As companies and their employees become increasingly spread out due to mobile and remote technologies, the process of collaboration has been stretched a little thin. While IP-based technologies make it easy to talk and share information wirelessly from just about anywhere, there is still something lost when you’re not sitting in the same room with a coworker, hashing out details and looking at papers together. This is where co-browsing technology steps in to fill the gap.
With co-browsing, users can see the screens of fellow collaborators, customers and so forth, making it easy to pinpoint problems or make sure you’re both looking at and talking about the same visual. Bud Albers, who formerly led Walt Disney (News - Alert) Co.’s corporate, connected and advanced technologies team as a chief technology officer, is a strong believer in the power of co-browsing to collaborate and improve communications. As such, he is now the chief executive officer of a seven-employee co-browsing startup called Click With Me Now.
Click With Me Now recently turned heads when it raked in $2.25 million in funding from undisclosed angel investors. And before that the startup raised $50,000 through the Capital Innovators accelerator in St. Louis, MO. Click With Me Now’s technology allows users to share their online experience in real time with customer service agents, sales and tech support reps, in addition to family, friends and colleagues.
While existing screen-sharing products are often external solutions, Click With Me Now is designed to fit inside of an application, and is complementary to websites built with HTML5 or RTC. Those with privacy concerns will be happy to learn that Click With Me Now will only share the browser window with other users—not the entire desktop or hard drive. Click With Me Now is an app solution that is free for end-users, and companies that want to integrate it into their sites can subscribe to the startup’s software-as-a-service plan. A basic plan allows as many as 1,000 concurrent sessions to run at a time.
The real-time collaborative nature of the app helps users not only understand but also more quickly resolve their problems. According to Albers, his company’s solution will lead to faster resolutions than the traditional call center, or through the use of instant messenger chat apps that are common on e-commerce sites today.
Click With Me Now also delivers analytics based on problem areas or points of interest identified by customers, either through comments or by circling and pointing to details on shared browser screens during sessions. These analytics can help teams improve their customers’ service and gain a deeper understanding of their customers.
The company has been focused primarily on the healthcare industry, and actually tested its technology with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Rhode Island as a pilot customer before this latest round of funding. Moving forward, Albers hopes to expand the company’s reach to work with financial services firms, e-commerce retailers, travel businesses and more.
Edited by Rory J. Thompson