What is Co-browsing and How Co-browsing Works?

Customer engagement is all about mapping your buyer’s journey and interactions that happen across multiple touchpoints of your customer relationship lifecycle. Having a deep understanding of your customer behavior can help your business to strengthen customer loyalty.

As per Forrester report, “Brands with superior customer experience bring in 5.7 times more revenue than competitors that lag in customer experience”

Let us dive into how to improve and yield better return on investment (ROI) in customer experience,
Co-browsing solution, one of the sophisticated tools for delivering better customer experience, is changing the way businesses communicate and could become the de facto solution for providing real time assistance.

What is Co-browsing?

Co-browsing, also known as collaborative browsing 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 customer support or sales assistance.

The businesses that make customer engagement the focal point are inclined towards value creation as well as optimizing their ROI. They give customers meaningful end-to-end customer experience with interactive and real-time support.

Co-browsing is the ultimate solution to resolve the commonly asked questions that agents ask their 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.

When the co-browsing session commences, the agent is provided with a precise visual depiction of the customer’s browser screen.

• The support agents can assist the customer, by securely co-navigating the website. 
• The agents can also annotate the customer’s view of the website, help to fill out forms, and even overlay documents.

WebRTC-based browsing also protects conversations from any malware attacks or threats and also supports most of modern browsers and devices including mobile browsers.

Why co-browsing is important for your business?

Co-browsing technology empowers your agents to see customers’ screens in real time and guide them through complex transactions, processes, forms, demos. It helps to enhance customer interactions by reducing multiple touchpoints. You can combine co-browsing with live chat and video chat increase to improve first contact resolution (FCR) rate.

The key business areas that are benefited by co-browsing are:

• Increased customer loyalty – You can engage your customers with the willingness to deliver the best visual experience via personalized chat will positively impact customer loyalty.
• Reduced customer service costs – With visual engagement, you offer quick solutions by reducing the number of touchpoints made by customers. Being able to deliver faster support reduces support costs and time.
• Improved team efficiency – Co-browsing empowers your agent to instantly see the customer’s screen and offer faster resolution in the first touchpoint itself. Thus, improving key team productivity metrics.

REVE Chat offers a suite of advanced customer engagement software that can help redefine the way you provide support. Sign up to enrich your business with new-age customer service tools and drive your user engagement successfully. 

How is co-browsing different from screen sharing?

Co-browsing solution is different from screen sharing in the context that does not allow to view or control the customer’s screen. Unlike screen sharing, co-browsing empowers your support agents to guide customers during their online journey by helping them take action while filling up a form or taking a certain action, without the need for any downloads. This makes the contextual interaction more secure and faster for both agents and customers.

The highlights of co-browsing are:

• It is completely browser based. It means no extra download or installations needed.
• With co-browsing, you can guide customers as well as take required actions on behalf of them.
• Co-browsing offers a set of highlighter tools that helps to assist customers in a streamlined way.
• As it is entirely browser based, it is highly secured.

We have a detailed analysis of the comparison between co-browsing vs screen sharing that is best for your business. 

Note: The main difference between co-browsing and screen sharing and what is best for your business depends upon the grounds of benefits to your business growth.

Main benefits of co-browsing 

Using visual customer engagement adds a human touch to customer experience can help you to give a competitive edge to your business. Let us go through the main co-browsing benefits that play a vital role in creating an emotional connection with your customers.

• Provide real time assistance – Co-browsing, along with video and live chat, provides complete engagement tools to provide real time assurance across web and mobile.
• Improve first contact resolution (FCR) – With shared viewing, it is easy to identify the problem deliver an effective solution in the first contact itself. It improves the FCR rate and boosts customer satisfaction.
• Continued conversations from other channels: By sharing a 5-digit unique co browsing code, customers can continue their conversations from other channels such as phone or Facebook messenger over the website with the same agent.
• 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.
• 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 co-browsing?

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. 
• 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. 

What is co-browsing by code? How does it work?

Co-browsing code helps to connect with the same support agent and continue the conversation from different communication/messaging channels with the help of 5 digit unique code. The 5-digit shortcode is a one-time occurrence that needs to be entered by the agent to resume the session and delivers the most integrated navigation experience.

For example, A customer starts the conversation with the agent over the phone or Facebook messenger. In case the agent needs to view the problem or give a demonstration to the customer, redirection needs to be done to the website to continue the conversation by initiating a co-browsing session with the help of the code.

Key use cases 

Call centers 

People reach out through different channels (online & offline), which makes it difficult to identify the callers. With co-browsing code, the agents can easily identify the callers, connect with them, and deliver co-browsing support.

Banks

The unique code helps to connect with customers who need real-time assistance in filling up complex forms or applications. The code gives the agent access to the customer’s screen to resolve the issue instantly. 

How co-browsing improves team performance?

One of the most important aspects of the support team is how productive they are. A brand that responds to customers in real time dramatically increases its chances of winning the deal. According to InsideSales, “50% of buyers choose the vendor that responds first.”

Co-browsing accentuates customer engagement by bringing true efficiency and effectiveness of customer interactions. It allows the support team to dive directly into guiding customers skipping the chat or phone support, thus improving team productivity. 

It greatly impacts the top team performance metrics and KPIs such as:

• First contact resolution (FCR) – Visually engaging with the customers allows for identifying the issue quickly and effectively. The result of this is – a faster resolution process than too in the first contact itself. It allows agents to handle more conversations as they identify the problems faster.
• Average resolution time (ART) – Co-browsing makes resolution faster 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. 
• Lesser touchpoints – Live assistance helps to diagnose the complexity of the error. The agent can deliver the best solution at the first touchpoint and reduces the number of attempts made in the future 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 customer service

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 more than text conversations.

The co-browsing solution helps you to provide contextual information to your customers while they are browsing your website.

Here is how?

Co-browsing helps you to show, not tell. Instead of spending time chatting or speaking to your customers about 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 them personally to enhance the engagement process. 

Co-browsing for sales & lead generation

The 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 witness a 2.4% annual improvement (decrease) in support costs. Co-browsing shortens the sales cycle by assisting customers in real-time to make timely decisions. Sales agents can help visitors to assist with navigation or complex form fill-ups when they are on the website for sales conversion.

For example, a customer wants to buy an insurance plan online but looking at so many options he is confused about which plan is right for him. He calls to the company hotline number to know more about the plan and services. And quite possible the call center agent may not be aware of what information the customer wants. Co-browsing is the best solution in such a scenario.

Best practices:

• You can use co-browsing along with video chat for guiding clients through complex form fill-up or application processes and deliver a better conversational experience.
• If you are a financial institution, your customers need to submit a loan/insurance claim application. You can use co-browsing to help customers in submitting the forms properly along with other documents.

Co-browsing by code use cases

Co-browsing by code refers to continuing the conversation with the same support agent from different communication channels by sharing the 5-digit unique identification code.

There are four options under co-browsing by code settings. They are as follows:

• Co-browsing by code with all options – If you want to provide options such as live chat, video chat, screen sharing to your customers or visitors, you can choose this option.
• Co-browsing by code without any options – If you want customers only to share their screen, you can choose this option. The customers won’t be able to do voice or video chat during the co-browsing session.
• Co-browsing by code through the Embedded tab – This option allows customers to view the unique code on clicking the specific link like a CTA (call to action) on the website.
• Co-browsing by code through the Chat button – On choosing this option, you can provide the co-browsing by code option in the live chat widget itself.

Co-browsing for onboarding

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? The co-browsing tool helps to give a complete product tour to your customers. It improves product understanding for the customers to make quick decisions for their business.

Generally, when your customers are inside your product, they need help in taking action for how to integrate or analyze data. Your product support team can provide an interactive demo to them on how to use the 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 combined with live chat, video chat, and co-browsing has recorded the 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 the 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 engaging their mobile app users by integrating API for iOS & Android. You can assist your in-app in real-time so that they do not have to shift to another channel to get 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 the co-browsing solution can be used?

Co-browsing software can help different industrial sectors and accelerate growth and efficiency. 

I. Banking and Financial services

Co-browsing helps customers to complete the most complex banking processes such as loan application fill-up and submission. Moving for customer support, co-browsing can be used to guide customers to upload documents for any kind of claim.

II. Hospitality

With co-browsing, you help customers to choose the right packages, book tickets, and make reservations (hotels, vehicles, etc.)

III. Healthcare and Insurance 

In the healthcare industry, co-browsing can be used for research and comparison of plans, verification of coverage claims, and processing of coverage claims.

IV. Retail 

In the retail sector customer experience is playing an increasingly important role. Co-browsing allows the agents to view the same page in real time as the customer. It helps in upselling and cross-selling to existing customers and mass purchase deals.

How to set up co-browsing for my website & mobile applications?

Integrating co-browsing on your website and mobile applications is an easy process. It is as simple as plug and play, as no downloads or installation is needed. REVE Chat’s cloud-based co-browsing software WebRTC based and is secured. It sends instant page updates once you integrate co-browsing software. 

For integrating co-browsing you just have to follow the below mentioned steps:

• Create an account and land to the REVE Chat’s dashboard.
• Under the Integrations option, you will get a short snippet code.
• Copy the script -> Paste it to your website. (If your IT person is setting up, you can email the code to your developer).
• After adding successfully, you can customize the chat window as per your business needs and start a co-browsing session whenever needed.

Final thoughts

Customer experience has undoubtedly become the key differentiator for businesses. It has been predicted that customer experience will overtake price and product as key brand differentiators by 2023. The businesses that will triumph in their verticals are those that elevate their online customer experience from ordinary to extraordinary.

With REVE Chat’s advanced customer engagement tools, your business too can redefine the way it offers support. Sign up to empower your support with top customer service software and add great value to your customer service strategy.  

Adopting practices that elevate the customer experience will undoubtedly produce a return on investment and provide a steady foundation for your brand. Co-browsing is an important toolkit to deliver ‘that unique experience’ to your customers. You can deliver a long-lasting impression by combining co-browsing with live chat and video chat.