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April 29, 2022
Remote support tools are the backbone of support operations, indispensable for diagnosing, troubleshooting, and resolving a customer’s technical issues. These important tools have evolved to support a growing array of device types, operating systems, and use cases.
As the world returns to some sense of normalcy, many call centers are re-evaluating their existing technology portfolio to determine whether it safeguards end users and empowers support agents, allowing them to overcome a new set of challenges created by flexible work and digital habits, while delivering an exceptional customer experience (CX). In a recent webinar, Rescue’s Marie Ruzzo, Product Marketing Director, and Chris Handley, Senior Product Manager, discussed pandemic-driven trends that will impact long-term remote support strategies.
Remote support has become, well, even more remote. There's been a 62% increase in tech support requests handled remotely compared to two years ago, according to a study conducted by IDG on behalf of Rescue. Another big change is how technicians are handling these requests – you guessed it, remotely. There's been an increased use of collaboration tools by agents to resolve support issues. A majority of agents, 56% according to the IDG survey, are relying on collaboration tools today to get work done.
Besides the increase of "remote" in remote support, other (related) trends are shaping the future of support:
It's no secret that cybercriminals are looking to take advantage of remote practices. The vast majority of data breaches, a staggering 85%, involve some kind of human element, whether a phishing scam, stolen credentials, or human error.
"The sophistication of these cybercriminals is only growing and exposes a significant threat that remote support tools need to protect against, especially in remote and hybrid work environments."
– Marie Ruzzo, Product Marketing Director
With fewer parts or wholesale replacements available for consumers, troubleshooting and break/fix scenarios are becoming the most viable solution. That’s adding to the day-to-day work of customer support technicians.
During the pandemic, customers have adopted digital-first habits and expectations they're unlikely to give up. In a landscape of increasing customer expectations, the remote support experience needs to be frictionless.
The IDG data shows that call center attrition has jumped as high as 80% since the pandemic. As employee churn continues, call centers need to find effective and efficient ways to deliver a great technician and customer experience.
In a rapidly changing landscape for remote support, you need to continually adapt. Are your remote support tools up to the challenge? Do they offer you the flexibility, security, dependability, and ease of use that you need today and tomorrow?
Here are five key things to look for:
“Today’s customers expect to get everything they want digitally, and that means accessing content and services on a multitude of devices and platforms,” says Handley. Rescue arms your technicians with tools that give them the ability to troubleshoot and resolve issues quickly no matter what device their customers need help with, even physical equipment.
With a product like Rescue Lens, for example, your agent can actually see the physical device being supported. “The agent and the customer can resolve issues faster, so you're saving money on truck rolls and have fewer returns,” says Handley. The ability to gain remote access and control of supported devices is powerful for CX. Agents can remote in and move quickly from diagnosis to resolution.
Secure connections are the top priority for customer support leaders as they seek to deliver on their CX and faster resolution goals, according to the IDG survey. “Security takes many forms,” says Handley, “including protection for your end users and your agents. There's a trust element too, especially around data privacy.”
We've all heard about malicious actors copying websites and end users being tricked into believing they’re in the right place for support. Rescue offers various security and validation measures to keep out phishers and scammers.
“Rescue’s data protection creates customer comfort and trust. We offer 256-bit encryption, as well as single sign-on and multi-factor authentication.”
– Chris Handley, Senior Product Manager
Rescue’s collaboration tools enable that to happen remotely. It's as simple as pressing a button to bring in additional experts/agents into an active session. You can bring up to five agents into a session and even record the session, so admins can go back and identify agent skills/knowledge gaps that need closing.
With today’s more distributed support teams, it’s important that admins have the tools they need, like granular permissions, agent insights, and detailed reports, to manage remote techs more efficiently and effectively.
“Rescue’s granular permission controls are so important, especially for larger enterprises seeking to ensure agents have access to only what they need,” says Ruzzo. Rescue also gives management insight into agent performance, letting admins see exactly what the users are doing. The Rescue command center gives admins a complete breakdown of their support center. Run reports to look at metrics for your average handle time and monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) in real time to ensure that the operation is running smoothly.
It’s important to go beyond the functionality of the product, because the relationship with the provider matters too. You need a remote support partner who is reliable, trustworthy, and easy to do business with. There are plenty of third-party review sites with unfiltered, unbiased evaluations, and be sure to ask any potential vendor for references.
“We're really proud that Rescue has been voted the “best relationship” and “best feature set” in the remote desktop software category by Trust Radius. We value our customer relationships and work really hard on building a great product.”
– Marie Ruzzo, Product Marketing Director
For more insights from the research, trends that impact how remote support is delivered today, and ways Rescue rises to the challenge of simplifying and securing remote support, watch the full webinar recording.
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