Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued) vs. Help Scout

Agiloft is a fully GUI based system that requires very little or no coding. That allows for a very quick deployment of a new install and for adding new features. Therefore, it works great for companies that don't want to write a new system from the ground up.

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

• Agiloft's performance has been excellent. This includes 1) Scalability, 2) System response, and 3) Reliability. We have not had a reported issue with the system for at least 2 years.
• Professional Services. When we had an issue interfacing with an external data mart we brought in Agiloft's Professional Services and got a quick, cost-effective solution.
• Strategic Planning. As we look to the future we are hoping to move to the ITIL model. We love Agiloft's solution and have embraced it as our future direction.
• Flexibility. This includes 1) Custom form design, 2) Routing based on just about any criteria, 3) Addition of attributes, 4) Search capabilities for end users.

• 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

• They could build a slicker look to the graphical charts output for the reports. These look a bit dated, and I would like the ability to customize them more.
• I find that some features of the tool are difficult to find, and aren't necessarily in the most common sense of places. This definitely eases with experience with the tool, but initially it will take some time just to figure out the setup of the tool and where things are located. For example, permissions can be set on many different levels, which is great, but logically finding where to find the differing permission levels is difficult at first. I would suggest attending their admin training session to initiate yourself with the tool at first, so you're not as reliant on Agiloft initially to guide you in building the tool, which can get expensive.

• 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

We have invested a lot of effort in tailoring the solution to our needs. Our users (both internal and external) are comfortable with it and we have aligned it with our workflow. We have also integrated it into our implementation processes and are working to connect it to our SDLC.

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

For the most part, it is an easy and intuitive system to use. There are many small things that could be improved to make the system work even easier. However, overall it is very easy to use if you have a good grasp on computer programs and using them to build things. I do not have any computer science or programming background, and I am able to use this system with few problems.

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

We often hear back very quickly with answers to our questions. They also support their answers at times with screenshots and videos to help further explain their advice and suggestions. The only reason it isn't a 10 is because sometimes using only the online support system, sometimes things aren't communicated as well as they would be over the phone. However, we know if there is a major issue going on, we can call Agiloft for support.

Agiloft's singular advantage is its ease of customization that allows you to capture automation requirements right at the point of use. We knew our company would always be developing new requirements for its customer-facing processes and any tool that made customization difficult was an inferior choice for us. Other vendors offered similar levels of customization, but when we dug deeper, Agiloft was the only one that delivered it. Our management team came from the IT and development side of NetSuite and we have used it to manage our business almost since inception. However, its support, marketing, and sales functionality was too difficult to modify and built to meet too broad a set of requirements, so we could never get full adoption or utilization, and it stood in the way of delivering the service levels we needed to provide our customers. We still use NetSuite for back-of-the-house financial functions which don't need that level of customization, but for everything else, the way forward has led us to choose Agiloft.

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

• Helps us organize tasks and projects and the data associated with each project
• Helps us organize our resources to meet the demand of issues and events
• This has helped us keep moving forward during times we otherwise would have pulled back.
• Completely revolutionized our way of work life. Upwards of approx 300 percent productivity and complexity..

• 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