Help Scout

Help Scout is a developer of a web-based help desk designed for businesses to manage customer support. The company's help desk lets agents see conversations that have taken place with the customer, along with a public profile of that customer compiled from data on social networks, enabling small businesses to understand and interact more with their customers.

The company powers customer support for more than 7,000 businesses in 140 countries. It provides email and live chat, and delivers help content where customers need it. Help Scout also works to simplify companies' help desks and make the customer experience better.

The Help Scout platform offers users collaboration tools, including shared notes and shared emails to keep customer support teams on the same page when working to help customers. Users can also send private notes in regards to customers and their needs, and they can tag customer conversations to create a searchable library of customer conversations. The Help Scout platform works to avoid duplication with real-time indicators to show when another person is viewing or responding to a help request.

Help Scout offers users the ability to build a searchable support library designed for customer self-service. The knowledge base works in Beacon, as a popover, as a modal, and as a sidebar. The integrations are designed to work on any device, includes SSL support, and is developed to be searchable with configurable SEO options.

Help Scout offers messaging services to help onboard customers, announce new features for customers, suggest helpful content, start conversations, and get product feedback. The messaging feature includes quick ratings, reporting to help users develop their products, and mobile SDK support.

Help Scout's platform offers customer management tools, which include listing customer data, previous conversations, and app activity. These tools function alongside customer support requests to help customer support teams respond faster and offers personalization features.

Help Scout's platform also offers reporting tools. These include dashboards to help evaluate teams, their customer volume, the busiest hours, and the trending topics among a customer base. This data is presented in a dashboard to help user visibility.

Image of an example of Help Scout's Reports dashboard. (credit: helpscout.com)

The platform offers live chat software to provide live customer support. Users are able to modify whether the platform prioritizes a self-service model, in which customers do not see contact options until viewing articles; a neutral model, where customers can see help content and contact options side-by-side; and an ask first model, in which customers see contact options prioritized over help content.

Help Scout's platform offers various software integrations, including integrations for:

• Slack
• Mailchimp
• Shopify
• Olark
• HubSpot
• Jira
• Salesforce
• Magento
• Campfire
• AirCall
• Asana
• Fivetran
• Facebook