Help Scout vs. Web+Center

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

It works well with any type of help desk/support system. This includes information technology but could be applied to any type of technical support service. It can also be modified quickly to create a totally different type of software package such as an indexing program for libraries and archives or it could be used as a permit management system. The software is very flexible and can be tailored to almost any need.

Incentivized

• 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

• Web+Center keeps a searchable knowledge base of all past issues. This makes it easy to search for solutions to recurring issues.
• Web+Center makes it easy to see where techs are spending their time and also to see which techs are your top producers.
• The automated email and text message alerts are great to alert techs right away to reported problems.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• I have read reviews where some people comment that the interface "looks dated". I am a believer in function over form. The interface is just eye candy and if it works well, why would you want to re-code software just to make it look different? I like the interface and can quickly find the functions I need. As for room for improvement? Well, that would depend on your location and what types of data you prefer to have access to. For me, the program is great the way it is.

Incentivized

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

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

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.

Incentivized

We've been using Web+Center so long, that I can't even remember what offerings we evaluated. We haven't felt the need to look at others because Web+Center just works for us.

Incentivized

• 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

• I looked for years trying to find a great software package that did not require a loan to purchase. Web+Center was the perfect fit. Pricing is very affordable even for very small organizations. It is dependent on the number of technicians, not the number of customers.

Incentivized