LogMeIn’s Rescue Lens Puts Tech Support Virtually In the Customer’s Home or Office

Today LogMeIn announced a new product, Rescue Lens, bringing the power of live interactive video to the support center. How many hours have been wasted talking to customers on the phone, trying to figure out what’s wrong, or walking them through a complex procedure they aren’t understanding? How many times has the call center agent said to themselves, “Gee, if only I could actually see what they are doing!”

This innovative product is an extension of LogMeIn Rescue’s remote control/remote support capabilities, which allow a support technican to “take control” of a piece of customer equipment to diagnose and fix errors. The problem is the agent can only see the screen, not the physical device. Rescue Lens goes a step further. The customer can download the Rescue Lens app on their mobile device, which allows the agent to see through the customer’s camera. Show the customer exactly where that semicolon is on the keyboard. Show them which button to push to reset the system. Walk them through replacing that toner cartridge quickly and easily. Inspect equipment to find that frayed power cord that is the real failing component–though the customer never noticed it.

Rescue Lens offers more than just a Facetime video. In addition to real-time video feeds, Rescue Lens offers:

• Smart Whiteboarding: Annotate on screen, on any device. This annotation stays in place, even if the device is moving.
• Adaptive Video Quality: Get the best picture and streaming quality, regardless of the strength of the internet connection.
• Auto Focus: Easily focus on exactly what needs helps.

With a fully burdened field service visit now costing more than $1000, not only will Rescue Lens dramatically cut core support metrics like talk time and resolve time, but it will also eliminate incredibly expensive field service visits.

To read more about LogMeIn Rescue Lens, here’s a link to today’s press release announcing the product:  https://investor.logmein.com/about-us/investors/news/press-release-details/2015/LogMeIn-Brings-Remote-Support-to-Virtually-Any-Product-With-Rescue-Lens/default.aspx

If you would like to see Rescue Lens in action, I’m doing a joint webinar with LogMeIn on April 9th which will include a demo. Here’s the link to register for the free webinar:  http://www.tsia.com/webinars/Revolutionizing_Support_Interactions_with_Video/

Hope to see you at the webinar, and as always, thanks for reading!

Join us live for TechFUTURES in Santa Clara!

Last fall at our Technology Services World Conference in Las Vegas, the question I asked everyone I talked to was, “What does the support desk of the future look like?” What I heard were lots of elements that are quickly evolving, and will definitely be different in 3 or 5 or 10 years. Social media and rising customer clout were voiced by many people. Impacts of mobility–on how we service customers and how customers consume our products–is another game changer. Remote workers becoming the predominate model for support was also on the minds of many people. And other people expressed concern that many of today’s challenges, such as knowledge management, will only get worse in the years to come.

Out of these dialogs grew a new TSIA event, TechFUTURES, which will open our Spring TSW conference on Monday at 11:00am at the Santa Clara Convention Center. TechFUTURES presents a day in the live of a support technician, and the day in the life of a technology customer, in the year 2018. We will look at how things will change in respect to four specific areas:

• Social media. How will social media shape customer conversations, especially as Generation Y becomes the primary demographic for employees and customers? After seven years of investment, TSIA members are finally starting to see ROI for social initiatives. How will customer communities, as well as current and future social media channels, allow service operations to accommodate ever-growing customer demand for support without infinite scaling of service employees?
• Knowledge and content management. With the amount of content exploding due to rising complexity and faster release cycles, how can future service employees navigate an impossibly large knowledge infrastructure? Tomorrow’s corporate content store will be even larger and more dispersed than today, creating challenges for service organizations to find what they need quickly and efficiently. How can knowledge tools become more intelligent, anticipating our needs and proactively serving content to employees and customers?
• Mobility. The mobile revolution has quickly moved customers from desktops and laptops to smartphones and tablets, with a myriad of smaller and smarter devices on the horizon. As customers become inseparable from technology, their expectations for service continue to rise. As more sophisticated mobile devices proliferate, and mobile applications become the predominate way customers access our technology, how do we effectively support this increasingly mobile customer?
• Customer experience. With the customer quickly gaining clout and visibility, how will the customer experience movement impact service operations in five to ten years? With the push toward managed services, how can next-generation remote and proactive support technology radically change the customer ownership experience? Where can we make investments today to better enable the ultimate customer experience in the future?

I will open TechFUTURES and then turn things over to our panelists, each an expert on one of these areas, who will present their vision of the future. Our experts are:

• Social Media: Joe Cothrel, Chief Community Officer, Lithium
• Knowledge and Content Management: Diane Berry, SVP, Marketing and Communications, Coveo
• Mobility: John Purcell, Director, Products, LogMeIn
• Customer Experience: Anthony (T.J.) Felice, President, ISOdx Solutions

After the 4 presentations, each audience member will vote live for what they think is the most provocative view of the future, using hand held response units provided in each seat. I will announce the winner during the awards ceremony at Service Revolutions on Wednesday at the close of the conference.

If you are interested in attending TechFUTURES, attendance is included with your TSW registration. If you aren’t attending TSW, TechFUTURES is open to the public and you can register and get an entry badge at the TSW registration area in the rotunda. I’m really looking forward to this new event, and hope to see you there! Thanks as always for reading!

TSW: The Shift To Mobile

Yesterday was Day 2 of Technology Services World at the Mirage in Las Vegas, and I hosted a workout session on mobile applications that was a lot of fun. Due to a speaker cancellation  I had to pull together a panel at the very last minute (last Friday!), but the results were terrific. The focus of the session was creating mobile versions of applications for customers and employees. I’m starting to get more questions from members, so wanted to pull together some experts to share their experiences and answer questions from the audience.

My panelists were:

• Karin Ondricek, Director, Product Marketing, Lithium Technologies, Inc. Lithium, the leading provider of community and social solutions, released mobile applications to allow both customers and employees to interact with the community any time, any place, boosting the collaboration potential.
• Bill Platt, SVP Operations, Engine Yard. A TSIA member, Engine Yard provides a mobile development platform, so Bill had lots of technical information on the intricacies of developing mobile tools, and the gotchas most companies encounter when they try to build it themselves.
• Don Brass, Sr. Product MarketingManager, LogMeIn. TSIA members primarily know LogMeIn as a remote control and desktop sharing solution, but they also have a whole line of mobile products for consumers and the enterprise. I use LogMeIn on my iPad to access my home computer, so I’ve stopped bringing my laptop on some trips. They also offer a Rescue product allowing you to remotely control mobile devices–a huge benefit for supporting mobile customers, or employees.

We kicked off the discussion with the top mobile application FAQs I’ve received from TSIA members:

• Who should build it? Internal development or a specialist firm? What I learned yesterday is that you may want to own the UI and feature set, but few companies are able to build the back end part of the application. The hard part is making sure the data and processing is happening on your server–not the mobile device–and still offer fast performance.
• What platforms should we cover? This is a hard one for many companies, because you want to cover as many devices as possible to encourage adoption, but the droid world remains unstable, with 50+ OS versions to deal with, and lots of device specific requirements. The panel’s advice was to survey customers to find the most popular devices and prioritize your development list.
• How much functionality is enough? Recreate everything or basic flows? Everyone seemed to agree that going with minimal functionality in the first version makes sense, so you can get your feet wet in a small pond before jumping in the ocean. But again, consider involving customers to make sure some key feature isn’t left out, dissuading adoption.
• How much support traffic is generated for mobile application help/support? Is self-service enough, or is assisted support required? None of the panelists have found that support volume increases measurably with the introduction of a mobile app, perhaps because the primary demographic for mobile users are also more prone to try self-service or peer support, not assisted support.

I’d like to thank the panelists for stepping in at the last minute and doing such a great job, and I’d also like to thank the audience for their interest and all the great questions and comments.

And as always, thanks for reading!

Consona Starts Consolidation Between CRM and Remote Support with SupportSoft Asset Purchase

Over the last 2 years I have made recommendations to many multi-channel service vendors that they consider partnering or acquiring some remote support technology.  To me, it makes perfect sense.  Today’s remote support tools allow access to a wide array of operating systems and devices, including Mac, Linux, unattended servers (creating a market for B2B remote support), mobile devices, the list goes on and on.  And, as the home office and home theatre begin merging, remote support tools will be able to diagnose and resolve all sorts of consumer issues.

So I was thrilled to see the announcment on Monday that Consona had acquired the remote support software assets from SupportSoft.  SupportSoft was an early leader in remote support, with innovative capabilities far beyond remote control:  diagnostics, self-healing scripts, etc.  In fact, I did a case study on SupportSoft’s success at BellSouth back in 2002.  In the last couple of years, SupportSoft reinvented itself as Support.com, a 3rd party support desk for consumers and SMBs, and no longer wanted to be in the enterprise software business.

Remote support technology is primarily used by the communications, consumer hardware and software, and IT support industries.  But, as platforms expand and new device and OS support is added, the business case for remote support expands.  As an example, I read last week that another remote support vendor, LogMeIn, had signed a deal with Ford to include LogMeIn’s remote access feature in a new dashboard control allowing owners of Ford F-150, Super Duty, E-Series and Transit Connect trucks and vans to access applications and files on any interent connected computer. This technology will soon be a basic part of our daily lives.

I’ve done a lot of webcasts about remote support, and one thing I’ve found is that the ROI for remote support is much higher when the tool is deeply integrated with the support architecture.  Here’s a graphic from one of those webcasts: