HelpScout Vs Front

Do you want to improve your services with the best software but don’t know which one, HelpScout or Front suits your business? Then you should read this article.

Here, we will compare the features of both software as Help Scout vs Front. All you have to do is, review them and pick the one that meets your requirements.

Front Vs HelpScout Feature Comparison

Helpdesk Features (Final Winner: HelpScout) Rating ⭐5/5

Shared Inbox & Collaboration

A shared inbox is an organizational space where your team can connect to perform all the operations related to handling user requests. Whereas collaboration refers to the process of two or more people working together to achieve a common goal. 

• HelpScout – Whether your team has 5 or 500, all of them can use a shared inbox. You can assign and organize the tasks. Also, collaborate by sending private notes to find solutions to problems.
• Front – Plug in group email accounts and let your team get a shared view of all emails. You may organize, assign, clear ownership, triage, and collaborate behind the scenes to handle customer emails. Plus, comment and share email drafts before replying to conversations.

Winner:  Both

Messaging

Here, we will talk about messaging services that will help you to engage with your customers.

• HelpScout – Create rich messages with bold, CTAs, and links. Plus, send promotional messages like campaigns, sales, and discounts, along with company updates such as product launches to your customers. 
• Front – Allows you to send messages to your contacts but Front doesn’t have tools to create rich messages.

Winner: HelpScout

Customer Management

The customer management tool brings all the customer-relevant data and their history in one place so it is easy to manage them.

• HelpScout displays user data, their previous conversations, and app activity alongside their support requests. In fact, for every identified customer, Beacon creates a profile that you can edit, sort, and filter.
• If configured, Front automatically creates contacts for people. You can view and edit contact information, see recent activities, and manage internal comments as well.

Winner: HelpScout

Collision Detection

Collision detection makes sure that multiple agents do not reply to the same conversation or request as it can result in confusion.

• HelpScout stops users from replying when someone is updating the conversation. Also, it displays visual indicators whenever more than one person is viewing or replying to the same conversation.
• In Front, when your teammate is working on a message, it displays that they are replying in real time.

Winner: HelpScout

Supported Channels (Final Winner: Front) Rating ⭐5/5

Email

• Both HelpScout and Front allow you to provide customer services through emails.

Winner: Both

Live Chat

• Through HelpScout and Front, you can offer live chat services.

Winner: Both

SMS

• HelpScout needs to integrate with other applications such as JustCall to provide SMS services.
• Using Front, you may send SMS (text) messages to your customers. 

Winner: Front

Phone

• HelpScout and Front let you solve customer requests via phone answering services.

Winner: Both

System Requirements (Final Winner: Front) Rating ⭐5/5

Operating System

• HelpScout supports only two operating systems. They are Android 11.0 or later and iOS 15.0 or later.
• You can install the Front app on both desktop and mobile. The supported Mac versions are Mac 10.11, 10.12, and 10.13. For Windows, it is Windows 7, 8, 10, or higher. For mobile, it supports iOS 12.4 or higher and Android 5.0 or higher.

Winner: Front

Browsers

• HelpScout is supported by the last 3 versions of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge (Chromium based only). However, it doesn’t support mobile web browsers instead you need to install a mobile HelpScout app. For Beacon and Docs, along with the above-mentioned browsers, Help Scout also supports mobile Chrome (latest version) and Safari (latest version).
• The Front supports Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Firefox, Safari, and Opera browsers. But it doesn’t work in Internet Explorer. It also supports common browser extensions such as Grammarly and Auto Text Expander.

Winner: Front

Self-Service (Final Winner: HelpScout) Rating ⭐5/5

Knowledge Base

Knowledge Base contains information about your products and services to assist your customers in resolving their issues. So, they don’t have to contact your support team for common issues.

• With HelpScout, you can create articles by adding images, videos, tables, and hyperlinks. Also, categorize the related articles and customize their SEO details.
• Front doesn’t come with tools to build a knowledge base. You need to enable integrations such as HelpCenter, HelpDocs, and Forumbee to generate self-service features.

Winner: HelpScout

Help Widget

Instead of going through a knowledge base to find relevant content, your customers can use a help widget to search for them.

• HelpScout – Through the Beacon Help Widget, you can suggest knowledge base articles to your customer and address their questions.
• Front – You must integrate other applications to insert a help widget on your website.

Winner: HelpScout

Automations (Final Winner: Both) Help Scout Rating ⭐5/5, Front Rating ⭐5/5

Canned Responses

Canned responses, otherwise known as templated responses are pre-built replies to commonly asked questions. Instead of manually typing responses, your team can use them to reply instantly.

• HelpScout allows you to create, use and manage saved replies. It provides email and custom field templates that you may directly use with your services.
• With Front create individual and team message templates. Also, you can edit, use, clone, and organize the templates. Once custom fields are created you can use them as custom variables in message templates and signatures.

Winner: Front

Automated Workflows

As your business grows, the work you need to do also increases. With this feature, you can automate repetitive tasks so your agents can work on unique and complex assignments. 

• HelpScout enables you to create workflow automation for crucial tasks based on certain conditions. It allows you to organize, prioritize, escalate, and avoid redirecting emails.
• Front also allows you to generate workflows as per if-then conditions. You can measure response times with automation. Also, create SLA rules to maintain your business standards.  

Winner: HelpScout

Auto Reply

Reply automatically to your customers so they know that you received the message and are working towards resolving the issue.

• HelpScout – Enabling auto-reply will send a templated response to your customers. Plus, if business hours are configured it will reply to your users in a specified time only.
• Front – By defining automated rules, you can set up automatic and out-of-office replies.

Winner: Both

Automated Routing

Automated routing ensures that the support requests or messages are directed to the right agent without any need for you to assign them manually.

• In both HelpScout and Front, you can route the messages to appropriate agents by using the workflow conditions to set up the rules. 

Winner: Both

Integrations (Final Winner: Front) Rating ⭐5/5

Social Media

Let’s see what social media applications are supported by both, HelpScout and Front software.

• HelpScout – Doesn’t integrate with any of the social media platforms.
• Front – Integrates with Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and so on.

Winner: Front

Other App Integrations

• HelpScout offers various integrations such as Slack, Mailchimp, Shopify, Google Apps, WooCommerce, Aircall, Campaign Monitor, Salesforce, Zapier, and so on.
• Front supports integrations like Shopify, Asana, Dropbox, Grammarly, Google Drive, Google Play Store, HubSpot, Jira, Zapier, Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics 365, and many more.

Winner: Both

Reporting & Analytics (Final Winner: Both) Help Scout Rating ⭐4.5/5, Front Rating ⭐4/5

Customer Feedback

By gathering feedback, you will know what customers are thinking about your services. Based on that data, you can analyze what you need to do in order to improve the services.

• HelpScout – After delivering a service, collect ratings from your customers. It even allows you to customize the rating options as per your need. Plus, email surveys with customized attributes to gather feedback.
• Front – This lets you send out CSAT surveys to get customer feedback. 

Winner: HelpScout

Team Performance

The team performance reports will help you understand how your team and agents are performing. So, you can take appropriate action such as providing additional training to improve the ones that are lagging behind.

• HelpScout – Evaluate your team’s productivity by measuring key metrics such as the team’s request volume by channel, busiest hours, and trending topics. Know the phone call summary and even analyze every individual’s performance.
• Front – Monitor the messages sent, average reply time, handle time, and so on to analyze your team’s performance. Also, by selecting the specific teammate in the Team Performance table, you can review their productivity report.

Winner: Both

Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) Reports

Know whether your customers are satisfied or not through CSAT reports.

• HelpScout – It tracks your user satisfaction ratings and delivers a happiness score to let you know how your customers are feeling.
• Front – You can view a visual representation of CSAT ratings. Also, check the survey comments along with the customers’ data of the ones whose comments are displayed.

Winner: Front

Bottom Line

As you can see HelpScout and Front deliver customer services but both excel at different features. So carefully review the Frontapp vs HelpScout comparison of features, and pick the one that fits right with your business needs.

If you are still confused about which one to employ, then try Saufter. It is an all-in-one customer service software that handles user requests and lets you deliver omnichannel support via live chat, email, SMS, and phone.

It offers marketing, automation, and even self-help such as knowledge base services. You can integrate with social media, messaging, collaboration, and eCommerce platforms with one click.