Struggling to choose between Help Scout and Gorgias?
While both will help you step up your customer support no matter where you start from, they outperform each other in certain areas.
So, which of these has a better UI? Which one offers powerful automation & reporting features? You must be having lots of such questions in your mind.
Well, fret not! This head-to-head showdown of Help Scout vs Gorgias compares their strengths and shortcomings to help you find one best suited to your support requirements.
Help Scout is a clutter-free customer support platform that helps businessesoffer high-touch, hyper-personalized resolutions to clients. It is an easy, all-purpose tool that meets your expectations when it comes to handling customer queries/issues.
Help Scout has all the features you need to improve your productivity by notches and save you countless business hours. When you sign up for their free trial, you caninstantly access an impressive stack of features designed to boost customer experience and retention.
A collision detector is a live indicator that steps in when some agent is reading or replying to a customer request while the another agent is typing. That way, you can prevent sending duplicate responses to customers.
Help Scout enables you to instantly respond to customers through Beacon, its multi-purpose web widget. Beyond chatting, Beacon recommends customers content based on the page they are currently browsing and escalates requests to suitable support agents. As such, you can tackle overwhelming query volumes and avoid frustrated customers due to long wait times.
Messages lets you announce new/upcoming releases, share important company news, or proactively support users who need additional help. This Help Scout feature helps you boost customer engagement and self-service experience.
You can choose five types of messages – standard, NPS, modal, banner, and microsurvey – to ensure you send targeted messages when and where you want them.
Also called canned responses, you can create and save replies, and edit them according to the customer query for further use. That way, you can address inquiries/issues that require standard or straightforward responses in a quick manner.
The in-built spam filter saves you the headache of sifting through spammy emails in your shared mailbox. When you mark a conversation’s status as “Spam,” Help Scout automatically puts future conversations from that specific sender into the spam folder.
Start-ups and small-scale enterprises looking for a simple customer support tool to respond via chat and email are ideal customer bases for Help Scout. These businesses work in the education, gaming, real estate, and e-commerce industries.
Gorgias is a customer service platform built for e-commerce businesses and has powerful functionalities that can be game changer for online retailers. The solution enables your support agents to bring all customer-facing communications into a single location, proactively engage with prospects, and turn them into revenue drivers.
As Gorgias mainly serves e-commerce brands, it offers unique value-creating features many customer support platforms do not.
Gorgias uses an artificial intelligence (AI) engine to comb the web for positive/negative customer feedback on your offerings, and later flashes them on the dashboard. Apart from these emotions, Gorgias supports multiple sentiments – promoter, threatening, urgent, and offensive.
You can define rules on the Gorgias platform to automate particular repetitive questions to save time based on “contains one of” and “contains all of.” While the former indicates you can use at least one keyword, the latter means you must use all the keywords.
Using autoresponders, you can sort, tag, and assign customer requests based on pre-defined conditions. This Gorgias feature decreases the number of repetitive tasks and ensures prompt responses to customers.
With its chat campaign feature, Gorgias lets you activate live conversations with customers whenever they browse your website. For instance, you can ask for feedback, provide product-related discounts, and promote a particular product.
The revenue dashboard shows the real-time impact of your live chat and customer support teams. As such, you can easily monitor agents’ performance based on response and resolution times, customer satisfaction scores (CSAT), and net promoter scores (NPS).
E-commerce companies of all shapes and sizes looking to serve across multiple communication channels should look no further than Gorgias. These online retailers primarily sell sporting goods, health-centric items, and consumer electronics products on their digital marketplaces.
We have rounded up a more detailed comparison between Help Scout and Gorgias on crucial areas. Read on.
Help Scout
Focusing on customer-centricity, Help Scout’s intuitive, user-friendly interface makes query handling a breeze for businesses. Your support agents will enjoy its clean and modern interface. Essential support-centric features – routing based on teams, prioritizing issues/queries, and auto-assignment – are easy to install and use.
However, Help Scout’s limited features and integrations on offer have hampered multiple users’ productivity. One of the users expects “more advanced integrations to our CRM and a way to take calls and record calls within Help Scout.”
Similarly, another user has criticized the platform as “Integration with some channels not available (like Whatsapp) as well as round robins and more complex adjustments not available on this platform.”
Gorgias
Gorgias has a basic, easy-to-use interface that closely mimics an email client. Once you get comfortable, sorting customer queries/issues becomes fairly smooth. The left-side column displays multiple options that let you manage all interactions without hassle.
Besides, the UI is visually appealing as it has color-coded ticket categories and a simple order entry process.
However, getting the hang of using the Gorgias app is challenging, eating up your precious time. One of the users has complained that “the user interface can be a bit daunting and difficult to use at times.”
Secondly, Gorgias falls quite short than other solutions when it comes to reporting, with one user wishing “a more robust reporting feature would be extremely helpful.”
Help Scout
With Help Scout, you can provide support to customers via in-app messaging, email, and live chat. While it has native integration with Facebook Messenger, it does not have direct WhatsApp integration. For that, you will need to bring in a third-party tool.
What further puts businesses, especially online retailers, at a disadvantage is that Help Scout does not offer phone support.
Gorgias
Gorgias’s customer support platform is omnichannel, bringing all of your customer-facing conversations into a single shared inbox for faster responses and resolutions. These include voice, SMS, email, chat, and Instagram & Facebook (DMs, comments, and ad replies).
Help Scout
Help Scout offer integrations with more than 90 business apps, including Shopify, Slack, Zapier, and Magento. To optimize your support operations, you can bring in 50 tools using the Help Scout-Zapier, such as Cyfe, FormKeep, and MySQL. Additionally, you can develop any app of your choice using Help Scout’s API.
Despite Help Scout supporting integrations with many enterprise apps, it does not blend with equally critical ones like Instagram and WhatsApp.
Gorgias
Gorgias’ customer service software easily integrates with over 100 enterprise tools (native and third-party) most e-commerce brands use regularly. While it primarily easily integrates with Magento, Shopify, and BigCommerce, there is an App Store with a significantly longer list of tools. Some of these include:
Help Scout
Help Scout’s support staff is available 24/6 via email, live chat, and the “Contact Us” pop-up at the bottom corner of the Help Center page. Besides, the customer service platform has a rich knowledge base where you can find content related to account management, getting started, reporting, and integrations.
Upgrade to the higher-tiered plans for quarterly training sessions and a dedicated account manager.
Gorgias
You can contact Gorgias’ customer support agents via live chat and direct email around the clock. Moreover, you can learn everything to become a power user by enrolling in Gorgias Academy, which offers courses on agent training, account setup, and e-commerce.
Gorgias’ knowledge base contains abundant resources surrounding daily operations, reporting, and get started.
Help Scout
Help Scout’s pricing structure looks like:
These Help Scout subscriptions are available at a 20% discount (except the Pro plan) if billed every year. All these plans come with email & live chat, Beacon help widget, custom reports, and around 50 integrations.
While Help Scout offers unlimited inboxes, its pricing gets annoying as your support team grows. No matter how many customer issues/queries (tickets) your agents handle, you will have to pay for every user.
Gorgias
The Gorgias platform is available in five pricing plans, which vary based on your monthly ticket volume instead of by agent:
You can subscribe to these plans at a 20% discount (except the Starter plan) if you decide to renew them annually. All Gorgias levels include social media integration, unlimited users, satisfaction surveys, live chat, up to 150 integrations, and macros & rules.
While this volume-based pricing structure is suitable for small businesses, it can be a bummer for those handling a large number of support tickets.
The Gorgias platform’s UI is fantastic. So is Help Scout’s. Both offer wallet-friendly subscriptions for their customer service software.
But…
These perks come with some trade-offs. Gorgias’ ticket-based pricing model can be a deal-breaker for brands managing high ticket volumes. Similarly, Help Scout’s agent-based pricing model hinders organizations looking to expand.
So, Help Scout is a great fit if:
Choose Gorgias if:
| Help Scout | Gorgias | |
| Features | Collision detection Live chat Messages Saved replies Spam filter | Customer sentiment analysis Rules Autoresponder Chat campaigns Revenue dashboard |
| Pricing | Paid plans starting at US$25/user/month | Paid plans starting at US$10/month (up to 50 monthly tickets) |
| Ease of use | Easy to setup and use; limited features and integrations | User-friendly interface; slightly complex with inadequate reporting functionalities |
| Support channels | In-app messaging, Facebook Messenger, chat, and email | Voice, SMS, email, live chat, and social media |
| Integrations | With 90+ business tools, no WhatsApp integration available | With 100+ business tools; most available in the basic plan |
| Customer support | 24/6 chat and email support; dedicated account manager and quarterly team training on higher-end plans | 24/7 chat and email support; help center and community forum for more focused queries |
| Customer reviews | 4.4/5 on G2 | 4.6/5 on G2 |
While both Help Scout and Gorgias have hits and misses, Helpwise is as clean as a whistle.
Helpwise has everything an exceptional support teamneeds. Build a chatbot without thinking a lot, offer omnichannel communication support to customers, assign conversations based on logic, and generate accurate reports.
Every feature of Helpwise’s platform is thoughtfully built to help your agents perform productively.
Let’s see how our customer service platform scores higher than Gorgias and Help Scout.
Gorgias narrowly focuses on e-commerce vendors, especially using Shopify, Magento, or BigCommerce. Outside of this space, however, Gorgias does not have much to stand out in the market. Fortunately, Helpwise serves businesses across multiple industries – e-commerce, SaaS, and real estate – making it an incredible Gorgias alternative.
Besides, Helpwise equips you with advanced customer service featuresnecessary to boost customer satisfaction and retention. For instance, AI-driven capabilities (macros, conversation summaries, and response rephrasing), auto-assigning conversations according to rule-based or round-robin logic, and shared inboxes for all channels (social media, SMS, and voice).
Plus, you can unlock most of these features in Helpwise’s basic plan itself, which costs US$15/agent/month.
Help Scout does not tick these boxes. Despite its limited feature set, Help Scout charges US$25/agent/month even for its basic plan.
Here is a quick breakdown between Help Scout and Gorgias.
The Gorgias app easily outperforms Help Scout when it comes to supporting online retailers. It offers deep integrations relevant to e-commerce: Shopify, Loop Returns, Skio, and Yotpo.
Features that the Gorgias platform provides and Help Scout does not include multichannel support, a reminder system, customer sentiment analysis, and chat campaigns.
Both customer service software easily integrate with popular business apps. Gorgias offers integrations with Magento, BigCommerce, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Help Scout is integrable with Salesforce, Zapier, Slack, and Facebook Messenger.
Both Help Scout and Gorgias offer affordable plans starting at US$25/month and US$10/month, respectively. That said, the former charges based on the number of users, while the latter charges based on monthly ticket volume. In either case, your spending will multiply as your ticket volume increases or you onboard more users.
Fortunately, with Helpwise, you will not come across any such situations. With our plans starting at US$15/user/month, we ensure your business does not face hurdles while growing.
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