4 Questions for Choosing the Right Visual Assistance Tool

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A shift toward virtual tools is underway in every industry.


Though there’s fear around what negative effects this could have on human capital, most companies are looking for artificial intelligence (AI) or augmented reality (AR) solutions to help them achieve a specific goal or drive process improvements. The solutions are more of an aid to existing processes rather than a replacement.


Despite what science fiction movies suggest, these tools are only as capable and trained as the people who use them.


There is no one-size-fits-all response to every company’s needs. If you’re looking to embrace virtual solutions for the first time or significantly scale up your company’s AI or AR operations, your objective should be to find a product with maximum customization. There are four core questions to ask.

What is your need?

Because you may not be using virtual solutions for everything in your business, it’s important to pinpoint the type and nature of the problem you’re trying to solve. 


Every business will have what’s called a pain point: a specific issue your customers regularly face, or as Merriam-Webster puts it, something that “frequently inconveniences or annoys customers.” If you already know your pain point, consider if and how you’re using data to track and measure it. 

Where is your starting point?

It’s important to choose a platform that can coexist with your current business processes and cause minimal disruption. The right solution will offer a variety of deployment options that meet your needs.


Do you want to use stand-alone visual assistance in an app or WebRTC setting? Do you currently have your own app that you use for customer or technician support? If so, you should choose a visual assistance platform can integrate into your app via SDK making it simple to start a video call with the click of a button.


If you have an existing field service management (FSM) or customer relationship management (CRM) tool, a visual assistance platform that integrates with these business tools will ensure a seamless workflow that makes adoption and scheduling easy for your employees.


Not only should your visual assistance platform integrate into these systems, it should collect and share data directly with the CRM/FSM. This will provide you with a single source of intelligence you can leverage to learn about your customers and their video usage with limitless possibilities.

Which key performance indicators (KPIs) are you looking to improve?

This partly ties into the first question and the reflection you’ll make on your pain points. You’ll also want to focus on enhancing the most important metrics that truly drive your business. Literally anything in your operations can be improved or built upon, but hitting specific targets results in the greatest success. As is often said, it’s important to focus on the critical few, not the trivial many.


Once you have established the most important KPIs needing improvement, you’ll be able to further narrow down the must-have features of your virtual assistance solution. Maybe it’s close integration with your CRM software, or a tool that works on your own devices and can be taken anywhere you need it to go, regardless of cellular connectivity or low bandwidth.

How much flexibility are you looking for?

In other words, should your virtual assistance solution respond to your needs, or your company to the capabilities (and limitations) of the tool you choose?


Our goal at SightCall is to help you digitally transform your service organizations. To do this, we aim to provide you with the ability to leverage our capabilities to fit your objectives. Customization works across all of our system integrations, from Salesforce to ServiceMax, ZenDesk to Guidewire, Symbility and more. And, if you’ve developed your own CRM software, our Custom Microservice architecture adds SightCall visual support to your existing system with the same ease.


SightCall’s Visual Support mobile application benefits from a high level of flexibility, adapted to respond to whichever settings you configure in the admin portal. To give one example, SightCall video sessions can be designed to launch with one-way video through the back camera of the user’s smartphone or tablet, or with a two-way video session using the front camera. During the session, users can switch to either option at any time.


If you already have existing mobile apps, SightCall is easily integrated into it – and with your company’s branding. Using the mobile software development kit (SDK), this involves putting a video assistance button within the app, thereby increasing its value proposition to your customers by being able to offer them this feature. 


The webRTC web console is just as readily customized. In addition to choosing your color, feature selections and logo, the page can also augment your existing web applications through integration into an iFrame. Top-notch portability is an added plus. Besides GDPR and CCPA compliance, and HIPAA compatibility for clients in the healthcare space, our web console works in eight languages, with the mobile visual support app working in 13.


More than any individual feature, the right visual assistance tool will place the greatest number of options right into your hands, for you to shape as you need them. If you want to learn more about what SightCall can do to augment your mission, vision or improvement drives, get in touch today for a free demo.

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