The Rise of Cobrowsing For Customer Support Reps

Take a look at any industry and it’s likely that online support is expanding. The sooner you adapt to this technological trend, the better equipped you are to sustain and grow in your industry. 

Customer support has come a long way – from just ‘call and chat’, to cobrowsing and live chat emerging as technologies for providing real-time support.

Now AI chatbots are even being leveraged to provide 24/7 customer support.

An Aberdeen Group report showed that, "Cobrowsing is crucial in improving customer satisfaction and decreasing support costs, whilst bringing 61% more revenue growth than companies without cobrowsing technology."

So, what is cobrowsing and why should you be aware of it?

The term cobrowsing is a shortened version of collaborative browsing.  When two or more people jointly navigate through the same web page at the same time, this is referred to as cobrowsing. Cobrowsing technology, like the ones we offer at Acquire, became popular in the customer support industry with the global rise of SaaS software services.

Aberdeen also reported, “78% of customers are satisfied when they use a cobrowsing experience compared to 47% who say they are satisfied using a web self-service.”

So, how is silent cobrowsing any different from conventional cobrowsing? And if cobrowsing is performing well, then why the need for a silent cobrowsing feature?

Generally speaking, customer support scenarios start with a question from a support representative asking, “Hello sir/madam, how may I help you?”, often followed by a long and potentially complicated explanation in response. Sometimes customers aren’t even able to explain the issue at hand.

Silent cobrowsing has been introduced to save support representatives from such a scenario. In silent cobrowsing, support reps already have enough context to start working on customers’ issues, hence they can concentrate on finding the solution instead of losing time understanding issues.

How does it work?

With silent cobrowsing, support reps can keep track of customers’ movements on the portal to see where they might be struggling, and initiate cobrowsing sessions to resolve issues if needed.

However, there is one consideration that has kept users wondering and stopped some non-users from taking up cobrowsing: privacy.

So, how can silent cobrowsing access customers’ screens without compromising their privacy?

Masking is used for all the sensitive data. As such, support agents won’t be able to see customers’ credit card information or any other strictly private details. Support agents can also only view the relevant tabs customers have open.

Now support agents gain valuable insights into customers’ problems prior to initiating a full cobrowsing session. They can see when customers click the ‘submit’ button on the form and get a specific error message, for example.

As support agents now have these insights, they can proactively initiate live chat sessions to ask customers if they need assistance or they would like to enable cobrowsing.

This way, agents then have access to help fill out form fields in real-time.

What are the factors ensuring your customers are better served?

• A reduction in time taken to understand issues:
  
  By tracking users’ movements across the portal, it becomes clearer where issues are occurring. Customers appreciate the proactive support and service.
  

• A solution-oriented approach:
  
  Viewing the customer’s real-time activity on the portal, support agents may initiate a conversation depending on what they observe. 
  
  Silent cobrowsing helps bring focus on finding solutions instead of taking up time to try and understand issues.
  
• Personalized assistance for customers:
  
  Getting assistance from agents already equipped with specific details regarding customers’ issues, without them even having to explain, ensures an outstanding personalized experience and boosts loyalty.
  
• Increase in supports reps’ productivity:
  
  Having such an incredible tool to solve customers’ issues enables support reps to close cases more efficiently. They will also be able to help even more users. 

Is cobrowsing compatible to use on mobile devices and tablets?

Mobile usage has significantly increased in the present times across the globe.

The following statistics show that one just cannot focus on one device but businesses will have to manage the exposure across all devices and platforms.

Business Insider conducted a survey and found, U.S. adults spent 59% of their time on mobile and 41% on desktop, but just 15% of their dollars on mobile and a staggering 85% of their dollars on the desktop. This shows why it is important to keep in mind the balance of both mobile and desktop users in cobrowsing.

Below is a representation of how cobrowsing works:

Customer satisfaction is achieved because they know that, no matter how complex the issue, they will be rescued from the situation.

Cobrowsing takes the onboarding experience to a new level of excellence for your customers. And that’s great because the easier it is to understand a tool, the more customers will stick around and use it. 

The points discussed above show that silent cobrowsing is indeed a boon for the customer support industry. Consider using it today.