Democratizing the Mayday button
In September 2013, Amazon launched the “Mayday button” on their Kindle Fire tablets, giving customers direct access to tech support with a single tap.
Even the CEO of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, said in an interview with The Verge that the Mayday button was “the greatest feature we’ve ever made.”
Working with support systems, we were expecting this concept to spread like wildfire. We saw a future where all apps would have such a button, where you could talk directly with customer care. In the “customer-focused future,” shoppers could get their questions answered easily online or on their mobile device, patients could get direct help from their doctors and banking customers could talk to their financial advisor with just a single click.
None of this happened. Despite Amazon’s success, one-click in-app support never moved beyond Amazon’s premises.
Therefore, we at Citrix GoToAssist decided to go on a quest to democratize the one-click support button.
We’re giving away the one-click support button for free
Our first decision was to make the basic functionality free. As the French say about democracy: “Liberté, égalité, fraternité” (i.e., liberty, equality, fraternity). You cannot democratize something if only companies with money can use it. It has to be equal for all. Therefore, we are giving it away for free. You can add the one-click support button to your app or your website.
We call the new product “Concierge” — as in a butler at a hotel. It does the same as the Mayday button:
- You can place the button in your app
- The customer taps the button to connect to support
- The customer can see, hear or exchange chat messages with the support agent
- The support agent can see and draw on the customer’s screen
Why has it not been democratized before?
We think there are several reasons why:
Technical reasons
Democratizing in-app support is actually quite difficult. We started fresh but soon bumped into many technical challenges. Some of the features, like video communication and voice, come out of the box quite easily using WebRTC technologies. But when you start looking at different versions of iOS, Android and web browsers, it can become quite difficult to deliver a seamless and consistent experience across them all. Since we were committed to the idea, we managed to, but many might have given up along the way.
Ability to support this new type of interaction
Offering video support can put a unique strain on a support team. Traditionally, support requests have all been taken by phone or chat, and introducing the new dynamic of video might be something organizations are not yet prepared for. But it’s worth the effort. The Amazon Mayday team takes pride in the quality of support they provide, and video adds a new competitive dimension that hasn’t really been seen before.
Security reasons
There are also a few security concerns, both from end users and organizations alike. For example, allowing the support agent to see the screen of a mobile device or browser window can risk data confidentiality. So to ease these concerns, we built Concierge to use a peer-to-peer connection, and we’ve been working to remove ourselves (GoToAssist) as the middle-man brokering the connection between the end user and support agent. We also restrict screen sharing to just the app the user is requesting support in. And for web sessions, the user can explicitly state what they want to share (full screen, browser window or just a single browser tab).
Return on investment
Do you track the support calls you receive from your mobile apps? How do you know if your mobile apps are causing you headaches and issues? Exactly. What isn’t measured cannot be improved. If you can’t measure it, how can you justify the ROI of providing Concierge-type functionality to your customers? As a result, we’re giving it away for free — enabling all organizations to provide this innovative style of support, measure what might currently be ignored and witness first-hand how it can set you apart from the competition.
How can we give it away for free?
We are giving Concierge away for free for a couple of reasons: First of all, we would like to learn. We would like to see how users use the product. Secondly, Citrix GoToAssist is an IT support product targeted at providing customer support for computer users. At some point, we hope to integrate Concierge into GoToAssist. We also hope that the product becomes so popular that some customers might request very specific features, such as very complex reports or integrations into ERP systems. The basic functionality of Concierge is free. At some point we will most likely integrate into other Citrix products to generate revenue in packages.
How can I be part the Mayday democracy?
The new democracy is called Concierge, and you can join us in our quest for providing amazing customer service here:
https://live.gotoassist.com
