Help desk software can tremendously impact the productivity and quality of customer support. These solutions help businesses build a community of happy customers who experience nothing but satisfaction when dealing with the company’s support team. So, how to choose the best help desk system for your business? Try checking our side-by-side comparison for a start.
This is what our researchers decided to do. Our team spent hundreds of hours studying numerous reviews and examining countless features to provide you with a definitive Help Scout vs Freshdesk comparison. You might be wondering why these two particular tools, the answer is quite simple, they are viewed as the best customer support solutions around.
Our Freshdesk vs Help Scout review covers every aspect of each solution and a few little details that aren’t as obvious as they may seem. Also, as part of our Scout vs Freshdesk analysis, we’ll be covering the user interface and ease of navigation, and elaborate on some other features that we find very useful. Also, we won't be touching on the pricing as these change occasionally, and you might catch a discount. Okay, now that this is out of the way, we can finally proceed to the real deal. Let’s get started!
Before you continue reading the help desk software comparison, check out the video about Help Scout vs Freshdesk:
Brief Help Desk Software Overview
Before we jump into the full-blown analysis, we would like to give you a general idea of what Help Scout and Freshdesk are and mention their most outstanding support features. This will help you better understand the latter sections of our overview.
So, what are the essential support tools to look for in help desk solutions? Make sure it offers a ticketing system, automation options, team inbox, knowledge base, and integrations. Now, let’s check whose features are more comprehensive.
What is Help Scout used for?
Like most help desk systems, Help Scout has everything users expect from a tool like this. It provides teams with multiple support channels, ticket management, issue tracking, live chat, and self-service options. The features, however, don’t stop there as you get several customization options and a dedicated team inbox.
What we should include in the Help Scout overview is that it provides a superb user experience by completely eliminating the need to browse through thousands of tickets in a portal and enter credentials all the time. One account is for everything and you can access it via a mobile app, desktop, or any other device with an Internet browser.
The platform offers a number of third-party integrations and can even communicate with other business systems. Such a feature combination adds to support teams' productivity and helps provide customers with an excellent experience.
What is Freshdesk used for?
While most new help desk systems aim for big companies, Freshdesk started only with mid-size businesses in mind. And this is what makes it so special. The platform unites support channels into one system and brings the essentials like ticket management, self-service (knowledge base and community forum), and many customization options for analytics. However, if you want to use a chat, you need to integrate the Freshchat app since Freshdesk has no built-in live chat.
Freshdesk offers means of speeding up customer support too. Thanks to the built-in automation options, you can reply to customer requests, update pricing, assign tickets to agents, and all this round-the-clock without the need for manpower. Also, the platform offers numerous integrations including over 1000 apps on the marketplace. We’ll close this Freshdesk overview by mentioning that such well-known organizations as Pearson, TeleResult, and even Lesley University belong to Freshdesk customers.
What Makes a Good Ticketing System?
It’s no secret that all operations in any help desk revolve around tickets. They are an integral part of customer support and they are possible to use in many different scenarios, including analytics, issue tracking, performance reviews, and more.
But these aren’t the only reasons why you should care about a good ticketing system. In time, tickets pile up, so agents have to manage large volumes of customer requests.
It is generally agreed that a good ticketing system allows users to sort, prioritize, and store tickets in folders. These are the features that you should focus on when choosing between Freshdesk or Help Scout.
How do you use Freshdesk tickets?
We’ve mentioned that filtering plays a vital role in ticket management and thankfully, the Freshdesk development team understands this. They’ve implemented a filter-like feature called “Views”. It’s very similar to what you can find in Help Scout. It also allows users to customize the filtering criteria, and sorting options and even provides the ability to share it between teams unique to the system.
Thanks to the role system, your agents can access and manage tickets without the need for special permission from the higher-ups. This allows teams greater autonomy and will reduce time doing all the sorting manually. This is definitely a good feature and Freshdesk continues to improve it with new sections added every month.
What is a Help Scout ticket management?
As we proceed through this Help Scout vs Freshdesk review, we noticed one particular specialty in Help Scout. The company doesn’t have a generic ticket management tool. Instead, they focus on mailboxes. This might seem odd but it works very well.
First off, when you create a mailbox, you connect an external email. As a result, all messages sent to this email, appear in the mailbox. You can create more than one email and set access permissions for agents. This allows your team to organize “tickets” based on where they came from. For example, issue type A will arrive at mailbox A, and if issue type A arrives in mailbox B, then it will be automatically assigned back to mailbox A. This saves time and helps agents manage tickets effectively.
Also as a part of the mailbox system, you get Folders. This is essentially a sorting tool that lets you arrange different types of tickets into different folders. These folders are also possible to customize in terms of visibility. If you want group A not to see group B tickets, you can hide them with just a few clicks.
Both tools are great at what they are designed to do. If you want to compare Help Scout to Freshdesk in terms of ticketing systems, save some time as they are practically the same and achieve good results.
What to Search for in Help Desk Analytics?
No analysis is complete if there’s no comparison of Help Scout vs Freshdesk analytics. After all, these are vital features and without them, the value of help desk software would be significantly lower. Knowing what your customers prefer is critical as with good analytics, you can refine your message even further.
So, once we looked at Freshdesk vs Help Scout, we noticed a few key differences around the accuracy of reports, as well as noticed that one of the tools doesn’t have a few cool little reporting features the other has.
What is analytics in Freshdesk?
So first thing first, Freshdesk. The platform has eight distinct data filters you can apply to a report and export as a customized overview. You can also download these reports again from the drop-down menu. It means that you don’t have to apply the above-mentioned filters again. Using the scheduling feature, you can automatically download new reports and send them to your customers, partners, etc.
But with all that in mind, the key takeaway of this reporting tool is that you are limited to just these eight report templates. This is a huge step down as once we compare Freshdesk vs Help Scout, you’ll immediately notice that the whole system is dramatically different. Yet, if you don’t need extra flexibility and do just fine with stock reports, Freshdesk will be more than enough.
What is analytics in Help Scout?
Help Scout software is very flexible in terms of creating custom reports. You get the ability to adjust names, and values, visualize reports or add them from the built-in store. Another interesting thing about the analytics section is that you can check them on the mobile version of the service desk.
You can also sort and filter fields such as tags, type, agent, etc. It's very good in terms of customizability but there is one caveat we couldn't ignore, and that is the inability to schedule reports. This seemingly simple feature would have made a day and night difference. Here’s hoping the company adds in a future update.
How Do You Automate Process in Help Desk?
The final part of our Help Scout vs. Freshdesk comparison is automation. It’s no secret that automated mundane work is not only cost-effective. It will also allow for a larger output from your customer support team. In other words, if your team has to manage tickets, assign issues, send surveys, and reopen cases on their own, a service desk can help. Do keep in mind that most service desks will help you in some way. It’s just some are better than others. So, let’s move on to figuring out whether Help Scout or Freshdesk is better in customer support automation.
What automation can be done in Freshdesk?
The developers at Freshdesk sure do love to separate features into different modules. The Dispatch’r, Observer, and Supervisor constitute their automation suite relatively. As the names imply, Dispatch’r is responsible for prioritizing and assigning tickets, Observer, on the other hand, is responsible for notifying staff about a poor reviews, bad customer service, etc. and finally, there's a Supervisor that can close tickets.
The system is pretty simple on paper but there’s technically a fourth function called Scenarios. Here’s where things can get complicated. In the right hands, this system can achieve a wide range of simple to semi-complex issues but if a person has no idea what he’s doing, he won't be able to configure it. He can still use the first three modules but Scenarios are out of the question.
What can you do with Help Scout automation?
When you compare Help Scout to Freshdesk you’ll immediately notice that the whole automation system is unified into one feature called “workflows.” This system is based on mailboxes and can automatically sort tickets by inbound email, send a scheduled follow-up email, and track conversations by tags and folders. Therefore, it is inherently tailored to certain support teams. It can perform most of the basic functions, as well as a few complex ones.
Just like in Freshdesk, using these features can be a hurdle if you have never seen them before. The user interface in these things isn’t exactly friendly but again, if someone with technical know-how grabs it, they can achieve good things. The main gripe of this functionality is its ties to a single mailbox. If you want to apply it universally across your company, you’ll need to clone it. But other than that, it’s good.
Help Scout vs Freshdesk: Drawing a Conclusion
Both service desks are great; whether you choose Help Scout or Freshdesk for your customer support, you’ll be fine. The only thing we can suggest is that it’s best that you imagine it being applied to your workflow. If you see a lot of benefits from a particular tool, good for it.
Naturally, you shouldn’t stop on Freshdesk and Help Scout. There are help desk software alternatives that might catch your eye, too.
Also, we know that we omitted the export options, and for good reasons. Migration can be tough as each service desk has its own set of rules you must follow. And not always the exported data compatible with the target platform. Yet, there is a solution. Our developers have been hard at work to create a wizard that will let you move all your precious information in just a few clicks. The best part is that you can try a Free Demo Migration and check how it works.
