Your router/modem goes down while watching your favourite show on your iPad or Smart TV. Lights on it are blinking away even after your have power cycled it. At least you have 4G/LTE on your phone, you frantically google your service provider’s support number and dial.
If you are lucky, within 5 minutes, you connect to a Level 1 rep who starts out asking you everything from you name to your last 4 of your social. You take a deep breath, pray there is a quick fix and get through the security questions with all the patience. You can muster thinking “Why cannot the technical support already know from my phone number everything about me including my router’s make and model. What the heck is wrong with it!” Instead, he says how can I help you today and you roll your eyes and start from the beginning trying to explain which lights are flashing. He tries to picture the problem without a live video chat and with no eyes on the router. He continues troubleshooting being blind, often asking you “What do you see now?” If you are unlucky enough to get escalated to an L3 technical support, you might have to go through all again! Sounds familiar?
Imagine the Level 1 technical support at the touch of a button on your phone is directly looking at your router via live video chat and knows exactly what’s happening. He can SEE the equipment and even see if you are following his instructions over live video chat. Think of how faster it would be to get you back to watching your show!
If you were a technician already at the customer site and you got stuck, imagine getting your favorite L3 technical support on a video call walking you through in a matter of minutes avoiding costly mistakes, reschedules and re-dos.
The 18B dollar field service management industry is poised to benefit with live interactive video chat and customer service systems that for the first time capture in real time the visually rich details about the job. Travel time can be cut and fewer L3 techs can be hired at HQ helping out L1 techs in the field. L1 techs can quickly assess customer issues and be better prepared and even avoid a trip. At a high level there are two primary uses cases:
Consumer supporting live video chat & technical support & service where call centers and L1 techs can quickly interact with the equipment end user to get a quick visual on the problem.
In house supporting live video chat & technical support & service where OEMs, vendors, resellers, system integrators and distributors who support any equipment through any army of field techs collaborate via video from the field.
Yes, we are talking about the advent of cloud-based solutions that enables interactive and predictive video chat customer service and support solutions for the 20 million people globally that install, maintain, and repair machines, appliances, scientific instruments, automobiles and heavy equipment. The timing is perfect given HD video capable phones and bandwidth.
These solutions are going to be integrated with Field Service Automation Software like ServiceMax (which take care of mobile scheduling, dispatching, invoicing and billing) and CRMs like Salesforce, Zen desk, Fresh desk. Industrial Augmented Reality and hands free enabling smart glass solutions will emerge as powerful complementary tools.