When it comes to delivering high quality, personalized remote customer service and support, two connected expectations reign supreme: customer experience (CX) and data security. Nothing ruins a customer support interaction faster than problems around security and data privacy. “I love it when I seek out customer service and end up compromising my personal data,” said no customer ever.

Of course, customer-facing agents want to deliver both a seamless and secure experience. With security and CX as the focus, this blog post will explain the differences between three remote support tools that enable sharing a screen with another computer: co-browsing, screen sharing, and remote desktop access. 

Evaluating 3 Options for Getting on the Same Page

In a customer service scenario, tools should enable an agent to gain access to a customer’s screen in order to provide them with a guided digital experience. The idea is to eliminate the CX frustrations caused by a lengthy, awkward back-and-forth dialogue between agent and customer: "Click on the icon on the bottom right of your screen." "I don't see that. Do you mean the green button?" Around and around we go.

A big part of delivering a better experience is having the agent see what the customer sees while masking sensitive customer data. Without that key capability, when a customer goes to share a screen with another computer, anxiety and security risks can ensue.

Let’s look at each option separately:

1. Remote desktop

Remote desktop allows an agent to establish a secure remote connection to access a customer's computer and control it as if they were sitting right in front of it. That’s great for diagnosis and resolution.

But remote desktop security has its drawbacks: everything on the customer’s computer is accessible to the agent. This means that an agent can see when a customer enters their credit card or banking information, and in the case of malicious actors, can even dig around in files behind the scenes to nab personal data. That “all-inclusive” access can impact the CX by making customers feel uncomfortable about their privacy – and these remote desktop security risks can put company liability at risk.

2. Screen share

Screen share technology used by online meeting tools, such as Zoom, are sometimes used to facilitate customer service conversations. The agent can screen share with the customer, just like they would with internal colleagues for collaboration, but the agent and customer cannot both have mouse control at the same time and screen sharing security has some big risks that impact CX. For instance, whatever is on the customer’s screen is in full view of the agent, including sensitive, private information like credit card numbers, Social Security numbers, and more.

If those screen sharing security concerns weren’t enough, the screen share option provides no auditing features for admins, because online meeting tools were never designed to be used for remote support. When you add the high risk of liability involving sensitive customer data to the lack of an audit trail, you could end up playing with fire regarding compliance/legal requirements.

3. Co-browsing

Co-browsing software allows any customer-facing agent (for service/support, onboarding, and conversion) to guide a customer one-on-one through any digital experience. Co-browsing even offers the ability to add video or voice to the conversation without jumping channels, enabling agents to provide the high level of service and security customers expect in an increasingly digital world.

Co-browsing security is the best of all three of these options for customer service and support. It offers both an audit trail for admins and the capacity to mask sensitive customer data from view. Plus agent and customer each have a labeled cursor to co-navigate the screen together without the hassle of changing presenter roles.

Rescue Live Guide: The Best, Most Secure, and Flexible Option of All

Where the other options fall short, co-browsing with Rescue Live Guide excels by providing co-browsing customers can trust, protecting sensitive customer information by connecting to an isolated browser in the cloud instead of the user’s device. With its unique and purpose-built combination of tools, Live Guide can be deployed quickly (without downloads or web resources) while offering secure remote connection and personalization and cross-domain capabilities.

Bottom line: Live Guide is purpose-built to help any customer-facing agent in any department enhance the customer experience while meeting or exceeding co-browsing security needs. It can help enhance your CX by:

• Ensuring customer success with onboarding and training
• Reducing drop-offs in form conversions
• Boosting customer

To learn even more about how Live Guide can be leveraged across your organization, download our Live Guide Use Case eBook.

Want to improve your CX and security with co-browsing? Make sure you’re using the most immediate, flexible, and secure solution available. See Live Guide in action by scheduling a personalized demo today.