#GoToGetsIT: This article is part of an ongoing series from GoTo’s thought leaders on the frontlines: Our Solutions Consultants deeply understand our customers’ unique challenges and connect the right solutions to meet their goals using GoTo technology. Here, they share their industry knowledge on what it takes to help businesses everywhere thrive in a remote or hybrid world.
We live in a world that runs on instant gratification with little patience for subpar experiences. In fact, 76% of consumers would stop doing business with a company after just one bad customer experience, which could be rude agents, long hold times, or too many transfers.
If we look deeper, we will realize that we contribute to that statistic and are a part of that demographic too. When was the last time we chose to silently wait, as a helpline kept our call on hold for more than a few minutes? Remember that time you ordered something online, eagerly waited for it and when it did come, were utterly disappointed with the product? We can confidently narrate stories of all our bad customer experiences, because as studies show, human beings are prone to remember bad experiences more vividly than the good.
Businesses have opted to stay ahead of the curve by adopting customer experience (CX) enhancers, such as visual engagement tools (specifically, video streaming via mobile camera sharing). With this CX enhancer, customer support agents can quickly get on a video call with a consumer, no matter the location, to provide immediate and personalized support. This results in a reduction in the number of Level 1 (L1) issues, product returns, and overall business losses.
How to use visual engagement tools across industries
While visual engagement was immediately successful in enhancing CX in the world of IT, it soon also became a necessity in other sectors, like Telecom, Manufacturing, Retail, Insurance, and more, for a not-so-obvious reason: Hardware.
Some simple yet essential use cases include:
Manufacturing
Picture a factory floor with hundreds of machines, stalled, due to a single issue that needs an unavailable field engineer. Field engineers may then need to travel many miles, which costs the company hundreds of dollars per visit.
Retail
Retail chains and restaurants rely heavily on their POS (Point of sale) devices and displays. Not being able to bill customers means not being able to serve customers.
Telecom
Telecommunication providers provide broadband setup, device connection setup, TV setup and router setup. They are heavily dependent on field staff.
Travel & Leisure
Think of airports, shopping malls, train stations; there are digital displays feeding us information, everywhere we look.
Healthcare
Hospitals and medical diagnosticians utilize medical equipment for testing. Medical practitioners oft do not have the luxury of time.
How visual engagement helps
All the above are industries that rely heavily on hardware and have at some point, fallen victim to the unavailability of technical help when and where they need it. Besides the fact that field visits by engineers are expensive (over $1,000 per visit, according to The Technology Services Industry Association (TSIA)), businesses have realized that this is not a scalable standard operating procedure given the uncertainties of human resource mobility, a realization that has been further emphasized by the pandemic. Visual engagement tools have therefore become a gamechanger.
For example, a large Telecom provider in the UK was able to reduce the need for fields visits and improve their NPS, and CSAT simultaneously by implementing GoTo’s live camera sharing support solution. An insurance company in Europe was able to reduce their claim processing times from an average of 1 week to less than 10 minutes by implementing the same tool, and an electric bicycle manufacturing company reduced the number of truck rolls and Return Merchandise Authorizations (RMAs) through the use of this technology. They use camera sharing to get eyes on the situation and to ensure they send out the right parts the very first time.
In today’s world, companies can no longer rely solely on traditional support tools, whether it be supporting their hardware or their consumers. Visual engagement is no longer a ‘good-to-have', it is now a ‘need to have’.
