A Better Alternative to Screen-sharing for Enterprise Customer Support
Screen-sharing is the default go-to approach as soon as you notice that you need more context in order to properly help a customer. As perfect as it may seem, screen-sharing has quite a few limitations when it comes to enterprise customer support. Many businesses are unaware that there are alternatives that are far superior in terms of customer support.
Handling sensitive data
In many cases, different enterprise departments have limited permissions in terms of the user data they have access to. For example, the onboarding team might not have permissions to customers’ financial data. This creates an issue during screen-sharing since you have no control over the data that will be displayed. For example, by mistake, the user or the support agent might navigate to the wrong page in the product and expose data that shouldn’t have been exposed. This is especially dangerous with financial and healthcare companies and organizations.
“We needed a way to see exactly what a user did to run into a problem. Things get even more complicated as we also have to comply with HIPAA, which requires that we either store all customer data in our own systems, or sign a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) with a service provider, to ensure that they are contractually obligated to meet the same standards for the privacy and security of healthcare data as we do.”
You can read more on how Mend managed is able to interact with their customers’ screens in a HIPAA-compliant manner.
Permissions to install software
The same screen-sharing software needs to be installed on the computers by both parties in order for it to work. This can create multiple layers of friction.
First of all, in different geographies around the world, people are used to different solutions for screen sharing like WebEx, Zoom, Teamviewer, etc. If your company is using a solution that is not adopted by your customers, they will need to install it. In many cases, this is not possible since the particular user might not have permission to install additional software on the hardware they’re using.
The problem can happen on the other way around as well: the customer might demand to use the software which is adopted by their organization, but the support agent might not have permissions or the skills required to set it up.
Even if everyone has permissions to set up the screen-sharing software, the download, installation, and configuration could take up a significant amount of time and the customer might not want to be bothered with it which obviously is bad for both parties.
Additional recording software
Often a percentage of the support requests turn out to be bugs. This means that during the screen-sharing session the support agent won’t be able to do anything but to promise a quick future resolution.
In the case of a bug, the support agent need the help of the engineering team to solve it. The agent has to properly document the issue so that the engineering team can properly reproduce it and hopefully resolve it in a timely manner. This might require taking screenshots during the screen-sharing session or even recording a video attaching it to the support ticket.
“ When you’re able to watch the user’s on-screen journey and see where they click, how many times they try something, and how exactly they run into errors, you’re able to derive some real valuable insights which inform areas for improvement. ”
- Jennifer Garcia, Staff Software Engineer, Bazaarvoice
To do so the support agents need to have the proper software installed in advance or they reschedule a call with the customer when they are prepared to get the info they need.
Co-browsing as an alternative
All of the downsides above can be avoided by adopting a co-browsing solution as an alternative to screen-sharing in your organization.
A co-browsing solution allows you to interact with your customer’s screen with just a click of a button, without any downloads and installations. This allows you to remove all of the setup friction when you need to start a support session.
The co-browsing solutions are integrated directly inside your product via a small JavaScript snippet (like Google Analytics). Yes, there is some small integration effort but it offloads all of the future efforts from all of your users. The great thing about co-browsing solutions (at least the good ones) is that they have zero impact on your web app’s performance due to the way the technology works.
Here is how co-browsing solves all of the issues mentioned above:
- Sensitive data — with a co-browsing solution, you have the ability to mask sensitive data in your product. This means that once the support agent joins your customer’s screen, the data that has been masked as sensitive won’t be shown to the support agent. Better yet, it won’t even leave your customer’s browser.
- Permission to install software — since the co-browsing solution is directly integrated with your product, your customers don’t need to do anything. They have the ability whether to grant or decline access to their screen by the support agent but they don’t have to spend time setting up anything.
- Additional recording software — some co-browsing solutions allow you to automatically record the whole support session. This means that no screenshots or additional recording software is needed. As soon as the support session ends, you can instantly link it’s recording to your support ticket.
SessionStack is an interactive co-browsing solution that can easily be integrated with your current support solutions to seamlessly fit into your workflow.
Curious how can SessionStack improve your customer service? 🤔 Take a look around 👉here.
