I am curious to see if anyone would consider offering this as a formal form of support to clients. I know many people would be uneasy with the idea of control of their desktop, however I'd like to know if anyone has had any success with this. (windows obviously)

Share your thoughts!

Until there's an extremely easy software solution for remote desktop support, its not going to be very practical. Mainly because the people who need that kind of hand holding can't sort out how to get the software working...and then ones who don't need that kind of hand holding aren't going to want someone messing about their pcs.

--Tina

Interesting you mention that about the two different extremes. I know most hosting firms do not provide 3rd party software support, and I might see this the center focus of remote assistance (essentially being a form of managed hosting).

About easy software, do you not agree clicking a few buttons and sending an email to the address listed is easy enough? Should it be initiated like a co-browse session like most live support panels offer? What would you do to change or improve windows system so that its tweaked for this industry?

I am curious to see if anyone would consider offering this as a formal form of support to clients. I know many people would be uneasy with the idea of control of their desktop, however I'd like to know if anyone has had any success with this. (windows obviously)

Share your thoughts!
We started this early Jan 2006, it is been working great to be honest. Especially with new clients that have never hosted, taking 20 minutes showing them ftp and how to use the panel pays off a lot.... also it helps in reducing reapeated requests as it is easier to show the client how to do things (simple tasks) instead of just having us do it everytime (given they are willing to learn it)

It was very useful in some situations when the client was trying to upload through the ftp client and kept complaining that our servers kept on blocking the connection, it turned out their firewall was the cause, created a rule to allow ftp connections to the server and was done in a second. trying to TS issues like that could take forever.
It builds the relationship and loyalty too. ;)

As far as other support business was gained from that point, we were able to get more business as standard IT support for some of the tasks and referred it to our sister company (with very few clients "handful") that does IT support.
So in my experience, it was really good. I was skeptical though

If you trust your host with your website, and your monthly payment, then I don't see much reason why they'd object to this.

But there's always people that defy logic.

Auracle Support has a very neat feature in it's chat system.
The admin can display his screen to the custumer and show him how it's done.

Thus the member can have some visual feedback on where to click, etc.
No pluggins needed, I like it :)

Full versions of Help Center Live have this function as well.

As for successful accounts of Remote assistance, I'm glad there are positive accounts. I have been long considering this myself as adding this to our support options can only help, not hinder. After using remote assistance for over 3 years I can finally say it may just work in a business environment!

webex.com allows you to connect to a website through any browser and the remote admin can take control of your PC with that. I've used it with dell for troubleshooting server issues, it works pretty well it's a bit slow when first connecting though.

ePop web conferencing software allow this kind of function as well but its a bit more of a round-about way of controlling the desktop.

Both those apps allow the connection through a website without any software installs.

You might be interested in checking out http://www.sunflowernetwork.com/. They have a support model which involves remote screen sharing for general PC and software support. You might want to check out how they run their business. I requested information once and they sent a nice PDF which explained exactly how their model worked.

how about good old desktop sharing with conf.exe (all you linux weenies have an xp box sitting around, right? your clients do!)

That probably falls into Tina's first category of users though!

I know Gateway uses windows Remote Assistance. So we have 1 person who actually uses it and sais it works. Anyone use it and dissagree?

Video tutorials could be a way to cover some of the basics, without the user having to do anything but play the movie.

Actually, I think movies might be preferable to live for many routine lessons, because there is less pressure on the student, and they can play the movie over and over until they get it.

I'm not sure web hosts should be logging in to novice user's machines (my dishwasher stopped working right after you did that stuff on my computer!) but it would be smart to have a list of outside consultants who can do live remote teaching.

I was shopping for service A the other day, which is useless without service B. The seller of service A had no info or links available on service B. Everybody complains about competition etc, but so many sites make mistakes like this.

I'm guessing most of you already know this company, but for those who don't, here's a hosting support video service that looks great:
http://demowolf.com/

If you buy the demo building application ($200) you could make your own video tutorials quite affordably it seems.

I haven't used this company yet, (and don't work or sell for them).