Freshdesk vs Help Scout: Which Customer Service Tool is Better?
Table of Contents
Providing great customer service is not simply a nice-to-have in the business environment; it is a vital component of success. Research shows that companies that put the customer experience first might outperform their rivals in terms of revenue by 4-8%. Choosing the best customer service tool is essential to producing those successful experiences because it allows companies to react fast, handle problems effectively, and establish enduring relationships with their clients.
Freshdesk and Help Scout stand out among the best choices available as well-liked systems made to improve and streamline customer support operations. Although both products provide strong capabilities to assist companies in handling questions and enhancing customer satisfaction, their functions and applications differ.
We’ll compare Freshdesk vs Help Scout in this article, highlighting their advantages, disadvantages, and special features. This article will assist you in making an informed choice to improve your customer service, regardless of your top priorities: scalability, complex features, or ease of use.
What is Freshdesk?
Freshworks created the powerful Freshdesk customer service platform to assist companies in managing communication across a variety of channels, such as social media, live chat, email, and self-service portals. Its primary strength is its ticketing system, which collects customer requests from many sources into a single, organized queue for easy administration.
Automation capabilities that effectively classify, prioritize, and allocate tickets are among the main Freshdesk features. These tools save time and guarantee reliable responses. With its omnichannel capabilities, Freshdesk helps companies to offer smooth interactions across several platforms, guaranteeing that clients have a productive and connected experience.
Whether you’re a small business looking to simplify support or an enterprise aiming to scale operations, Freshdesk offers the tools to improve customer service while improving team productivity.
What is Help Scout?
Help Scout is a customer service platform, created to provide effective and personalized email-based assistance. Its focus on simplicity and use makes it an excellent choice for small and medium-sized businesses that appreciate building strong, customer-focused relationships.
One of the best Help Scout features is its shared team inbox, which makes it easy for support teams to work together and guarantees that every email receives the consideration it needs. Teams can stay organized and keep their responses personal thanks to its user-friendly design.
Beyond Help Scout email support, this tool includes a knowledge base tool and an embedded search/contact widget, enabling customers to access self-service options and find answers quickly without needing to contact support directly.
This blend of personal and self-service support makes Help Scout a flexible, customer-centric solution that simplifies service management while improving the overall customer experience.
Freshdesk vs Help Scout: Feature Comparison
Both Freshdesk vs Help Scout have an array of important customer support functions in common, but they vary in how they implement these features and the benefits they provide. Here’s a summary:
Ticketing System
- Freshdesk: Features a complex multichannel ticketing system, consolidating queries from email, chat, phone, social media, and messaging apps into a unified dashboard. Its advanced capabilities, like parent-child ticketing and automatic ticket assignment, ensure efficient management of complex issues.
- Help Scout: Offers a simple, Help Scout email support ticketing system designed for a more personalized and humanized support experience. Its team inbox allows agents to collaborate effortlessly, with features like private notes and customer information readily accessible in the sidebar.
Collaboration Tools
- Freshdesk: Includes advanced collaboration features like agent collision detection to prevent duplicate responses, shared ticket ownership for cross-department collaboration, and automated ticket assignment.
- Help Scout: Focuses on simplicity with shared inboxes, private notes for internal discussions, and collision detection, ensuring smooth teamwork without unnecessary complexity.
Automation
- Freshdesk: Is perfect for larger teams handling high ticket volumes since it offers complete workflow automation and allows rule-based triggers for issue routing, escalation, and pre-configured responses.
- Help Scout: Focuses on simplicity of setup and use for smaller teams, including simple automation features like rule-based email routing, tagging, and assignment.
Knowledge Base
- Freshdesk: Comes with a feature-rich knowledge base, allowing businesses to create multilingual support articles, FAQs, and guides. Its hierarchical organization and collaboration tools make it an excellent choice for detailed self-service support.
- Help Scout: Offers “Docs,” a versatile knowledge base tool that allows businesses to create a public or private support website. Integrated directly with Help Scout, it enables easy article management, supports multimedia-rich content, and offers branding options like custom domains. While there are no limits on articles or assets, it focuses on self-help, allowing customers to rate but not comment on content.
Multichannel Support
- Freshdesk: Is an expert in multichannel assistance, combining social media, live chat, email, phone, and messaging apps like WhatsApp. It offers a consistent experience across all platforms.
- Help Scout: Primarily focuses on email-based support but integrates with live chat tools for real-time assistance. It lacks built-in support for social media or messaging apps.
Reporting and Analytics
- Freshdesk: Offers detailed and customizable reporting with visual dashboards that track metrics like agent performance, ticket resolution times, and customer satisfaction. Advanced users can build reports tailored to specific needs.
- Help Scout: Offers clear reports that highlight important parameters like discussion volume and response time. Teams without complex reporting requirements can easily understand it due to its simplicity.
Although both tools offer first-rate customer support features, your decision between Freshdesk vs Help Scout will rely on the particular goals of your company, such as multichannel help, ease of use, or advanced automation.
Freshdesk Unique Features
-
Omnichannel Support
Freshdesk distinguishes itself by combining client requests from several channels, including chat, phone, email, messaging applications, and social media into a single, unified platform. This guarantees that every customer interaction is handled with ease, enhancing agent productivity and the clientele’s experience. No matter how a customer decides to contact a business, they can continue to provide consistent service due to the advanced Freshdesk omnichannel support.
-
Freddy AI
Freshdesk leverages AI-powered capabilities through Freddy, its virtual assistant. Freddy helps automate repetitive tasks, such as ticket assignment and canned responses, and provides insights by analyzing trends in customer interactions. It can even predict customer needs, enabling proactive support. These features make Freshdesk a powerful tool for teams looking to optimize their workflows and reduce manual effort.
-
Field Service Management
Freshdesk offers specialized tools for businesses that manage on-site service teams. This feature supports scheduling field visits, assigning tasks to agents, and tracking their progress. It’s particularly useful for companies in industries like home services or equipment maintenance, where customer issues often require physical intervention.
Freshdesk is tailored for businesses with complex support workflows. Its advanced multichannel capabilities, AI tools, and features like Field Service Management position it as a robust solution for scaling operations and ensuring excellent customer experiences.
Help Scout Unique Features
-
Email-Centric Support
The Help Scout email support tool excels by providing a shared inbox that facilitates easy team collaboration. Agents may answer questions in a style that feels conversational and personal thanks to its simple and easy-to-use interface, which closely resembles the experience of a traditional email interaction.
This simplicity makes it ideal for teams that rely heavily on email to connect with customers while maintaining a human touch in their interactions.
-
Beacon Live Chat
A small and discrete live chat tool that blends in perfectly with websites is offered by Scout’s Beacon feature. Beacon, in contrast to conventional live chat systems, enables companies to combine real-time conversation when necessary with self-service features like knowledge base searches and frequently asked questions.
This guarantees that clients receive the appropriate assistance at the appropriate moment without overwhelming support staff.
-
Customer Profiles
Help Scout places a strong emphasis on personalized support by offering complex customer profiles. These profiles include conversation histories, allowing agents to view past interactions and provide contextually relevant responses. This feature not only improves response quality but also builds stronger relationships with customers by showing that their needs and histories are understood.
Freshdesk vs Help Scout Pricing
| Pricing Plan | Freshdesk | Help Scout |
|---|---|---|
| Free Plan | Monthly: $0 (Up to 2 agents; basic ticketing and limited features) | Monthly: $0 (Up to 50 contacts; inbox, Docs, basic reporting) |
| Growth/Standard | Monthly: $18/agent | Monthly: $55 |
| Pro/Plus | Monthly: $59/agent | Monthly: $83 |
| Enterprise | Monthly: $95/agent | Not Applicable |
| Free Trial | Try Freshdesk for free | 15-days |
Freshdesk Use Cases
- Large Support Teams – Freshdesk is ideal for businesses managing extensive customer support teams. With its Freshdesk features including multichannel support and robust collaboration tools like parent-child ticketing and shared ownership, this tool helps large teams stay organized and efficient.
- Enterprises – With cutting-edge capabilities like Freddy AI for automation, predictive support, and field service management, Freshdesk stands out for businesses in need of scalable customer service solutions. These solutions make it easy for businesses to manage complicated workflows and large ticket volumes.
- Customer-Centric Startups – Freshdesk empowers startups to build a strong customer support foundation by combining multiple communication channels into one platform. Its intuitive interface and scalable pricing make it accessible for growing businesses focused on delivering exceptional customer experiences.
Freshdesk customer service excels in meeting the needs of diverse industries, offering flexibility and efficiency through its rich set of features.
Help Scout Use Cases
- Small to Medium Businesses – Small to medium-sized organizations that prioritize offering straightforward, effective email help would benefit significantly from using Help Scout. It is perfect for companies with simple support requirements because of its user-friendly platform, which enables teams to handle and address client inquiries fast.
- Teams Focused on Personalization – For businesses that want to offer a more personalized customer experience, Help Scout excels. With features like customer profiles and continuous email threads, it allows support agents to have meaningful conversations and build lasting relationships with customers, making it feel more human and less robotic.
- Content and Service Companies – This tool offers a well-integrated Help Scout knowledge base. Its Docs feature lets businesses create a self-service portal, enabling customers to easily find answers to their questions. Its clean and intuitive tools make managing content and customer interactions seamless.
Help Scout email support stands out with its focus on simplicity and personalization, while the knowledge base feature helps businesses provide efficient, self-service options to their customers.
Freshdesk vs Help Scout Conclusion
In summary, both Freshdesk vs Help Scout provide excellent customer support systems, but they address distinct requirements.
Freshdesk excels for companies that need scalability, powerful AI technologies, and multichannel support. It is perfect for larger teams or businesses with intricate workflows because it can handle assistance via chat, social media, phone, email, and more. For companies that require a strong, adaptable system, the extra features like enhanced automation and field service management are ideal.
Help Scout, on the other hand, specializes in email-based help and emphasizes personalization and ease of use. Small to medium-sized enterprises that prioritize user-friendliness and personal engagement will find it ideal. Its clean interface and knowledge base integration make it a strong choice for teams focused on offering a personalized customer experience.
Take into account your budget, the complexity of your assistance requirements, and the size of your company when deciding between the two. Since both platforms have free trials, it’s wise to give them a try to determine which one best suits your requirements.
