NETTING IT OUT
LiveLOOK CoBrowse is an assisted-service application that lets your customer service agents help your customers answer questions about and solve problems with your products and services by browsing your self-service Web pages with them. LiveLOOK introduced LiveLOOK CoBrowse in March 2007. To date, nine customer accounts have implemented the product.
On the PSGroup Report Card for Customer Self-Service, LiveLOOK CoBrowse exceeds requirements for architecture and need improvement in analytic functionality and company viability.
LiveLOOK CoBrowse is an elegant, innovative, easy-to-implement approach to Web-based assisted-service that addresses important customer service requirements. Its virtually universal browser and desktop support and no-software deployment make it an attractive way to let your customers escalate from your Web self-service applications.
CROSS-CHANNEL CUSTOMER SERVICE
Customers Need Your Help
Customers want excellent self-service, and they want seamless escalation to assisted-service when your self-service facilities don't give them the service they need to do the business that they want to do with you. Patty Seybold first pointed this out in 1998 in her landmark book, Customers.com, where she stated,
Nine years later, Patty remains on point. Her concept for what we now call cross-channel customer service is still today exactly what your customers want to do. In addition, technologies and products that support customers' self-service activities have evolved to enable your implementation of excellent Web self-service and excellent contact center-based assisted service.
Escalating from Self-Service to Web-Based Assisted Service
In the past year or two, we've seen the emergence of attractive approaches for integrating what Patty calls that “person into the process.” This integration transforms a Web self-service customer service experience into a Web cross-channel customer service experience. The approaches give customers Web-based alternatives to the conventional approach of picking up the telephone when they can't get answers on a self-service Web site. Customers can click a button to:
- Exchange text messages with your agents through a dialog in their browsers
- Co-browse or share the self-service experience with your agents
The best part of these approaches is that they allow the customer to stay within the context of their self-service Web sessions. Their Web sessions continue during assisted service interactions, and, after the agents give them the assistance they need, customers can resume doing their business with you without changing context. That's a big productivity advantage for your customers and a significant reduction in cost-to-serve for you.
Requirements for Web-Based Assisted Service
Based on our work with you, with your customers, and with suppliers of customer service technologies and products, we've identified a set of requirements for the operational functionality to escalate to Web-based assisted service. Customers want you to:
- Escalate from within the self-service context
- Don't make me retell my story
- Contact me quickly and converse with me
- Make the escalation technologically easy
You have requirements for the implementation of these approaches for Web-based assisted service, too. In fact, they're the same requirements that you have for all cross-channel, cross-lifecycle customer service technologies and products.
- Analytic functionality to help you understand customers' behavior in escalating to Web-based assisted service and to refine your implementation to make the experience more effective
- Architecture to determine how easily a Web-based assisted service approach can integrate with your existing customer service systems
- Product viability to assess the business and risk in implementing a Web-based assisted service product
- Company viability to assess the business risk around the product's supplier
Putting these requirements together, we have a framework for evaluating Web-based assisted service products. The framework is quite similar to the framework for other cross-channel, cross-lifecycle customer service products. The top-level criteria—operational functionality, analytic functionality, architecture, product viability, and company viability—are the same, but there are fewer sub-criteria for operational functionality because the operational functionality of Web-based assisted service offerings is so much narrower than, for example, the knowledge management-based offerings designed to support the complete customer experience across Web self-service and a range of assisted service channels.
In this report, we introduce LiveLOOK CoBrowse and evaluate it against our framework.
LIVELOOK COBROWSE
Easy Escalation for You and for Your Customers
LiveLOOK CoBrowse is a new product that makes escalation to Web-based assisted-service easy for customers and easy for you. It's easy for your customers because all they have to do is click a button to ask for your agents' help. It's easy for you because your agents deliver assisted-service in response to your customers' requests by clicking a similar button to see the customers' screen. Combine LiveLOOK CoBrowse with a Web chat session or a telephone call-back to deliver Web-based assisted-service.
By way of product background, LiveLookCoBrowse1.0, the initial release, was introduced in March 2007. Release 2.0 was introduced in May 2007. It added support for the Apple iPhone. Release 3.0 is planned for November 2007. It will add co-shopping functionality and improved analytic functionality. To date, LiveLOOK claims that LiveLOOK CoBrowse has an installed base of nine customer accounts and that the product is installed on a trial basis at many more.
OPERATIONAL FUNCTIONALITY
Escalation to Assisted-Service
Customers can't always get all the help that they need from your self-service systems. When they need that extra help during a self-service session, they like escalation mechanisms from within their self-service contexts. They'd like to interact with your customer service agents without having to leave that context and without having to retell their stories or to redo the work that they've already done with you.
LiveLOOK CoBrowse Escalation
As we've mentioned, LiveLOOK CoBrowse lets customers escalate from self-service to assisted-service by clicking a button that you place on your self-service Web pages. The click signals your agents of the request. In response, your agents click a link on their screens to create co-browsing connections with the customers. They also call the customers using a telephone number or create a Web chat session in order to guide the customers through the actions for which they need assistance.
So? What's the big deal? You're probably thinking, as we thought, that co-browsing has been around since the 1990s, when it was introduced by ecommerce application suppliers as a way to deliver assisted-service to online shoppers or to let them shop with their friends, and that there are lots of co-browsing offerings available today that deliver the same functionality. Absolutely true. There's nothing unique about the operational functionality of LiveLOOK CoBrowse.
What separates LiveLOOK CoBrowse are its technology and implementation, in other words, its architecture. While we'll discuss the details of LiveLOOK CoBrowse's architecture, below, this is briefly what differentiates LiveLOOK CoBrowse from other co-browsing technologies and implementations:
- No software installation on customer's or agent's desktop (just the download of a Java applet)
- Support for every browser
- Support for different browsers on customer and agent desktops
- Support for Windows, Mac, and Linux
- Support for different desktop operating systems on customer and agent desktops
In addition, the logic that signals agents of customers' escalation requests, creates and manages co-browsing sessions between customers and agents, and transfers screen images from customers to agents is deployed by LiveLOOK as Software-as-a-Service. So, not only isn't there a software installation on customers' and agent's desktops, there's no software installation on your servers, either. And there's no integration required between LiveLOOK CoBrowse and your customer service systems. These factors add up to easy implementation.
This report continues...
To read the full report: http://www.psgroup.com/detail.aspx?ID=848.