HP, Inc. - Remote Customer Service Innovation of the Year

Company: HP, Inc., Boise, ID
Company Description: HP is a cutting-edge, leading technology brand with a steadfast mission to continuously innovate and reinvent for the digital world. The global brand reimagines technology with a vision of creating experiences that elevate how individuals and businesses live, work and play. The company dominates the world stage in personal computes, printers, software and solutions for consumers and businesses.
Nomination Category: Customer Service & Call Center Awards Achievement Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Remote Customer Service Innovation of the Year

Nomination Title: HP Inc. Live Lens

HP Inc. is a cutting-edge technology brand serving more than 1 billion customers in more than 170 countries on 6 continents. Their customers include end-users buying their products from retail establishments, as well as corporate entities utilizing their various print and computer solutions across multiple office locations.

HP is continuously innovating and reinventing for the digital world. The global brand excels in creating experiences that elevate how individuals and businesses live, work and play — made possible with a team of the world’s most forward-thinking innovators who are constantly working towards HP’s next revolutionary product. The company dominates the world stage in personal computers, printers and software that consumers and businesses rely on daily.

Since the company’s 1939 beginnings, to its current position as a leading enterprise technology company, HP has expanded globally to become a nearly $60 billion-dollar annual business today. While the COVID-19 pandemic proved challenging for business operations worldwide and hindered face-to-face interaction, HP’s Global Customer Service Team stepped up to reinvent how it serviced customers in need of repairs. This nomination is focused on its Live Lens solution — an innovation that allowed HP Customer Service to troubleshoot customer issues visually and resolve their problems remotely.

HP has a well-established reputation for providing an elevated level of customer service, ensuring the individual needs of customers are met and making agents available through phone, chat, and email — as well as offering in-person technician visits. The company understands that any issue experienced with one of its products could impact business operations, especially as people worked from home during the COVID-19 pandemic without in-person tech support.

HP’s Live Lens innovation proved invaluable through the pandemic, helping Customer Service agents efficiently and effectively resolve customer issues remotely. This troubleshooting tool removes the communication barriers experienced over phone and chat support by allowing Customer Service agents to physically see the customer’s issue in real-time and more effectively troubleshoot. It has nearly eliminated customer frustration over articulating an issue verbally, and allows for expedited fixes since the agent can see the issue. It was also monumentally helpful in assisting customers when field technician visits were deemed unsafe at the peak of the pandemic.

With Live Lens, a customer can demonstrate their issue to a Customer Support agent by using the camera on their smartphone. To walk the customer through the resolution, the agent can draw or annotate through Live Lens paused video, visually guiding the customer through the exact steps needed to correct the problem. This browser-based, two-way audio and visual interface requires no app or software, livestreaming the issue directly to the Customer Support agent. Solutions are identified immediately and customers are guided through the fix with ease.

HP’s Live Lens innovation is entirely unique to the computing and print marketplace, as the exclusive company offering real-time video technology to help customers troubleshoot. Throughout the pandemic, its largest competitors continued to rely on automated troubleshooting, chat, and phone support to address customer issues. HP went the route of elevating its troubleshooting capabilities, understanding the immediate needs of those working from home and needing to maintain business-as-usual to the fullest extent possible. People were also living and working in a high-stress situation, which is only exacerbated when technical issues arise. HP helped to quickly alleviate technical issues by empowering its Customer Service agents with the technology to see issues through the eyes of its customers — thereby expediting fixes and delivering a more personalized customer service experience.

Live Lens is a breakthrough innovation since it delivers more efficient solutions to customers. It eliminates lengthy conversations with a customer trying to articulate their issue, and instead allows them to show a Customer Service agent. Issues are resolved more efficiently and with far less frustration by the customer, therefore improving their overall customer satisfaction. Since introducing Live Lens, the company has experienced a dramatic decrease in service calls and a dramatic upswing in remote resolutions. Remote resolutions for hardware-related issues has increased 10 points, from 40% to 50%, and the Net Promoter Score (NPS) for those types of calls has increased from 50 to 58. Remote resolutions for HP computing and electronic systems has increased from 68% to 84%.

When developing Live Lens, HP didn’t stop at simply developing a system that allowed visual access to the customer and their HP product. They ensured the troubleshooting steps could be both verbally and visually communicated, allowing Customer Support agents to pause the video and draw or annotate on the screen to clearly identify which component the agent is referring to and the exact steps to take. Image 1 (“Annotation_Tools”) shows this functionality as well as the various tools available to the Customer Service agent to demonstrate the solution.

Image 2 (“Agent View_Customer View”) demonstrates the ease of use of Live Lens for the customer. You’ll see how they simply utilize their smartphone camera to give the Customer Service agent a clear visual of their issue.

The video shared provides a brief yet comprehensive look at the Live Lens functionality.

Finally, a document has been shared (“Live Lens Testimonials”) with testimonials from HP engineers who have leveraged the Live Lens technology and found great success in resolving customer issues as a result. These detail specific functionality issues it helped to resolve, its overall efficiency, and how it has enhanced the customer experience.