Agent quick start

Understand that what you will see in this quick start guide will be different to what you may see in your own company’s implementation. You may see more or fewer icons, the page will look different, etc. However, there should be sufficient commonalities for you to work through this guide without too much pain.

Make sure your computer’s audio and video are in working order (if you intend to use audio and video). Ideally, you should use a headset (with earphone(s) and microphone) but a set of headphones and an on-board (your computer’s built-in) microphone will do, at a pinch. If you intend to practice with a colleague (each alternately playing the role of visitor/agent) you will both need a working microphone of some sort.

Ensure you have the required credentials to login to the system.

Have a document in a minimized folder ready to experiment with document sharing / document co-browsing.

Now the agent and the visitor can type messages and press the Send button to converse with each other. All participants in the Conversation will see the messages. Type in and send a few messages on both sides to see how it works.

You will notice that both the visitor and the agent chat panels look similar but the agent panel has a few more options.

For a more comprehensive look at canned responses and advice on how to create them, see Canned Responses.

Now that you can chat with visitors you may find that Chat is simply the first step in effective communications. Next, we will look at using audio and video. (You can keep using this session or you can start a new session to learn about these features.)

In the Conversation panel click on the movie camera icon in either agent or visitor.

You can use video and audio simultaneously or you can use only audio or only video (silent video). You can also move between these different states easily. Be aware that using video and audio works best when using two devices (as the same camera and microphone will be used for both participants when using a single PC).

You can select the Video call icon either on the agent side or on the visitor side. For our purposes we will start with selecting on the agent side. This will send video of you (the agent) to the visitor.

Visitors can range from nervous; where you will make the suggestions and initiate the processes, to over-confident; where the visitor may click everything madly to see what works. In the first instance it is best if the agent confidently suggests actions to the visitor, without limiting those actions in any way. For example: “Would you like to do this on video, where we can see each other? Or perhaps audio suits you best right now?” Many users may be, on first contact, a little resistant to use video. This is perfectly normal. Chat is often sufficient but knowing that video/audio is available is important to visitors (who may, after making many typos, give audio and/or video a go).

Now the agent and visitor can see and hear each other, and they can still also use the Chat box to communicate.

It can be confusing at first as messages and video shoot back and forth but you can use the real-time messages listed above the Chat box to keep track of where you are, what you’ve said, and what is switched on or off.

You should also note that if you are using a single PC you will not get the same view as using two PCs or devices. Using two devices you will see a video of the visitor/agent with a smaller video stream of yourself superimposed in the lower-right corner of the screen.

The history shown in the session above is simply a record of chat messages and notifications of who is publishing what (video / audio /documents) and when.

Note that the color orange represents the on state. Using the icons in the picture above you can switch video and audio on and off, end the call, or you can take a snapshot.

Snapshots allow you to take a still picture of a video stream. Mostly, this would be used for identification purposes. For example, apart from a snapshot of the visitor’s face, you may need to see, and retain evidence of, their passport or other identification. In turn, the visitor may want a snapshot of the agent.

Co-browsing comes in two flavors:

These are two methods of doing (almost) the same thing. They use different technologies but, as far as the agent is concerned, the main difference is that with Embedded co-browsing you (and the visitor) are restricted to browsing only your own company web pages that have been properly orchestrated to handle the Unblu system, while Universal co-browsing allows you navigate anywhere on the web.

Embedded co-browsing allows you to arrive in the agent Conversation with the visitor history intact. This means that when using embedded co-browsing you can enter the context of whatever the visitor was doing (within your company’s Unblu-orchestrated pages).

Using embedded co-browsing the agent can observe the actions of the visitor and they can move their pointer but they cannot interact with the page; only the visitor can trigger actions. See Agent Side Limitations for a little more on what Embedded Co-browsing actually means for the agent.

Initiating co-browsing requires the agent to pass a PIN (code) to the customer. The customer enters the PIN and joins the Conversation.

In order for any visitor to join any PIN session (Embedded or Universal) they must already be on a page that has been orchestrated with the Unblu snippet (otherwise there is no place to enter the PIN).

The following assumes the visitor is on one of your web pages, but not yet in any Conversation, and is waiting for you to pass the PIN to them to enter into whatever dialog box your company has designed.

The following steps assume the visitor and the agent are, in some way, in contact, or have been in contact and the engagement is planned. This is necessary as the PIN must be passed to the visitor in some way; email, phone, message app, etc. It is also assumed that the visitor can see a dialog box on their side that allows them to input the PIN. (This may be on any part of the page, as a graphic with a box, for example, or it may appear when something else is chosen. Either way, there must be a PIN entry field displaying on the visitor side.)

At almost any time during a Conversation you can switch to/from universal to embedded and vice-versa, simply by choosing either the universal co-browsing or embedded co-browsing icon(s). There may be many specific use cases for such actions. The important thing to remember is that Universal co-browsing allows you to roam free across the web. So, switching would mostly be about a necessity to see web pages other than your company’s own web pages, which would require universal co-browsing. While going from Universal to Embedded would mostly be about switching the visitor back to pages within your firewall.

Mark mode allows both the agent and visitor to highlight parts of the page using either a single click that produces a throbbing colored dot on both the agent and visitor sides, or by drawing a rectangle, which produces a throbbing colored rectangle on the both sides; useful when directing attention to something on the page.

Documents can be uploaded/downloaded on both sides and documents can also be co-browsed by all participants in a Conversation.

Invite Others into the Session or Forward the Session to Others

If you need to get other agents, or visitors, involved in a session there are two ways to do this:

There may be any number of reasons to get other agents involved with a particular visitor. In general, you would use Invite an agent mostly to get someone from your team into the session, while forwarding the whole session is more likely to suggest forwarding to another team that can, in turn, forward the session to the right agent, or you might forward the whole session directly to another agent.

There are two places from where you can get others involved:

Another visitor does not have to be an actual visitor, it can be someone in your organization who is not registered within the Unblu system. Using this feature can be handy when you need expertise that may be available but not available from with the Unblu system (not yet registered).

See Visitor Desk for more on inviting visitors.