a word on cobrowse (and a hack)

Submitted by Julie on 7 July 2010 - 7:15am
in

Cobrowse is a feature of our chat software that allows a librarian and customer to share a page and view what the other person is viewing. When a customer clicks on a link on a site, the librarian goes there too and vise versa. This feature was particularly handy when navigating databases with customers.

Unfortunately, due to the vast number of varying broswers, OSs, proxy's, firewalls, etc, cobrowse- for all intents and purposes- doesn't work. It even creates a negative experience for customers when we try to use it and it fails or crashes. We even stopped teaching it in New Staff Training classes. The sticky point is the fact that no download is required to use our chat software (on either the customer or the librarian end). If we had a software that required a download, we might be able to have a feature like cobrowse again. However, if we had a software that needed to be downloaded, our stats might drop as well.

QuestionPoint had cobrowse on their list of things to figure out but in 2008 took it off the list when the members of the Advisory Board (or Users Council) said they rather QP put their energies into other upgrades- like typeback and a more intuitive interface. We at AskUsNow! supported that decision.

cobrowse hacks

Aside from cobrowse allowing people to follow along with each other on sites as they were clicking though, one of the features it had was a pointer- a red dot- that helped you show  someone something specific on a page. We've got some hacks for that:

awesomehighlighter.com is a free web-based tool that allows you to mark up a page with notes and highlights and send the permalink to the customer. Here's one i did with the askusnow.info page: http://awurl.com/mAmsCItbJ. You can use awesomehighlighter in other ways too- by marking up your database list, you've got a super simple subject guide that you can link on your website!

citebite.com is similar, but less awesome. ;-)

Jing is a free download that allows you to capture video and photo from your screen. You can create on-the-fly tutorials on using a database that might be harder to explain in chat ("okay now you see the monkey halfway down the page? click there... then go to the 2nd paragraph..." etc...). The product of your video or photo capture can be a downloaded file or a URL you can send directly to the customer.