, I shouldn't have to follow their processes, they should handle that for me. But even when I create the new SR, it seems like their right hand isn't talking to their left - they aren't reading back to the previous issue for context. So I get bounced around a lot, and I have to tell them how to do their job
    Incentivized
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    In-Person Training
    Help Scout
    No answers on this topic
    Oracle
    Most of our training was given while doing user acceptance testing, and getting the system approved by the market. When ever we were in doubt, our implementer helped us along. Later on we started exploring by our selves.
    Incentivized
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    Implementation Rating
    Help Scout
    No answers on this topic
    Oracle
    Work with a RightNow expert during the implementation. Explain features that would you like to have. Often, somebody who really knows the system can show you what you need to do to achieve the desired results. Where a RightNow support engineer or a consultant might say "the system can't do that," a RightNow application engineer will listen to what you need, and often come up with an alternate path to achieve it
    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
    Oracle
    TCS' customers who also selected Oracle Service Cloud over Salesforce Service Cloud and GE's ServiceMax in the Mfg. vertical in which I work, did so because of the robust ability of Oracle Service Cloud and its APIs to integrate with other value-add solutions for manufacturers such as IoT applications, Big Data Analytics, and Field Service applications.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Scalability
    Help Scout
    No answers on this topic
    Oracle
    We have never had any down time, slowness or anything. Any error or instability that has occurrred has so far has been caused by user errors.
    Incentivized
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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.
    Incentivized
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    Oracle
    • Since its, it has significantly reduced our training time of new agents. What used to take 6 weeks in the class room, went to 4 weeks.
    • Service Cloud allows us to easily gather data to report to the other departments quickly.
    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.

    Oracle Service Screenshots

    Screenshot of A pixel-perfect Customer Portal organizes self-service content in a way that makes sense to your customers.Screenshot of Customers can search, email, chat, and call your business from their mobile devices for immediate resolution.Screenshot of Bring omnichannel interactions together into an intuitive, unified agent desktop.Screenshot of A fully integrated knowledge solution is the backbone of all seamless and consistent service experiences.Screenshot of Tailor customer experiences with contextualized and personalized service using dynamic interviews.Screenshot of Predictive forecasting tools increase field service operational efficiencies to ensure timely job completion.