Over the years one of the most sure-fire solutions to customer support, especially on the higher technical end, has been a "remote assistance" application of some sort. There are systems built into operating systems: Windows, Apple, Linux, and so on. Some practitioners have a favorite and some use what their company provides. At MediaCarbon we're lucky enough to be able to use anything we want.
One of the most promising solutions we've encountered so far has been "Team Viewer". It's nice because it's obviously designed for a professional, or even department to utilize on the back-end, and on the front-end (the customer being supported) there are options for them to install the software so that the support partner can always access their machine and administer tasks, or a "Quick Support" where the user needn't install anything, they simply run the executable file and it sets them up for a single support session.
Besides the UI design and philosophy some of the features we see in Team Viewer that look promising:
- Skinable Support Window
- Installable version for desktop and server support
- Administrator enhancements like "partner list"
- Extras and Add-Ons
- USB Stick Portable Version
- General Attitude of the Company!
We'll be passing the Quick Support module to customers via our LiveSupport installation of Crafty Syntax's great Live Chat program. Who says you've got to use PHP or ASP.NET, the obvious pragmatic solution is to use both! ;-)