What is Cobrowsing? and how does it work?

In this digital world, real-time digital support is essential for businesses nowadays. Customers want quick resolutions to their queries, and businesses need to meet those requirements to stay on top of their game — especially for banks, insurance agencies, and all those businesses where documentation plays an important role.

With the increased needs, there has also been a rise in collaborative tools — tools that help businesses collaborate with their customers easily. One such tool is co-browsing. In this post, we will talk about what co-browsing is, how it works, how it can benefit businesses in collaborating with their customers and more.

What is Cobrowsing?

Cobrowsing is a technology that lets two or more people collaborate in real-time over the same screen and view or interact through the same screen. It can be a website, document, or any screen. It can also be called collaborative browsing. Contact center agents can solve customer queries real-time through cobrowsing. It enables a more personalized and efficient experience for the customer. It is a crucial feature for customer support service.

Cobrowsing can be used to fill out a forms, troubleshoot issues that the user might be facing, or, in any case, where the user needs assistance from human agents.

According to Forrester, companies that provide superior customer experience outperform by 80%

History of Cobrowsing and its evolution

Cobrowsing is an evolved version of screen sharing. In the early 2000s, customers relied heavily on calls and emails for their queries, which often led to errors and delayed resolutions. As technology evolved, screen sharing tools started gaining traction and helped support teams resolve queries faster.

However, screen sharing tools required software to be installed on the system, and there were also privacy concerns. These tools enabled screen sharing, but only one user could navigate the screen while others just watched—making it difficult to collaborate on the same screen.

But with the latest advancement of cobrowsing, users no longer need to install additional tools, and all participants in the session can navigate and collaborate in real time.

Why should support agents use Co Browsing?

Co-Browsing help agents understand customer queries faster and help resolve them quickly. There might be scenarios where it becomes difficult for agents to understand customer issues and thereby makes it difficult to solve over a chat or call. But with a cobrowsing session agents can navigate through customer screens and understand the issue better, helping them solve faster.

During a collaborative session, agents can see precisely where the user needs assistance. They can highlight, comment, and even take actions on the user's screen, guiding them through the screen. Regarding permissions, users or customers have control over what screen is visible and what permissions are granted to the agent. Also, critical details such as card details, contact info, etc., are masked.

How does Co Browsing work?

Co-Browsing works by syncing the DOM between two or more users’ browsers.

• It transmits real-time changes in website structure.
• Without losing control it enables multiple users to navigate and collaborate through interactive session.
• It ensures privacy and security as sensitive information like passwords, payment details can be masked.
• DOM-level synchronization allows smoother, faster and safer collaborative experience than traditional screen sharing
  

Technology that powers cobrowsing

JavaScript: Used to track and replicate user interactions like clicks, scrolls, inputs, and navigation. It captures user behavior on the web page and mirrors it in real time.

WebRTC (for audio/video integration): Though cobrowsing itself doesn't require WebRTC, it’s often used alongside it to support real-time communication, enabling voice and video calls during cobrowsing sessions.

WebSockets or Server-Sent Events: These technologies enable low-latency, two-way communication between browsers and servers. This ensures real-time sync without noticeable delays.

Backend Server: Stores session data temporarily and handles synchronization logic, ensuring that all changes are accurately mirrored across user sessions.

Together, these technologies ensure that cobrowsing is lightweight, secure, and doesn’t require any external software or plugin installations.

Here are the steps to a Co-Browsing Session

Cobrowsing or collaborative browsing enables agents to join users for their browsing support.It can be a real-time joint session for one or more users.

• During a live chat or a call, if the user needs assistance in real-time, the agent can take the user's consent and request a collaborative session.

• The user must accept the request and select the screen or windows that will be visible to agents.

• Once accepted, agent can browse user screen and can assist user with the queries or issues. During the session, agents can chat, highlight, comment and can also start a video/audio call with the user.

• During the session, the conversations can be recorded and kept track of, including audio and video calls. The agent or user can also invite others to join the collaborative session.

Key Features of Co-Browsing

• View-only or interactive
  Co-browsing can be configured in both the ways, one which allow agents to just view user screen and with other agents can interact with user screen actively. With interactive mode agents can click, scroll and control user screen in real-time, making the support easier and faster.
• Masking Sensitive Data (Passwords, Card Numbers)
  Co-Browsing tools automatically mask sensitive information like passwords or credit card details. This means agents won't see confidential data during a session.
• Click, Scroll, and Annotate
  Agents can click through menus, scroll pages, and even draw or highlight elements directly on the customer’s screen. Cobrowse make it easy to guide users visually and resolve issues.
• Integrated Chat/Voice/Video
  Cobrowsing sessions are integrated with chat/voice or video calls that let agents and customers communicate while they collaborate on the same screen. Multi-modal support enhances clarity and personalization.
• No Download or Installation
  One of the biggest benefits—no software installation required. Customers can start a co-browsing session directly from a website, making it quick, seamless, and accessible to anyone, even with low technical knowledge.

Data privacy and security during a collaborative session

Customer data privacy and security are of utmost importance when browsing or controlling user screens. Ensuring customer security becomes crucial to building strong relationships with your customers.
Here are a few of the points which need to be ensured for any collaboration solution

• The user needs to grant permission before starting a cobrowse session. A few of the solutions also require OTP to grant access.
• The Agent can only view the window the user allows and cannot view any other windows/screens.
• Data masking is inevitable, user’s confidential information Such as payment information, address, CVV, login details etc. should not be visible to agents.
• Limited controls to agents, depending upon the permission granted agents cannot click on buttons.
• Users need not required to download any software or plugins for a collaborative session.
• Agents should be able to highlight and comment on users screen for better understanding.
• Agents should be able to get on an audio/video call during the session and can record the session.

Uses and Benefits of Co Browsing

Co-browsing enables visual customer engagement that gives your business a competitive advantage by personalizing customer experience.
Here are some of the use cases where cobrowsing can be helpful.

• Filling complex forms & documentation.
• Troubleshooting payment errors and completing successful payments.
• Resolving account-related queries.
• Understanding products & services and selecting the appropriate one.
• Searching from reference materials & documentation.
• Scenarios where navigation is complex.

Let's discuss how co-browsing is beneficial for establishing strong relationships with your customers.

INSTANT QUERY RESOLUTION:

With co-browsing solution, your customers need not wait over call or chat. Agents can quickly identify the issue and fix it for customers. This saves time for users and agents to explain over call or chat.

REAL-TIME ASSISTANCE:

Co-browsing enables real-time assistance to your customers. They don't have to wait for the agent to come up with a solution, implement it, and go back and forth.

INCREASE FIRST CONTACT RESOLUTION (FCR) RATES:

With co-browsing, agents can solve most issues at first contact. Even if it is a complex issue, co-browsing will reduce the number of contacts.

PERSONALIZED SUPPORT:

Co-browsing helps establish the human touch and provides personalized service, which leads to happy customers and high CSAT scores.

Improved customer experience

Customer experience has always been at the center of businesses. With time, its significance continued to rise. Today, thanks to cutthroat competition among companies in the market, it has become hard to determine which is a better product or service. In such a scenario, customers make buying decisions based on customer experience.

Given the high expectations of today's customers, businesses always keep an eye out for new ways to innovate their customer experience. Since Co browsing helps improve customer experience by providing support in real-time, it becomes important for businesses to incorporate Cobrowsing for their customer support.

Cobrowsing Vs Screenshare

With the specified differences it is clear that collaborative browsing is flexible and secure as compared to screen sharing.

Why Co Browsing should be a must-have feature for contact centers?

Cobrowsing technology enables contact center agents to remotely connect and resolve issues of the users in real-time.

For an agent, there is always a situation where a user is stuck at a point and is not able to follow the agent’s instructions properly. Ever yday agents struggle with such kinds of situations, and for such situations, collaborative browsing is the only option. Agents can connect immediately and resolve the issue.

Contact centers where the time of their agents is crucial to increase FCR rates. Collaborative browsing is a boon.

It not only saves time but also improves customer experience. Hence it should be a must-have feature for contact centers. To name a few:

Connect Faster

With live chat, you can connect with your customers right away, cutting out those annoying wait times. Offering immediate assistance helps you quickly answer questions and solve issues, making your customers happier.

Easy notifications and management

You’ll get real-time alerts when someone starts a live chat, allowing you to jump in and help right away. You can see who are online in the ‘Online Visitors’ tab & access chat history for reference.

Always-on customer support

Your support doesn’t have to stop when you do. With live chat, your customers can reach out at any time, day or night. Making constant availability a priority leads to happier customers who feel cared for.

Improved sales

Use live chat to address potential concerns and answer questions guiding customers toward making a purchase. Engaging with visitor can help reduce cart abandonment and boost sale.

Efficient lead capture

Start conversations with your website visitors through live chat. This lets you offer help and gather important information that can be used to turn leads into customers.

Simplified onboarding

Make onboarding easy with live chat support. You can help new customers navigate the process, answer their questions, and assist with any challenges they face.

Smooth KYC processes

Improve security and compliance with real-time help for KYC processes. Your agents can assist customers in completing their KYC quickly and smoothly, ensuring a hassle free experience.

Enhanced support experience

Take your customer support to the next level with live chat. Your team can respond quickly to inquiries, troubleshoot issues, and offer personalized help creating a friendly and efficient support atmosphere.

Better member assistance

Support your members effortlessly with live chat assistance. Whether it’s account management or answering membership questions your team can provide top-notch service that keeps members satisfied and loyal.

Floatbot’s Live chat with Co-Browsing

Floatbot cobrowsing is available with Floatbot live agent chat. Floatbot allows smooth collaborative sessions with the users. It supports advanced features like

• Freehand highlighter.
• Chat during a co-browse session.
• Audio video call during co-browse session.
• Co-browse session recordings.
• Add others to the collaborative session.
• Users can upload documents during the session.

Flotbot's Co-Browsing is smooth and hassle-free, which comes in handy for the agents when handling complex user queries.

TO SUM UP

Co-browsing (collaborative browsing) helps businesses take their customer support to the next level - it leads to quick resolution of customer issues, higher FCR (first contact resolution) rates, happy customers, and higher CSAT and NPS scores. It is a must-have technology for contact centers.

Sign up now and give it a try! For any questions or queries, feel free to write us at connect@floatbot.ai