The customer engagement lifecycle is a road map of how to produce the right action to influence at any stage of your consumer relationship. This understanding will make engagement productive for your business and build trust and loyalty in customers.
Temkin Group found that companies that earn $1 billion annually can expect to earn, on average, an additional $700 million by investing in customer experience.
Let us have a comprehensive discussion of one of the sophisticated live engagement tools i.e. the co-browsing solution.
What is co-browsing?
Co-browsing, also known as collaborative browsing is a browser based solution that empowers customer support agents to collaborate with the customer’s browser in real time. The agent can view to identify the issue and jointly navigate over the customer’s screen to guide interactively for sales or customer support assistance.
The businesses that make customer engagement as the focal point are inclined towards value creation as well as revenue extraction. They give customers meaningful end-to-end customer experience with interactive and real-time support.
Why co-browsing is used?
Live customer support software levels up the interactions by bringing true efficiency and reducing multiple touchpoints for resolving issues. Live tools like co-browsing and video chat increase the chances of first contact resolution and delivering a truly engaging experience to customers wherever they are.
Co-browsing solution is the ultimate solution to the questions that are commonly asked by the agent to the customers such as:
- Are you sure you are on the right page?
- What do you see actually?
- Can you find the green button to move to the next step?
- Can you share a screenshot?
The co-browsing tool allows you to guide your non-technical customers through complex processes without the need for additional downloads.
How co-browsing works?
Modern co-browsing solutions combine the power of WebRTC (Web Real Time) technology that requires no downloads, installations or plugins. This browser based technology allows peer to peer communication between two browsers and provides a seamless experience by delivering instant contextual communication.
WebRTC based browsing also protects conversations from any malware attacks or threats and also supports most of the modern browsers and devices including mobile browsers.
How is co-browsing different from screen sharing?
While choosing co-browsing software for your business it is imperative to know the upsides and downsides of the tools. Similarly, both the customer engagement tools – cobrowsing and screen sharing, have their unique benefits and drawbacks.
The difference between co-browsing and screen sharing and what is best for you depend upon the grounds of benefits to your business growth, you need to consider the software. Co-browsing and screen sharing can be beneficial for businesses in different sectors.
Co-browsing empowers
- Support agents the control to guide customers during their online journey by helping them take action while filling up a form or taking a certain action.
Screen sharing
- Allow the agents only to view the customer’s screen and does not allow them to control the customer’s screen.
Main benefits of co-browsing
Using visual customer engagement software adds a human touch to customer experience can help you to give a competitive edge to your business. Let us go through the main cobrowsing benefits that play a vital role in creating an emotional connection with your customers.
- Real time assistance: Co-browsing tool assures real time assistance to your customers through complete visual engagement tools like video chat and live chat.
- Improves first contact resolution (FCR) – With shared browsing, it is easy to identify the problem in the first go and deliver an effective solution in the first contact itself. It improves the FCR rate and boosts customer satisfaction.
- No download or plugins – There is no need for extra downloads or installations for a co-browsing session. Just with a single click, your customers can share their browser.
- Faster resolution process – When the agent is able to visually identify the issue it improves the speed of resolution. It can be more effective and interactive by combining with video, voice and live chat.
- Creates customer loyalty – You can engage your customers with the willingness to deliver the best visual experience via personalized chat will positively impact customer loyalty.
- Deliver personalized service – With collaborative browsing, you can personalize your conversations based on the customer’s problems. Co-browsing delivers high-tech solutions giving a virtual in person experience.
What are the top features of cobrowsing?
Whether you are looking co-browsing solution for your website engagement, for sales or customer support, it should be a complete co-browsing package covering the below features.
- No downloads or installations – WebRTC based co-browsing solution requires no installations or plugins and delivers a better contextual experience to the customers who look for instant in-context communication while browsing your website.
- Switching pages – Co-browsing allows navigating your customers seamlessly through your web pages by swapping or shifting pages on their behalf.
- Point & scroll, highlighter tools – The tools allow you to point and scroll the page or to highlight important areas if needed in order to guide customers in the right direction.
- Mobile SDK – It makes co-browsing a simple process without any hassle of downloads. You can provide messaging support to your in-app visitors and customers with mobile SDKs.
- Data masking – It allows you to control your support team’s access to the sensitive information of the customers. You can mask specific web page elements such as credit card input fields.
- Easy usability – Co-browsing is simple to use with easy integration. It can be easily combined with live chat, video chat, screen sharing, phone to resolve the customer issue faster
- Data Security – It assures high level security to the conversations, video chats, the shared data, documents, other crucial details during the live chat and co-browsing sessions.
How co-browsing improves team performance?
Co-browsing takes customer engagement to a new level that boosts customer satisfaction and increases team productivity. It greatly impacts team performance metrics and KPIs such as:
- First contact resolution (FCR) – Visually engaging with the customers allows identifying the issue quickly and effectively. The result of which is – faster resolution process that too in the first contact itself. It allows agents to handle more conversations as they identify the problems faster.
- Call handling time – Co-browsing impact in lowering the call handling time by seeing and knowing the problem. With accurate error details, the agent is able to deliver quick solutions. The time saved can be used for other important tasks.
- Reduces the number of support follow ups – Live assistance helps to diagnose the complexity of the error. The agent can deliver the best solution that will reduce the number of support tickets raised by the customer for the same issue.
What are the most common use cases of co-browsing?
Co-browsing is an advanced way for helping your customers to resolve complex issues in real time. It’s a great tool on its own and amazing when combined with video chat and live chat tools to deliver an interactive engagement and virtual in person experience.
Here are some of the key use cases of co-browsing:
Co-browsing for Sales
With the rapidly growing competition, the search for the best price, service or solution is a risk for your business. A modern customer journey integrates multiple touchpoints on multiple channels.
When used for sales, co-browsing helps to take advantage of the company’s website, transforming it from static into an interactive sales tool.
The businesses using co-browsing enjoy a 2.4% annual improvement (decrease) in support costs year-over-year, compared to 0.4%.
Co-browsing software can shorten your sales cycle by allowing you to assist your customers in real time to make timely decisions. Sales agents can help the visitors to assist with navigation or complex form fill-ups when they are on your website with sales conversion and lead generation.
For example, a customer wants to buy an insurance plan online but looking at many options he is not sure which plan is right for him. In such cases, he needs to call the company hotline to know more about the plan and services but the call center agent may not be aware of these plans or what information the customer was looking at.
Best practices:
- Use co-browsing along with video chat to guide your customers through tough application submission process or complex form fill-ups and deliver an in-person experience with more effectiveness.
- If you are a banking or financial institution, your customer needs to submit a loan or insurance claim application. You can use co-browsing to empower your agents to help customers in submitting the forms properly along with other documents.
Co-browsing for call center support
Co-browsing is a key tool used in call centers to deliver live assistance for technical issues and add proactive support to their existing channels, which helps to improve the support KPIs.
By enabling the co-browse button in the menu bar help to connect with the visitors and customers directly by sharing the unique code that appears in the chat widget of the visitor, when the agent initiates a co-browsing session over the phone.
Contact centers – Usually, customers reach out to contact centers via many channels (online & offline), where callers are difficult to identify. The co-browsing button helps to identify the callers easily by pairing with the unique 5 digit code to connect successfully and deliver co-browsing support over the phone.
Banks – With the help of the co-browsing button helps you can connect with customers who need some vital information to fill up a form or application. By asking the customer to share the 5 digits unique code you can connect immediately. It will give you access to the exact page the customer is facing the problem and guide to complete the application.
Note: As normal browsing occurs over the website in the live environment, the unique code is not required. With the co-browsing button, the code is mandatory as it identifies the customers as well as the exact page they are facing the issue.
Co-browsing for customer service
Nevermind the completeness of your website, no matter enriched with all the information your customer needs to buy your products or services. Customers may always need to have some guidance.
Research by t-sciences found out that humans process visuals 60,000 times faster than written text. Providing visual support to engage customers proves worthy to improve customer experience than text conversations.
Co-browsing helps you to provide contextual information to your customers while they are browsing your website.
How?
Co-browsing helps you to show, not to tell. Instead of spending time chatting or speaking to your customers on how to solve their problems, co-browsing helps to guide website visitors and customers on the right path in real time.
Best practices:
- With shared browsing, your support agents can move their mouse around the customer’s browser, highlight information and make the tricky process even clearer.
- You can connect with the customer and guide personally to enhance the engagement process.
Co-browsing for product demos
What is the need for product videos on websites if they fail to explain the product thoroughly and leave the customers confused with so many questions in mind. Co-browsing tool helps to give a complete product tour to your customers.
Using a co-browsing solution improves product understanding for the customers to make quick decisions for their business.
Suppose, when your customers are inside your product and need help to take any action, for example how to integrate or analyze any data, your product support team can provide an interactive demo to make sure your customers know how to use your product efficiently.
Best practice:
- If you are a SaaS product or any other business where you need to help your customers with product demos or customer onboarding then co-browsing can be your right tool.
Co-browsing with live chat and video chat
Real time engagement with live chat, video chat and co-browsing have recorded highest satisfaction rates.
It reduces customer effort by jointly navigating an application in real time. This helps businesses to accomplish far greater annual improvements in customer satisfaction scores, compared to companies without co-browsing technology i.e. 5.1% vs. 1.4%.
The major reason behind inclination towards co-browsing with live and video chat is that maximum customers prefer complete engagement with the support agent in real-time rather than just call support. Such kind of instant communication has changed the way companies interact with their customers.
Co-browsing for mobile apps
Businesses can enhance customer engagement by integrating mobile SDK to their apps to help users inside the apps. They do not have to shift the channel to get the support. You can co-browse with your customers to deliver instant support over their preferred channel.
Is co-browsing secured?
Yes. Co-browsing does not allow the agent to see any other data on its desktop or computer. Also, the customers need to approve the request before the agents can start the co-browsing session. Customers can also end the co-browsing session at any time if they wish to terminate the discussion.
During the session, agents can not see sensitive customer information such as his credit card or personal details. Hence all the customer data is completely protected and is not stored on any devices.
What are the key verticals where co-browsing solution can be used?
Co-browsing software can help different industrial sectors and accelerate growth and efficiency.
- Travel Industry
In the travel, industry co-browsing can be used for planning and research for package plans, and reservations (hotels, vehicles, etc.)
- Brokerage and Online Banking Industry
Co-browsing can be used for on-boarding of new accounts, cross-selling and upselling to existing customers, initiating loans & services, bill payments & online banking, wire money and other transactions.
- Healthcare and Insurance Industry
In the healthcare industry, co-browsing can be used for research and comparison of plans, verification of coverage claims, and processing of coverage claims.
- Retail Industry
For the retail sector, co-browsing can be used for sale conversion via catalogs, processing returns, upselling and cross-selling to the existing customers, and mass purchase deals.
- Financial Services Industry
Co-browsing can help agents in on-boarding of new accounts, linking of accounts and account transfers, retirement planning and IRA (Individual Retirement Account) rollovers, planning and managing investments, and assessment of investment portfolio.
- Education
In the education sector, co-browsing can help in application submission and processing, payment and processing of tuition fees and financial assistance.
How to set up co-browsing for my website & mobile applications?
The configuration of co-browsing on your website and mobile applications is an easy process. REVE Chat cloud-based co-browsing software is secure and reliable and sends instant page updates.
For configuring of REVE Chat support on your website you need to add a few lines of code on your website. Follow the below mentioned steps to enable the software.
- Create an account.
- Copy the shortcode -> Add the code to your website. (If your IT person is setting up, you can email the code to your developer).
- After adding successfully, you can customize your chat window as needed and start a co-browsing session whenever needed.
Co-browsing solution can only be initiated by the agent, so your customer is supposed to chat and request a session.
Final thoughts:
Co-browsing with live chat and video chat can undoubtedly accentuate your customer experience. Live chat isn’t just meant for customer support but for defining customer experience. The field is ripe to take advantage of but not many companies are doing so. Hence, if can leverage live chat to boost customer satisfaction, you’ll for sure have a great future ahead for your company.
