Cobrowsing Benefits: 5 Key Use Cases

As online consumer journeys have become increasingly prevalent, so too has the importance of digital customer support tools.

Although modern contact channels like live chat and virtual assistants are great for communicating with customers, they're not always enough to resolve specific and complex issues.

And that's where cobrowsing technology can be a great solution.

‍Cobrowsing is a powerful tool for customer service and sales.

It enables your business to provide a shared digital space where your customers and advisors can collaborate in real time.

But how exactly can cobrowsing benefit businesses? And what are they potential use cases for this tool?

In this article, we'll answer these questions and more. We'll cover:

• What is cobrowsing?
• Cobrowsing for sales
• Cobrowsing for support

What is cobrowsing?

Cobrowsing software allows agents and customers to browse a website, web application or mobile app together in real time. 

It's most commonly used for customer support, but can also be used by sales teams to improve online conversions and the digital customer experience.

Cobrowsing solutions are commonly used alongside live chat or video chat.

These sessions allow your agents to see an accurate visual representation of the customer's view of the website.

The advisor can then assist the customer by securely co-navigating the website.

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

Cobrowsing for sales

When used in a sales environment, cobrowsing turns your business website from a static web-based brochure into an interactive sales tool.

With cobrowsing, your sales team can wield your website in the same way a shop assistant can give advice and physically show customers relevant items.

Increase upselling

If your website is geared towards selling a product or service, it should be filled with all the information your customer needs to make a decision.

However, we live in an imperfect world, so your customer may need some guidance to overcome a paradox of choice.

As the old sales saying goes, "Show, don't tell." Cobrowsing lets you escalate a chat or voice based interaction (the 'Telling') into one where the customer can see and interact with what your representative is 'Showing' them.

Sales advisors can proactively display alternative products, terms and conditions, and other added extras that the customer may not have seen or considered before.

Travel agencies can directly navigate with the customer to the appropriate holiday for them.

Retailers can show and suggest products that are better suited to what the customer is looking for.

This results in increased conversions, upsells and revenue.

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

Shortening the sales cycle

It's easy for customers to switch from your website to a competitor's, in the search for the best deal, price, service, or solution to their needs.

A modern customer journey typically involves multiple digital touchpoints on multiple different communication channels.

Three of the most popular are websites, web chat, and telephone.

Cobrowsing unites these otherwise-disparate channels into one.

Sales teams can answer questions more intelligently, direct customers to the right information, and understand the context of their enquiry.

In essence, cobrowsing keeps the customer within your website until they finish their journey.

A great example of this is comparison websites.

If a customer is comparing quotes when they call in to speak to an advisor, they are at an advanced stage of their buying journey.

Cobrowsing assists the advisor to assist the customer, by providing information parity between both parties.

Quotes that have been presented to the customer on the website are instantly accessible by the advisor, who can assist and close accordingly.

This is in stark contrast to the alternative without cobrowsing, where advisors have to follow a drawn out process to even ascertain what the customer is looking at.

Reducing drop-off

Website drop-off is a perennial and ever-evolving problem for websites.

During inbound sales interactions, cobrowsing allows you to directly retain customers on your digital real estate.

In addition to in-the-moment customer wins, an interesting implication of cobrowsing is its ability to provide historical data to marketing teams, via integration with website analytics tools.

With a plethora of popular customer journey mapping tools, the understanding of online customer journeys is a real pain point for website owners.

Cobrowsing gives you that extra insight into your customer journey, by letting you understand the digital paths of customers who are directly interacting with your business.

Cobrowsing for customer support

When used in a support environment, cobrowsing leverages your brand's website, allowing advisors to see, understand and resolve issues in real time.

With cobrowsing, your customer service teams can provide in-depth, practical support as if they were with the customer in person.

Reducing Call Times

With 90% of customer conversations starting on an business' website, a large part of their customer journey context is wrapped up on their browsing session.

The issue for support teams is that this context is lost when customers call in.

Web calling and web chat allows the pass through of some customer journey data.

However, the situation is still dire for incoming telephone calls.

Cobrowsing allows phone advisors to see exactly what the customer is looking at, usually by asking them to read out a 6 digit PIN.

The customer doesn't have to explain over the phone what their issue is, and the advisor doesn't have to explain the possible fix.

Instead, they can view the customer's issue and simply perform the fix themselves, saving time and money.

In fact, studies show that cobrowsing results in a 10% improvement in agent utilisation costs - all while remaining compliant and secure.

For complex and form-heavy websites in particular, cobrowsing increases first contact resolution by giving advisors the information they need to understand the customer's issue.

Improving the customer experience

If you've read this far, we don't need to tell you how important the customer experience is.

The more complicated issue is, of course, how to actually improve the customer experience.

95% of customers say they would prefer slower support if it meant the quality of help was higher.

That's why cobrowsing is the ultimate tool to provide high-quality, relevant customer support in the place they are most likely to need it: your website.

Aberdeen Group shows that cobrowsing is helping companies accomplish far greater annual improvements to customer satisfaction (5.1% compared to 1.4%), achieved by minimizing customer effort.

Of course, cobrowsing is not the silver bullet to end all customer frustration.

But it certainly goes a long way to empowering your agents to minimise customer friction in an age when your website is the most common place for customers to interact with your business.

Being able to view customer journey context helps advisors to empathise and build rapport, especially during longer calls.

With cobrowsing, you can now really see what the customer means and use this information to optimize the customer experience.

The takeaway

It’s clear that cobrowsing can be a valuable tool, both for sales and customer service.

With cobrowsing, you can elevate the customer experience, increase conversions and gain a deeper insight into the digital journey.

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 personalized experiences.

And that's where Talkative comes in.

Our solution provides a complete suite of engagement channels that'll empower you to connect instantly, and effortlessly, with your digital customers.

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 advisors will be fully equipped to engage and convert more customers than ever before.

Want to see for yourself? Book a demo with Talkative and start getting the most out of cobrowsing today.