What Is Cobrowsing? The Essential Guide for Cobrowsing Success

From guiding customers through your website to assisting with tasks, cobrowsing serves as a valuable technology for digital customer service.

It's also a useful tool for driving online sales. In fact, research indicates that cobrowsing can boost online conversions by up to 45%.

This is because cobrowsing adds an extra, collaborative element to the customer experience.

It allows you to see a situation through the customer’s eyes and gain a greater understanding of their digital journey.

With cobrowsing, advisors can better understand complex customer queries and provide in-depth guidance.

It's the perfect solution for when contact channels like live chat are not enough to resolve an issue on their own.

But how exactly does cobrowsing work? And how can it be used effectively to drive business success?

In this article, we'll provide all the answers you need. We'll cover:

• What is cobrowsing and how does it work?
• How can cobrowsing be used?
• The benefits of cobrowsing
• Choosing the best cobrowse solution for your business

What is cobrowsing?

Cobrowsing allows customers and advisors to collaboratively browse a website, web application, or mobile app, in real time. 

It's an effective way to resolve customer issues quickly and help prevent repeat problems.

A cobrowsing session provides a shared digital space where advisors can give customers hands-on assistance. 

This creates an interactive experience where you can show customers what to do rather than simply telling them.

By adding cobrowsing to your brand's website, you can take your customer service to the next level.

You'll be able to provide immersive digital engagement for your website visitors without interfering with their browsing.

Cobrowsing vs screensharing

Cobrowsing is sometimes confused with screensharing. Although there are similarities between them, they're not quite the same thing.

With cobrowsing, advisors can view, annotate, and co-navigate the customer's open browser tab.

They cannot see the customer's desktop or other tabs and customers cannot see the advisor's screen at all.

Screen sharing, by contrast, is two-way. Advisors can see the customer's screen view and also display their own screen.

But there are no additional collaborative elements to it, like with cobrowsing.

Screensharing is useful for situations when a full cobrowse session isn’t required.

Sometimes, a resolution just takes a quick look, without the need for shared navigation, annotation, or anything else.

How does cobrowse software work?

Cobrowsing solutions work by allowing your advisors to view exactly what the customer is seeing on their screen, directly through the web browser.

The advisor can then assist the customer by securely co-navigating the website with them as if they were with the customer in person.

They can also annotate the customer's view of the website to help to fill out forms, or even overlay documents.

Any on-screen changes that occur during the session are updated on both ends as they happen.

How can you use cobrowsing software?

Cobrowsing is used alongside other digital communication channels in the following ways:

• Phone calls - The advisor asks the customer to read out a PIN from the website. The advisor enters the PIN into their console to join the session. This PIN can be hidden behind a button in the company's website by using the cobrowsing API.
• Web calls - The agent offers cobrowsing to the customer during a web calling session, who accepts to begin cobrowsing
• Live chat - The agent offers cobrowsing to the customer during a live chat session, who accepts to begin cobrowsing.
• Video chat - The agent offers cobrowsing to the customer during a video chat session, who accepts to begin cobrowsing.

Although it's most commonly used in customer support scenarios, cobrowsing can also be used by sales teams and other business functions to improve the digital customer experience and conversion rates.

How does cobrowsing technology benefit customers?

Cobrowsing is a great tool for helping customers who are struggling with an online process.

We can all relate to the frustration of having to try and explain over the phone what we are seeing on a website. 

Having access to remote assistance from an advisor removes this frustration and makes for better problem-solving.

What cobrowsing helps to achieve is a virtual 'in-store' experience for the buyer that transforms the digital customer journey.

This promotes customer satisfaction and can transform what may have initially been a negative experience into a positive one.

How does cobrowsing technology benefit businesses?

Cobrowsing transforms your website into an interactive and intuitive tool for sales and customer service.

Being able to physically guide customers towards specific pages and products doesn't just increase conversion rates - it also improves average order values and increases upselling opportunities.

Additionally, a cobrowsing session can keep customers engaged with your website, speed up resolution times, and prevent cart abandonment.

As a result of these perks, cobrowsing contributes to an overall increase in growth and revenue.

Case in point, Aberdeen Group reports that brands using cobrowsing enjoy 10% year-on-year growth compared to 6.2% for those without it.

Choosing the best cobrowsing solution

It’s important that you implement the right cobrowsing solution for your business and customer-facing teams.

When reviewing the different options, keep the following factors in mind.

1. Security

Whatever your business or industry, it's vital that you choose a cobrowsing solution that fully protects your customers' privacy.

That's why Talkative's cobrowsing solution offers maximum security, with measures in place to protect against unauthorized access and data breaches.

With Talkative's cobrowsing, no plugins or downloads are required - the customer only has to grant permission before an advisor can cobrowse with them.

The customer maintains full control over their device while cobrowsing and can choose to end the session at any time.

The advisor can only view the customer's current website page - they cannot see the customer's desktop or any other tabs/windows they have open.

Plus, any sensitive or personal data on the page is automatically masked from the advisor's view.

By providing cobrowsing that is safe and secure, you'll give your customers peace of mind and strengthen trust in your brand.

2. Integration

The easiest way to implement cobrowsing is through integration with your existing systems.

Luckily, Talkative's innovative cobrowsing solution can be seamlessly integrated with a huge range of CRM and contact center systems, including Mitel and Salesforce.

It can also be deployed on your website in minutes with just three lines of code.

However you choose to integrate cobrowsing, the Talkative solution makes it easy - allowing you to enhance your customers' digital experience with minimum hassle.

3. Flexibility

Flexibility is a key factor when you're weighing up various cobrowsing options.

Ideally, you want user-friendly cobrowsing software that works on all different devices and browsers.

It's also useful to have a solution that can power screensharing as well as cobrowsing, for those situations where a full cobrowsing session isn't required or wanted by the customer.

Fortunately, the Talkative cobrowsing solution ticks all of these boxes. And, it comes with a highly customizable user interface to fit with your branding.

With Talkative's cobrowsing, you'll have all the flexibility you need to provide seamless customer experiences all while being on brand for every interaction.

The takeaway

There's no doubt that cobrowsing is an essential tool for digital customer service and online sales.

With cobrowsing, you can provide next-level customer support and immersive virtual experiences that'll set you apart from your competitors.

But if you want to truly reap the rewards of cobrowsing, you need the right platform to facilitate it. 

A platform that’s specifically designed to provide superior customer service and innovative digital experiences.

And that's where Talkative comes in.

In addition to cobrowsing, our solution provides a complete suite of engagement channels that'll empower your customer advisors to connect instantly, and effortlessly, with your digital customers.

What's more, you'll be able to manage cobrowsing sessions, and all other customer interactions, within a single plane of glass.

As a result, you and your customer-facing teams will be fully equipped to engage and convert more customers than ever before.

Want to learn more?

Book a demo today and discover how you can power cobrowsing success by getting Talkative.