Ultimate Guide to CoBrowsing ebook

Ultimate guide to CoBrowsing

Standing Out in Today’s Digital Economy

Ultimate guide to Cobrowsing

01 Standing Out in Today’s Business Landscape

01 Standing Out in Today’s Digital Economy

It’s no secret that the customer experience has taken on a more important role for financial institutions (FIs)—from banks and credit unions to insurers and wealth managers—especially in a post-pandemic digital world. Today’s consumers demand more from the organizations they choose to do business with ("choose" being the operative word).

These days, there is a heightened sense of immediacy and impatience from consumers who need assistance finding something on a digital property or resolving a problem. The overall experience and outcome of each interaction are inversely proportional to the perceived effort they have to expend to achieve their desired goals.
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So, how are companies reshaping their customer experience and how are they not only meeting, but exceeding customer expectations?
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The most innovative companies today are surprisingly quick to leverage new technologies to make online transactions and servicing more customer-centric and, in doing so, are able to stand apart from their competition. While adding digital channels like live chat to their websites was a positive step in the right direction, chat alone is not enough. CoBrowsing supplies new life to chat and other interactive channels, including phone, to create the high-touch, deep level of engagement needed to truly stand out. Guiding a customer through an application, or digitally walking them through account changes, with CoBrowsing creates a lasting impression at critical moments of the customer journey.

Ultimate guide to CoBrowsing

What Is CoBrowsing?

Ultimate guide to Cobrowsing

02 What is CoBrowsing

02 What Is CoBrowsing?

CoBrowsing (or Co-Browsing) is short for collaborative browsing and refers to a method of screen sharing characterized by the simultaneous browsing of a single webpage by a consumer and remote representative in real time. To avoid confusion, many CoBrowsing solutions label the cursors to identify each member of the CoBrowsing session.

CoBrowsing is a step up from screen sharing. Unlike screen sharing, CoBrowsing facilitates more direct engagement and is also confined to a financial institution’s enabled digital properties to ensure a more personalized, and enriching engagement while protecting sensitive personal information.
While there are numerous use cases for CoBrowsing, one popular example is when a customer is trying to locate a resource within an FI’s public or authenticated website.

One popular use case for CoBrowsing is to guide customers to difficult to find resources within a website.

Without technology to CoBrowse, company representatives typically have to rely on memory and the verbal back-and-forth to direct a customer to specific areas of the website (which becomes increasingly difficult as product and marketing teams continue to optimize and personalize their digital properties).With CoBrowse technology, a customer service staff member can simply show vs tell the customer where to navigate. Besides making interactions more efficient and satisfying, CoBrowsing helps customers learn how to be more self-sufficient in the future—a win-win.
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CoBrowsing falls under the category of visual engagement solutions. Whether on its own or coupled with other mediums of visual engagement, like video chat, CoBrowsing provides rich visual context, which creates a deeper level of engagement and more successful online sales and support conversations.

Ultimate guide to CoBrowsing

Evolution of CoBrowsing

Ultimate guide to Cobrowsing

03 Evolution of CoBrowsing

CoBrowsing’s roots can be traced back to screen sharing technology. In fact, early CoBrowsing solutions more closely resembled the one-way experience of screen sharing than the two-way collaboration found in modern digital-first solutions. What was considered CoBrowsing not long ago used technologies like java and required a software download and installation for all participants wanting to browse together. Additionally, the speed at which participants could CoBrowse together was extremely slow, as solutions were bandwidth-intensive. Most solutions were also lacking on the security front, making adoption by financial services companies almost non-existent.

The CoBrowsing we offer today, is a seamless, zero download experience made possible by advancements in browser technology.

Early CoBrowsing was essentially little more than screen images being sent back and forth between two web browsers at some interval. The CoBrowsing we offer today is a seamless, zero-download experience made possible by advancements in browser and mobile technologies. Advances in bandwidth and communications technology made it possible for speeds to increase tremendously, for an instant, real-time shared browsing experience between two people.
These changes led to increased interest and adoption of CoBrowsing technology by businesses seeking ways to decrease average handle time (AHT) and improve customer satisfaction (CSAT) in customer support. Moreover, innovative organizations began to experiment with CoBrowsing as a tool to increase online sales and conversions.

To meet high customer expectations, companies have to evolve the way they support their customers, including using the right technology and tools.

Ultimate guide to CoBrowsing

Why You Should Include CoBrowsing in Your Online Offering

Ultimate guide to Cobrowsing

04 Why You Should Offer CoBrowsing

04 Why You Should Include CoBrowsing in Your Online Offering

There is no question that CoBrowsing creates a better customer experience by enabling a company to get right to the issue at hand without giving the customer the run-around, as the representative attempts to get on the same page. Because customer expectations are so high nowadays, even the slightest inconvenience can mean the difference between a customer doing business with you or your competition. Using CoBrowing is an important way to stay ahead in the game, providing higher quality service, lower customer effort, and real-time resolution.

78%
of customers say the quality of service is fundamental to earning their loyalty and repeat business

Higher quality customer service

78% of customers say the quality of service is fundamental to earning their loyalty and repeat business. Consumers are on-the-go and expect a seamless experience, not one that requires an afternoon in front of a computer or a two-hour phone call. They also don’t want to get lost in a state of confusion when searching a website for a product or information. CoBrowsing provides real-time visibility into customer experience pitfalls, remedied by human interaction and quick resolutions to elevate the level of customer service.

96%
of consumers who have to use great effort to resolve their problems are more likely to stray

Reduced customer effort

Customer effort largely affects the customer experience these days too. 96% of consumers who have to use great effort to resolve their problems are more likely to stray, according to Gartner research. CoBrowsing provides sales and service staff with real-time visual context to “see” customer issues immediately and decrease customer effort. Knowing what the problem is immediately, allows service employees to “show & tell” customers how to properly resolve the issue much more quickly than with disjointed communication channels. Subsequently, the customer doesn’t need to work as hard at finding the answers or solving their problem.

83%
83% of customers expect to interact with someone right away when they contact a company

Real-time resolution

Consumers expect not only high-quality customer service and low effort, but also immediate attention for real-time resolution. According to Salesforce, 83% of customers expect to interact with someone right away when they contact a company. This finding underlines the importance of digital-first engagement options supported by CoBrowsing, where customer service staff can effectively interact with visitors in real time, decreasing friction and increasing customer satisfaction. Further, when combined with business logic and video or audio chat, CoBrowsing creates deeper levels of engagement comparable to an in-person customer experience. This allows companies to better retain their existing customers, while attracting new ones.

Ultimate guide CoBrowsing

Questions To Ask When Choosing a CoBrowsing Solution

Ultimate guide to Cobrowsing

05 Choosing a CoBrowsing Solution

05 Questions To Ask When Choosing a CoBrowsing Solution

Ease of access, standalone tool?

Now that you recognize the importance of including CoBrowsing in your digital offering, it is vital to have a firm understanding of the various solutions available and their unique feature sets. During the evaluation phase you should raise the following questions:

Where can CoBrowsing be accessed and should it be a standalone tool?

While CoBrowsing can offer helpful visual context as a standalone tool, its benefits are limited. As such, the communication and navigation experiences between a customer and a support representative are disjointed. To reap the benefits of CoBrowsing, it should be integrated with communication channels as part of a Digital Customer Service (DCS) platform. A single platform approach creates a more seamless experience for your customers and decreases the likelihood of channel-switching dead-ends.

Ease of installation?

How easy is it to install the CoBrowsing solution?

When discussing installation, there are actually two sides of the equation. First is the installation experience for you as an organization, and then comes the installation experience for the customer (since that’s a requirement of many CoBrowsing solutions).
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Leading solutions require minimal effort for a company to implement, in some cases, only requiring a company to place a simple line of script on their website (similar to implementing Google Analytics).
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Another important consideration is whether or not the CoBrowsing solution can easily be implemented with the fintech platforms you use and integrated directly with existing technology, such as a CRM or analytics solution. This minimizes the training required, as customer service representatives can continue working within the same windows and interfaces they’re already comfortable with. For example, Glia CoBrowsing seamlessly integrates with hundreds of technology solutions, including Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics.
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The second piece (which is often forgotten), is the end customer’s installa- tion experience. After all, companies are interested in deploying a CoBrowsing solution for the benefits that it offers to the customer experience. Requiring customers to download anything to begin a CoBrowsing session creates friction; therefore, the best CoBrowsing solutions require no downloads or installation. Choose a solution that works seamlessly across a variety of browsers, devices, and operating systems to account for your customers’ browsing preferences and behaviors.

Live Observation

Does the solution offer Live Observation?

The most complete and forward-thinking CoBrowsing solutions offer not only the ability to CoBrowse, but also the ability to observe active website visitors in real time. Live Observation capabilities create immediate visual context, allowing for faster resolution of customer issues. Additionally, Live Observation creates a natural progression to CoBrowsing. Our data shows that service representatives who use Live Observation are 3x more likely to leverage CoBrowsing.
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Importantly, it’s possible to maintain high levels of security with Live Observation and CoBrowsing because they are enabled on a site-by-site basis, not across the entire web browser or a customer’s device.

Dual-Cursor Control?

Does the solution offer Dual-Cursor Control?

With multiple participants in a browsing session, it is important to clearly delineate one person from another. That is why leading CoBrowsing solutions offer labeled dual-cursor experiences. Both customer and representative cursors are visible on screen, and each has the ability to click, scroll, and type. Dual-cursor control is a way to create a truly collaborative browsing session.

Ultimate guide to CoBrowsing

Getting More Out of CoBrowsing

Ultimate guide to Cobrowsing

06 Getting More Out of CoBrowsing

While CoBrowsing provides real-time visual context to provide a highly personal company-to-customer interaction, the true value of CoBrowsing shines when coupled with other communication channels, such as live chat, audio, or video. The ability for customer service representatives to not only show, but also tell, has enabled companies to achieve amazing growth in online sales and drastic improvements in customer support.

Financial services companies that incorporate CoBrowsing across their communication channels have seen even better results—creating a near-perfect, digital-first solution that allows them to uniquely position themselves as a true customer-centric organization. According to a study by Aberdeen, “Companies with extremely strong digital-first customer engagement retain, on average, 89% of their customers, compared to 33% for companies with weak digital-first customer engagement.”
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Determining your CoBrowsing and channel mix depends on a variety of factors, including customer preferences and the complexity of customer issues. Here are a few options to consider.

CoBrowse & Live Chat

Live chat has seemingly become the preferred online communication chan- nel for companies, as it provides a cost-effective method of providing decent (though not stellar) support for a majority of customers. However, compa- nies that have leveraged live chat and CoBrowsing together have found great success in both customer satisfaction and online conversion.

Current Glia customer data shows that companies using CoBrowsing in live chat engagements have seen an average of a 69% lift in online conversions, as well as a meaningful increase in customer satisfaction scores. This shouldn’t be surprising, given the added context CoBrowsing provides to customer service representatives.

69%
lift in online conversions

CoBrowse & Voice

While chat is a convenient way for consumers to engage, sometimes a verbal exchange is preferred or better suited for a particular need. Yet, voice alone still relies on those same back-and-forth questions that make both parties work harder than needed to get and stay on the same page.
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Voice interactions—whether on screen through computer audio or via a traditional telephone call—can be significantly enhanced with CoBrowsing.

OnScreen voice

Digital Customer Service technology enables a voice conversation to take place directly within an FI's digital properties without a separate call—whether user-initiated or as an upgrade from chat—without breaking the digital experience. Coupling that voice conversation with real-time CoBrowsing creates a natural connection and eliminates ambiguity for a more productive and satisfying experience for all.

Traditional phone calls

Combining CoBrowsing with a traditional phone call is a valuable way to leverage on-screen collaboration because it marries a consumer’s offline and online behavior. A typical contact center phone call is often a verbal guessing game between caller and representative trying to understand each other to accomplish something—usually a frustrating experience for both.

With one easy step using Glia’s DCS platform, the service representative can pair a caller to their online session. Instantly, the service staff member has visual context for the caller with Live Observation and can guide them on their digital journey with CoBrowsing. This is even easier and more customized if integrated within a CRM platform, such as Salesforce. Since 84% of callers are on or near their screen when they dial the phone, having these capabilities is a must.

While the technology needed to accomplish this is only offered by the top CoBrowsing solutions, like Glia, the results seen by companies employing this tactic are amazing. Allowing customers to voice their issues, while simultaneously being visually guided on their journey usually exceeds the customer’s expectations. Companies leveraging CoBrowsing and audio have seen a nearly 80% lift in online conversions.

CoBrowse & Video Chat

At Glia, we feel very strongly that video chat can be a game changer in the way companies and customers communicate. Financial services companies currently leveraging video chat, whether 1-way or 2-way, are already seeing better conversion numbers and customer support metrics than others relying on more traditional channels.
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Combining CoBrowse and video chat takes visual engagement and the customer experience to the next level. Our data shows that companies leveraging CoBrowsing and video chat see on average a 138% lift in online conversion along with a sizable rise in customer satisfaction—not surprising considering that this coupling most closely recreates the “in-person” experience online.

138%
lift in online conversion

Ultimate guide to CoBrowsing

Why Glia CoBrowsing?

Ultimate guide to Cobrowsing

07 Glia CoBrowsing

07 Why Glia CoBrowsing?

By now, you should have a better idea of CoBrowsing and how it can help your organization. At Glia, we are dedicated to creating the most advanced and secure visual engagement solutions on the market. Our dedication to meeting or exceeding the “in-person” customer experience online has enabled us to create a unique Digital Customer Service platform with a seamless CoBrowsing solution that provides service staff with more customer context than they’ve ever had.
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Here are just some of the ways Glia’s solution stands apart from others.

No downloads

Implementing Glia is simple and requires no downloads or any additional software installs for customers or company staff to engage across channels and CoBrowse. Companies can be up and running to serve customers quickly.

Instant and fast CoBrowsing

Glia CoBrowsing adjusts in real time for dynamic screens and tab movements, making it the fastest and most accurate CoBrowsing solution available, whether in a public website, authenticated portal, or mobile experience.

Financial grade reliability and security

Glia’s Digital Customer Service platform was architected from the ground up to exceed the security, reliability, and compliance needs of the most demanding financial enterprises. Glia’s CoBrowsing masks out sensitive form fields and encrypts interactions, end-to-end, to ensure privacy, security, and peace of mind for customers and financial institutions.

Fintech integrations

A CoBrowsing solution needs to work with your customer-facing platforms, but cutting through the implementation roadblocks that some fintech providers impose can be a long process. Glia has built close partnerships with leading fintech providers—from digital banking and LOS platforms to insurtech and beyond—and is a preferred digital engagement provider for many.

WhiteGlove partnership

Glia’s commitment to our clients does not stop at leading-edge technology. We partner with you every step of the way to share best practices and continued success for all. Many of our customers have told us that we are the easiest provider to work with and a true partner to their business.

Patented technology

Glia holds multiple patents for its innovative, ChannelLess Digital Customer Service technology, which means our clients benefit from a one-of-a-kind, highly valuable solution.
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To learn more about CoBrowsing and Glia's Digital Customer Service, visit www.glia.com and request a demo.

Ultimate Guide toCoBrowsing

01 Standing Out in Today’s Digital Economy

02 What Is CoBrowsing?

03 Evolution of CoBrowsing

04 Why You Should Include CoBrowsing in Your Online Offering

Higher quality customer service

Reduced customer effort

Real-time resolution

05 Questions To Ask When Choosing a CoBrowsing Solution

Where can CoBrowsing be accessed and should it be a standalone tool?

How easy is it to install the CoBrowsing solution?

Does the solution offer Live Observation?

Does the solution offer Dual-Cursor Control?

06 Getting More Out of CoBrowsing

CoBrowse & Live Chat

CoBrowse & Voice

OnScreen voice

Traditional phone calls

CoBrowse & Video Chat

07 Why Glia CoBrowsing?

No downloads

Instant and fast CoBrowsing

Financial grade reliability and security

Fintech integrations

WhiteGlove partnership

Patented technology