Jim Darragh, CEO at Totalmobile, explains the importance of remote support.
Since the start of the pandemic almost a year ago, any technology that helps to limit face-to-face contact has become a priority. Remote support comes in a variety of forms but, overall, the ability to provide assistance to colleagues or customers from a distance is vital to enable services to continue. Smart collaboration technology is helping many businesses to provide a better experience for their customers – without always being there in person.
Video-based remote assistance is a rapidly advancing technology that is enabling workers in a variety of professions to carry out their jobs with less risk to themselves and their customers, including MSPs that are responsible for physical services, such as energy and water provision. From smart irrigation monitoring and scheduling to smart grid deployments, utilities companies are increasingly relying on MSPs to help provide a high-quality service to their customers.
To get the best understanding of how to help manage these services, MSPs may have traditionally visited sites in-person to understand more about the infrastructures in place. Or, for example, if a problem occurs with a smart irrigation system, the MSP may be involved in helping to resolve this, alongside staff on-site. Now, with increased efforts to reduce the number of people on-site, video-based remote assistance can help to connect MSPs and their customers remotely, particularly at short notice. If the assistance required is fairly straightforward, a customer can use an application that includes video to send a livestream to a support assistant who can provide the customer with any help or advice that they may need quickly and efficiently.
This technology can also play a part if an employee from an MSP does need to attend a site in-person. One person can go and, if required, connect to more experienced colleagues using video to show them the situation they’re faced with. They can get advice and input from other specialists and therefore provide a high-quality support service to their customer. This reduces the number of people that need to attend a site at one time, and also helps the MSP to deploy its resources more widely than before, as the supervisors working remotely can assist multiple employees in one day without travelling between locations.
MSPs are becoming increasingly crucial businesses as many industries opt for specialists to help ensure that their services run optimally. As the world of work becomes more remote across the board, having support solutions in place – such as video-based remote assistance – will continue to help businesses of all types to provide the service their customers need faster and easier than ever before.