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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

    Salesforce Service Cloud

    Score8.4 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 Service Cloud
    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 Service Cloud
    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 Service Cloud
    Considered Both Products
    Help Scout
    Chose Help Scout
    Help Scout is more reasonably priced compared to our other options.
    Incentivized
    Salesforce
    Chose Salesforce Service Cloud
    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
    5 Answers
    88%
    Would buy again
    36 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    No answers on this topic
    82%
    Delivers good value for the price
    28 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    5 Answers
    90%
    Happy with the feature set
    37 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    No answers on this topic
    81%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    21 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    No answers on this topic
    83%
    Implementation went as expected
    24 Answers
    Features
    Help ScoutSalesforce Service Cloud
    Incident and problem management
    Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Help Scout and Salesforce Service Cloud
    Feature
    Help Scout
    8.8
    19 Ratings
    9% above category average
    Salesforce Service Cloud
    8.8
    77 Ratings
    9% above category average
    Organize and prioritize service tickets9.019 Ratings9.475 Ratings
    Subscription-based notifications10.010 Ratings8.663 Ratings
    Ticket creation and submission8.118 Ratings9.375 Ratings
    Ticket response8.119 Ratings9.174 Ratings
    Expert directory00 Ratings8.553 Ratings
    ITSM collaboration and documentation00 Ratings8.260 Ratings
    Self Help Community
    Comparison of Self Help Community features of Help Scout and Salesforce Service Cloud
    Feature
    Help Scout
    8.5
    17 Ratings
    8% above category average
    Salesforce Service Cloud
    8.7
    72 Ratings
    10% above category average
    External knowledge base9.016 Ratings8.463 Ratings
    Internal knowledge base8.015 Ratings8.970 Ratings
    Multi-Channel Help
    Comparison of Multi-Channel Help features of Help Scout and Salesforce Service Cloud
    Feature
    Help Scout
    8.0
    19 Ratings
    3% above category average
    Salesforce Service Cloud
    8.7
    77 Ratings
    11% above category average
    Email support8.019 Ratings9.276 Ratings
    Help Desk CRM integration8.011 Ratings8.866 Ratings
    Customer portal00 Ratings7.954 Ratings
    IVR00 Ratings8.834 Ratings
    Social integration00 Ratings8.947 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Help ScoutSalesforce Service Cloud
    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 ScoutSalesforce Service Cloud
    Likelihood to Recommend
    7.1
    (19 ratings)
    8.3
    (83 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    6.2
    (8 ratings)
    Usability
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    8.0
    (12 ratings)
    Availability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.5
    (28 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 Service Cloud
    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
    It is a helpful tool, but it can be a bit cumbersome to manage. It is also a bit expensive, but we already use CRM for Salesforce and it is convenient to be able to immediately tag contacts and accounts when the tickets come into the system and tie them directly to the account. I do know an integration with Jira is possible (we use Jira internally for our engineering team to escalate issues) but it is not configured right now so managing the connection between support tickets and Jira tickets is manual and hard to keep up with
    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
    • Allows us to make changes quickly and with relative ease
    • Can be flexible enough to use among several teams who do very different work
    • Salesforce in general provides SO much training that anyone on the team can skill up and help maintain the system
    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
    • There is a slight scope for error, but sometimes it has a heavy impact. So this can be improved.
    • Costing is high.
    • Maintenance is more.
    • Expertise is required for implementation.
    • The number of communication messages have some limit per organisation account.
    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
    Salesforce's Trust Center clearly communicates occasional issues to anyone who subscribes, down to an organization's cloud instance. Bundled sandboxes ease updates, and seasonal upgrades are seamless, scheduled well in advance with plenty of information about what's coming. Support agents have noticed intermittent Omni-Channel disconnects due to internet connections, and these are clearly notified.
    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
    Salesforce service cloud is more configurable than Zendesk and Freshdesk. It has its own inbuilt AI chatbot also which further improves service agent efficiency. Salesforce is more integration agnostic and has pre-built connectors with multiple 3rd party systems. However, in terms of pricing it is priced at a premium compared to the other solutions
    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
    • Because this is a cloud service, the security, implementation framework and feature list is very mature and you don't have to develop these during implementation.
    • The larger the implementation programme the better the licensing arrangements
    • Free developer toolkit for proof of concepts or showcasing features
    • Limited to annual subscription model
    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 Service Cloud Screenshots

    Screenshot of Workflows and OrchestrationScreenshot of Service CatalogScreenshot of Contact Center