Co-Browsing: Pros and Cons of Collaborative Browsing

Rapid development of online commerce and growing competition in the market of digital technologies motivates companies to improve their customer services. 56% of US customers expressed they have higher expectations for customer service than a year ago. 42% stopped doing business with a company as a result of poor customer service experience.

Customers say that, with all the convenience of digital services, something is still missing. Most of the time, it’s simply the need to get help or advice. Some details are not always clear, and self-service is just not enough. Offering human advice through digital means has a direct effect on customer satisfaction. An overwhelming 85% of customers found video chat helpful. 91% loved co-browsing.

Let’s take a closer look at co-browsing as a user support technology, discuss its pros and cons.

What is co-browsing?

Collaborative browsing (co-browsing) is a customer service technology for cooperation with the customer’s browser in real time. It allows customer support consultants to use two browsers at the same time, with one window on each side of the monitor. Co-browsing only shares a mobile application or web browser, not the desktop. And it doesn’t involve viewing or controlling a presenter’s screen. 

Advantages of Co-Browsing

In the process of customer-agent interaction, co-browsing can:

Resolve Customer Issues Faster

When customer support consultants can see what is on their customers’  screen, issues are handled much faster than with a phone call or in chat without any visual tools. Most users say co-browsing helped them receive instant responses to their queries and saved time of operations. Forrester report supports this idea:

 “Wood Group, a Scotland-based company that supports global oil and natural gas exploration, remotely supports oil platforms in the North Sea and onshore-based facilities in the UK, US, and Middle East. Using visual engagement helps Wood Group avoid the $15,000 round trip helicopter ride to an oil platform and the need to send a field technician to a geographic area wrought with strife.”

Reduce Costs

With visual engagement, you offer quick solutions by reducing the number of touchpoints made by customers. Empowering consultants to see and guide customers in solving problems quickly leads to 396% ROI within 6 months. In fact, recent studies have found that businesses utilizing co-browsing and other visual engagement apps and tools have seen an 83% increase in year-on-year revenue growth.

Fewer Customers Bounce

By providing visual context for complicated transactions, customer support consultants bring the customers quickly through the points where they might get stuck and leave the site. 

“Nationwide, a UK-based mortgage lender, found that it was losing customers when it couldn’t help them in their moment of need. The company uses visual engagement technologies to virtually — and instantly — connect branch customers to experts. These virtual experts can see clients, and they can complete all functions as if they were meeting face to face. Branches that used the technology saw a 62% uplift in mortgage sales during the pilot of the program, and it’s now been rolled out to 400 branches.”(Forrester report)

Provide a Personalized Service

78% of customers feel positive and engaged when they interact with customer support consultants who offer them individual help with co-browsing.

The conversations can be personalized with collaborative browsing based on the issues. In addition, co-browsing has provided high-tech solutions that create a virtual in-person experience.

“Intuit, a US-based personal finance and tax software company, wanted to give its users more confidence when preparing their taxes online. The company now offers a service that provides a comprehensive review of a customer’s return. Intuit uses one-way video that allows customers to ask questions of experts who can only see the user’s TurboTax window. With co-browsing, Intuit’s tax experts can highlight on screen areas to address questions or enter more information. In 2015, Intuit slashed support time by 50% while increasing customer satisfaction scores by 50%.”(Forrester report)

Guarantee Private and Secure Environment

Agents and customers are able to see the website or application and nothing else. Furthermore, the field masking function governs what an agent can see when customers are inputting their personal information during a session.

Also, both parties are safe from viruses and data breach.

“The main co-browsing advantage is that it helps us eradicate remote access tools, which are quite different. Many less computer-literate people, potentially older people, may not realize that remote access to your computer is extremely dangerous to your digital security and is a common tactic used by hackers as you are giving them holistic control of your computer. Co-browsing operates similarly but does not give someone access to your computer, you simply share the same session within a browser, which means I cannot control the customers’ computer, merely see the same thing they are.”(Peter Strahan, Founder & CEO of Lantech)

Be Browser-Based Only

Ideally, a co-browsing solution should be 100% browser-based. This makes contextual interaction more secure and quicker for both you and your customers. This is also ideal for elderly or non-tech-savvy customers who find it difficult to use your website.

Improve Conversion Rate

As customers run into fewer issues, they are less prone to abandon and leave. This means greater customer satisfaction, which, in turn, means they will respond to calls-to-action with increased frequency. In other words, better conversion rates. 

Businesses witness an increase in their conversion rates by up to 2.5 times by using visual tools like co-browsing to deliver high-end customer service.

 Improve Customer Loyalty

Customer satisfaction rockets as the issues are resolved faster. 93% of repeat customers are more likely to stay longer with a brand they trust. What is more, 72% say they share good experiences with others. Happy customers are loyal customers, and they are far more likely to return. 

Visual engagement boosts business retention rate by 7.6% annually, and co-browsing has been becoming the leading technology for remote visual collaboration.

Use Graphic Tools

Once the co-browsing session is underway, customer service representative can make use of mouse pointers, highlighters, and even drawing tools to help visualize the solution.

Highlighting the exact button or tab on a website can be much easier understood than getting instructions on where to find the webpage element and descriptions on how to identify it. It’s almost like having someone looking over your shoulder to guide you.

Be Used for Onboarding and Training Assistance

Co-browsing for onboarding and training makes the process easier, quicker, more interactive and efficient for both parties. This is what Jason Wise, Chief Editor at Earth Web, told us about his daily usage of co-browsing.  

“We use a co-browsing program for the onboarding orientation of every new remote hire. The HR department has developed separate modules for each manager to demonstrate the writer platform to new hires so that they are able to navigate smoothly. This has eased my life ten-fold, honestly. Because before this co-browsing technology, I had to dictate every mouse click step by step to the new hire while they shared their screen. And trust me, that gave both of us a hard time. The orientation process has become very smooth now with co-browsing technology, where I can give live demos and also test the employee’s understanding of the platform before they can actively start writing”.

Drawbacks of Co-Browsing

Alongside the mentioned advantages, let’s take a look at some drawbacks of co-browsing.

May Be Expensive for Small Businesses

Research shows that the most popular co-browsing programs are used by Small-Business (30%-60%) and Mid-Market (20%-60%). But there are ones that are used by small businesses only. As the prices for co-browsing solutions vary from $40 to $200 per month, it may not be the best choice for startups and small businesses which don’t have extra financial resources.

Lack of Voice and Video Communication

Since only the browser is shared between the representative and the remote customer, the collaboration is limited to visual guidance, there is no built-in text chat, audio or video communication. Combining it with video, voice, and live chat can make it more effective and interactive.

One Customer Can Be Serviced at a Session

Due to the personalized nature of co-browsing, expect your customer service consultant to handle only one customer at a time. Although, handling time will be drastically shorter compared to audio or text-based discussions, your representative will be tied up until the resolution of customer concerns.

Depending on the number of expected customer interactions, you may need to hire multiple customer service representatives to decrease resolution time. 

High Internet Quality Is Needed

For a seamless co-browsing session, the internet connection must be optimal on both sides. Since co-browsing relies on real-time coordination, insufficient internet bandwidth will result in network lag and poor customer service quality. 

While additional memory and faster processors can help resolve this issue, they are not a panacea. Even the quickest browser on a fast system might reach its limits. When additional pages are staged to run some co-browsing apps, the likelihood that some of them may run into DOM complexity increases.

However, we should never forget that not all customers become ready to co-browse during the conversation. Complex technical glitches in this system also make co-browsing difficult for customers if they fail to follow the instructions. 

Conclusion

According to Gartner and Forrester, the new tendency is that over 90% of companies expect to compete mostly based on customer experience. Improving customer journey by assisting customers through complicated processes, co-browsing ensures increased efficiency. This is beneficial for companies who want to upskill employees with digital tools and stay a step ahead of competitors who have yet to undergo significant digital transformation. 

To make your best choice of co-browsing solution, it is worth keeping a few things in mind. Are you looking for an enterprise or personal solution? Integrated or standalone? Once you figure those questions out, select some vendors and have them provide demos and a possible sandbox implementation. That should flush out what is real versus big talk. 

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