10 Best Helpshift Alternatives for 2024

When it comes to customer service, the right software can make all the difference. Helpshift has made a name for itself with several powerful features that enable companies to offer support to users on their mobile apps. 

But it’s not the only customer support tool out there! 

Many other advanced customer service platforms are available, each with unique features that might suit your business better. 

These alternatives could offer more detailed analytics, support a wider range of communication channels, or be more user-friendly. In this blog, we will explore the top Helpshift alternatives. 

Let’s see how they differ and what makes these competitors to Helpshift stand out! 

Table of Contents

• What is Helpshift?
• Why Look for a Helpshift Alternative? 
• 10 Helpshift Alternatives for 2024 
• Features to Look For In Helpshift Alternative Tool 
• Select The Right Helpshift Alternative

What is Helpshift?

Helpshift is a digital customer support platform that integrates advanced technologies like AI, automation, and chatbots to provide efficient and personalized customer service. It allows businesses to manage customer interactions across various channels such as mobile apps, web, social media, and phone. 

Some of its notable benefits include: 

• Mobile-First, In-App Support: Helpshift stands out as a mobile-first, in-app customer support platform. This focus on a mobile-first approach differentiates it from other platforms that may prioritize web or email support first​​.
• Conversational Customer Service Platform: It is positioned as a conversational customer service platform, emphasizing personalized, real-time conversations. The use of AI and machine learning enhances the efficiency and effectiveness of these interactions​​.
• Efficiency and User Retention: By leveraging its patented AI technology, Helpshift allows brands to save time and scale their support efforts effectively. This technology also contributes to reducing user churn, which is critical for boosting retention​​.

Helpshift offers four different pricing plans. 

• Feedback + Plan: $0 (250 Free Feedback submissions per month) 
• Starter Plan: Starting at $150 per month
• Growth Plan: Custom
• Enterprise Plan: Custom

Why Look for a Helpshift Alternative?

Businesses might look for alternatives to Helpshift due to limitations in certain areas:

• Users have expressed concerns about the platform’s analytics capabilities. This includes limitations in managing user roles, making it challenging for admins to define clear roles and responsibilities.
• Helpshift reportedly lacks sufficient modules for Business Intelligence (BI) number crunching, such as tracking how much time an agent spends on a ticket or assessing agent productivity rates. 
• Integrating Helpshift data with external reporting systems like Microsoft PowerBI is considered very challenging. Users note that unless they are on an enterprise plan, it is difficult to find helpful resources or online support for these integration issues​​.
• Another limitation is the inability to export tickets to Excel, and the system being slow when assigning tickets in bulk. This can affect the efficiency of handling customer tickets at scale.

“Helpshift can sometimes hold on to tickets far too long before putting them back in the queue, its necessary too frequently to manually move them to ensure they get answered. Being able to reopen the same ticket for years on end is a nightmare for collecting data.”  – Helpshift User Review | G2

10 Helpshift Alternatives for 2024

Explore the top 10 alternatives to Helpshift. 

1. Hiver

Hiver, a Helpshift alternative for 2024, offers a multi-channel help desk platform that integrates seamlessly with Gmail and Outlook.

This integration ensures that support teams get to work with a familiar interface and don’t need extensive training before getting started. This is a significant advantage over Helpshift, which doesn’t have such deep integration with Gmail and Outlook.

Besides, Hiver supports integration with CRM systems, Aircall, Asana, Jira, Okta, QuickBooks, Salesforce, Slack, and even WhatsApp. It also offers 24×7 customer support to all users, irrespective of the pricing plan.

Key Features

• Shared Inboxes: Hiver centralizes customer emails into shared inboxes, enabling teams to efficiently assign, track, and collaborate on customer queries. This helps to ensure quick, expert responses and maintain clear visibility in query management.

• Collision Detection: This feature prevents multiple agents from responding to the same customer query, ensuring consistent and efficient communication with customers​​.

• Automated Workflows: Hiver helps in automating repetitive tasks such as email assignment and categorization. For instance, Hiver can automatically assign incoming customer emails to specific agents based on keywords or sender, and categorize them by urgency or topic. 
• Customer Satisfaction Surveys: The platform enables the collection of customer feedback through surveys, aiding in understanding and improving the customer experience. 

• Service Level Agreement (SLA) Management: Hiver helps in setting SLAs that ensure customer queries are responded to in a timely manner. For example, Hiver can automatically track response times and alert agents if a customer query is close to breaching the set SLA, ensuring timely and consistent service quality.

• Reports and Analytics: Hiver enables the creation of custom reports to analyze team performance. Users can start from scratch or build upon Hiver’s pre-built reports. For instance, using Hiver, a team leader can quickly create a report to analyze trends in customer query types and response effectiveness. 

• Knowledge Base: Set up your own Knowledge Base with Hiver. It enables customers to independently resolve inquiries, thereby lessening the burden on customer service teams. 

Pricing

Hiver offers four pricing options. 

• Forever free
• Lite: $19/user per month 
• Pro: $49/user per month 
• Elite: $79/user per month 

2. LiveAgent

LiveAgent is a customer support software that serves as an all-in-one solution for managing customer interactions across various channels. LiveAgent’s core strength lies in its multi-channel ticketing system, which efficiently consolidates customer inquiries from email, chat, phone, and social media into a unified ticketing system. 

While LiveAgent offers various plans, the cost can be a consideration for smaller companies with budget constraints. Also, the free plan has limitations in terms of the number of agents and features.

Key Features

• Real-Time Chat Support: Offer immediate assistance to website visitors, with features like chat routing, canned responses, and chat transcripts​​.
• Call Center Integration and VoIP Support: Seamlessly handle customer support over the phone, allowing agents to make and receive calls directly from the LiveAgent dashboard. Features include call recordings, call routing, and call scripts​​.
• Social Media Monitoring and Engagement: Integrate with popular social media platforms, enabling timely responses to customer messages and comments.
• Customization and Branding: Customize the appearance of your customer support portal and live chat widgets to align with the brand’s identity​​.

Pricing

LiveAgent has a free plan with some limitations. It’s four pricing tiers include:

• Small business: $9 per month 
• Medium business: $29 per month
• Large business: $49 per month
• Enterprise: $69 per month

3. Help Scout

Help Scout stands as a comprehensive customer support platform, primarily focusing on streamlining email support, live chat, and knowledge base management within a unified interface.

While designed to mimic an email inbox for ease of use, new users might still need time to fully grasp and efficiently navigate the platform’s features. Help Scout also does not include a native feature for creating Service Level Agreements. 

Additionally, the interface design can be quite confusing for users – leading to an overlap of internal communication with external customer messages. 

Key Features

• Team Collaboration Tools: Shared inboxes, one-click assignments, and private notes encourage collaborative responses and efficient team coordination.
• Automatic Email Categorization and Assignment: This feature ensures that customer emails are organized and directed to the appropriate team members promptly.
• Beacon for Live Chat and Self-Service: Beacon is an AI tool that enables customers to chat in real-time with support agents or access the self-help centre. 
• AI Summarize: This AI feature is designed to streamline the process of managing long, back-and-forth customer conversations. It’s particularly useful when multiple team members are involved in a conversation, as it helps them quickly understand the context.

Pricing

Help Scout offers the following pricing plans: 

• Standard: $25 per user per month  
• Plus: $50 per user per month  
• Pro: $65 per user per month (annual plan only) 

Top 10 Help Scout Alternatives for Businesses 

4. Zoho Desk

Zoho Desk is a customer service platform designed to enhance customer support efficiency across various channels like phone, email, live chat, SMS, and social media. It centralizes all customer interactions in one place for more contextual and effective communication.

Zoho Desk’s combination of AI integration and comprehensive channel support makes it a robust tool for customer service, particularly for small businesses. Its freemium plan adds to its appeal for budget-conscious businesses. 

While offering customization, it’s perceived as less flexible compared to other platforms. Besides, users have reported difficulties with the phone calling feature within Zoho Desk.

Key Features

• Multi-Channel Support: Integrates different communication channels into a single dashboard.
• Work Modes: Offers various ticket views to categorize tickets by priority, due dates, and status, aiding in workload management.
• AI-Powered Assistant, Zia: Automatically detects ticket sentiment and assigns relevant tags for more accessible identification and categorization.
• Keyword Optimization: Converts specific keyword-related posts or messages into tickets, reducing spam and enhancing agent efficiency.
• Ticket Assignment: Features an automated Round Robin system for equitable ticket distribution among agents.

Pricing

Zoho Desk offers five types of pricing plans. 

• Free Plan 
• Express: $7 per month per user 
• Standard: $14 per month per user 
• Professional: $23 per month per user
• Enterprise: $40 per month per user

5. Zendesk

Zendesk stands out as a prominent helpdesk and customer support software, particularly suited for large organizations. It provides a unified view of customer interactions across various channels like email, live chat, phone, and knowledge base. 

However, Zendesk is noted for being relatively expensive compared to other ticketing solutions, which might be a deterrent for businesses with tighter budgets. Like, for instance, Zendesk costs 2x more than Hiver. Also, personalized training and assistance from the Zendesk team come at a substantial extra cost, potentially ranging from $1,500 to $2,800.

Key Features

• Skills-Based Routing: This feature intelligently directs customer tickets to agents who have the specific skills and expertise required to handle them effectively.
• Zendesk Explore for Reporting and Analytics: Offers a suite of analytics tools with daily updated reports, automated insights, and customizable dashboards, facilitating data-driven decision-making.
• Conditional and Custom Ticket Fields: Enhances the ticketing workflow by allowing administrators to create specific fields in ticket forms. These fields are conditional and customizable, ensuring that agents collect precise and relevant information from customers.
• Zendesk Generative AI: Powered by OpenAI, this feature assists in automatically recommending support articles to customers and deploying bots that can mimic human interactions.
• Macros for Quick Responses: Agents can utilize pre-written responses for common customer questions, improving response efficiency and maintaining consistency in communication.

Pricing

Zendesk’s Support plan has three pricing tiers.

• Team: $19/user/month
• Professional: $55/user/month
• Enterprise: $115/user/month

Zendesk also has a Suite plan that offers four pricing tiers.

• Team: $55/user/month
• Growth: $89/user/month
• Professional: $115/user/month
• Enterprise: Custom pricing

6. Saufter.io

Saufter.io is a customer relationship management (CRM) and help desk software. It comes with several features that help manage customer queries effectively, especially through channels like social media and live chat. Additionally, Saufter.io leverages AI technology to support customer interactions and provides a platform for consolidating all such communication. 

However, one key drawback is that Saufter.io provides limited options for visual customization, which may restrict businesses looking to tailor the interface to their specific branding or aesthetic preferences. 

Key Features

• Social Media Integration: Efficiently manage and respond to customer queries on platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram.
• AI Chatbot: Data-driven live chat support, enhancing real-time customer interaction.
• ‘One View’ Feature: Get a consolidated view of all customer interactions, across multiple channels.
• Knowledge Base: Integrate live chat with a knowledge base, facilitating real-time support by sharing relevant articles in chat sessions.

Pricing

Custom pricing is available. Contact their sales team.  

7. Intercom

Intercom is a customer communication platform designed for businesses of various sizes. The tool helps in enhancing customer support through real-time messaging and various integrated channels, such as email and SMS. 

However, Intercom’s reporting capabilities are considered to be limited, posing challenges in generating comprehensive reports. The tool is also not particularly intuitive, which can hinder user experience and efficiency.

Key Features

• AI Chatbot (Fin): Intercom’s AI chatbot, Fin, is designed to decrease support volume and enhance team efficiency by automating customer interactions. Fin engages with customers the moment they initiate contact, providing immediate responses to common inquiries. The chatbot also assesses the complexity of customer queries. And, unlike human agents, Fin is available round the clock. 
• Automation: Automate manual tasks such as routing and closing out conversations, and integrate with customer data for personalized experiences. Connect with various apps for automation across multiple platforms​.
• Intercom Messenger: This feature facilitates real-time, personalized customer interactions directly on websites and apps, enhancing user engagement. It seamlessly integrates with other features like the AI Inbox and Knowledge Base.
• Integration: The platform integrates with over 450 apps and supports building custom integrations with flexible APIs, Webhooks, and low-code options.

Pricing

Intercom offers the following pricing plans: 

• Start: $39 per month per seat 
• Grow: $99 per month (includes 5 seats)
• Accelerate: from $499 per month (includes 10 seats)
• Scale: from $999 per month (includes 10 seats)

10 Best Intercom Alternatives for 2024

8. Drift

Focused on real-time interactions, Drift aims to humanize digital experiences and foster stronger customer relationships. Its primary objective is to enhance the user experience on websites by providing immediate, personalized communication. This approach helps guide visitors towards making informed decisions, whether that’s making a purchase, learning more about a product or service, or getting answers to their questions.

However, the tool may not be ideal for businesses that prefer traditional ticketing or email support due to its focus on real-time engagement. Some users find the setup of Drift to be time-consuming and challenging.

Key Features

• Live Chat: Allows real-time engagement with website visitors, providing instant answers and support.
• AI Chatbots: Leverages AI technology to automate responses and guide visitors, reducing the load on human agents.
• Email Playbooks: Automates email sequences based on user behavior, ensuring continuous engagement even when visitors are not on your site.
• Drift Engage: Personalized conversations with visitors, directing highly interested individuals to sales teams and nurturing others until they are ready to engage further.
• Account-Based Marketing: Targets high-value visitors with personalized interactions to increase conversion rates.

Pricing

Drift offers three types of pricing options: 

• Premium: Starts at $2,500/month
• Advanced: Price on request 
• Enterprise: Price on request 

9. Freshdesk

Freshdesk is a help desk software designed to streamline customer service across various channels such as email, social media, and more. It efficiently converts incoming queries into tickets and facilitates their allocation to the appropriate agents.

However, users have faced challenges in syncing Freshdesk with Google Workspace products like Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Contacts. New ticket alerts cannot be actioned directly within Gmail, requiring users to switch to Freshdesk’s platform.

Key Features

• Agent Collision Detection: Prevents simultaneous handling of the same ticket by multiple agents.
• Team Inbox: Combines automated responses, self-service options, and analytics in a unified email communication hub. Agents can tailor their views for easy access to assigned tickets and tasks.
• Parent-Child Ticketing: Allows complex issues to be split into smaller tasks (child tickets) for distribution among various teams or agents, aiding in faster resolution.
• Ticket Field Suggester: Automatically suggests ticket fields for categorization, prioritization, and routing, enhancing efficiency and accuracy.
• Freddy AI: Freshdesk’s AI tool offers advanced support and productivity features, available on Pro and Enterprise plans.

Pricing

Freshdesk offers four pricing tiers:

• Free plan
• Growth plan- $15 per user per month.
• Pro plan- $49 per user per month.
• Enterprise plan- $69 per user per month.

10. Salesforce Service Cloud

Salesforce Service Cloud is a comprehensive customer service and support software, part of the Salesforce suite of products. Built on the Salesforce Customer 360 Platform, Service Cloud facilitates seamless integration with other Salesforce products and leverages artificial intelligence through Salesforce Einstein.

Despite its intuitive interface, the software is not well-suited for beginners due to its complexity and extensive features​. There are challenges with getting notifications on sales deals and customer responses to closed tickets, and users have reported that the overall experience can be sluggish. 

Key Features

• Omnichannel Support: Enables support teams to interact with customers across various channels, including phone, email, chat, social media, and SMS, all from a single platform.
• Knowledge Base: Provides a comprehensive repository of information and resources that both customers and agents can access for quick problem resolution.
• Service Analytics: Offers in-depth reporting and analytics tools to track key metrics such as response times, customer satisfaction, and agent performance, aiding in data-driven decision-making.
• Multi-Lingual Support: Supports over 30 languages, making it suitable for global operations and diverse customer bases.

Pricing

Salesforce Service Cloud offers five types of pricing plans: 

• Starter: $25 per user/month
• Professional: $80 per user/month
• Enterprise: $165 per user/month
• Unlimited: $330 per user/month
• Unlimited+: $500 per user/month

Features to Look For In Helpshift Alternative Tool

When looking for a Helpshift alternative, consider these key features:

• Comprehensive Analytics: Look for tools that offer in-depth analytics, allowing you to monitor and improve key performance indicators like response times, resolution rates, and customer satisfaction.
• Multi-Channel Support: Choose a tool that supports a wide range of communication channels, such as email, social media, live chat, and phone, to cater to diverse customer preferences.
• User-Friendly Interface: A tool with an intuitive, easy-to-use interface can significantly enhance the efficiency of your support team.
• Customization and Flexibility: Opt for a platform that allows customization to fit your specific business needs and workflows.
• Cost-Effectiveness: Evaluate the pricing structure to ensure it aligns with your budget and offers good value for the features provided.
• Reliable Customer Support: Good customer support for the tool itself is crucial for troubleshooting and assistance.

Select The Right Helpshift Alternative

In conclusion, all these alternatives to Helpshift offer unique features catering to the diverse needs of customer support teams. Businesses can choose from Salesforce Service Cloud’s advanced AI and omnichannel features, or Saufter.io’s social media integration. 

However, for those seeking a more streamlined, efficient, and collaborative approach to customer service, Hiver is the ideal choice. 

Its focus on simplicity, combined with powerful features like shared inboxes, automation, and analytics, positions it as a highly effective solution for managing customer interactions directly from your familiar email environment.

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