Co-browsing should ask first

Every co-browsing tool can see a customer's screen. The difference is what happens next — and whether the person on the other side of it knows.

When we designed co-browsing in coview, we started from a support agent's point of view: the fastest way to help someone stuck on a payroll run is to circle the button they can't find. Then we sat on the other side of the screen. Being helped is only pleasant when you're the one who said yes.

Seeing isn't touching

A customer's tab is their workspace. An agent drawing on it, or clicking around in it, is closer to someone leaning over your desk than to someone reading your ticket. So we drew a line between seeing and touching, and made everything on the touching side ask, every session, in words a customer understands without a manual.

Watching live shows the agent the customer's tab a second or two behind, with passwords, card numbers and private fields masked in the customer's browser. Nothing an agent does while watching reaches the customer's page.

Show me: point and draw

The first level of help is Show me. The customer sees a request — “Linh wants to show you something here. They can point and draw on this tab. You stay in charge. Esc stops it.” — with Allow and Deny.

Once they allow it, the agent can point and draw on their page: a pen, a highlighter, an arrow with a note, numbered steps, or a spotlight on one part of the page. Marks are pinned to the page: when the customer scrolls, they move with the content they point at, and they stay until the agent erases them or the session ends. The customer's mouse and keyboard stay theirs — most “where is it?” questions end with them clicking the button themselves.

Take over: click and type

The second level is Take over: the agent clicks, scrolls and types for the customer, in that tab only. It's asked for separately — “Linh wants to control this tab” — and the customer can choose Only let them point instead.

We treat Take over like handing someone your keyboard: it's asked for separately, it's visible the whole time, and it ends the moment you want it to.

Some things stay out of reach even then. An agent never types into password, card, bank or tax-number fields, and you can mark any control on your pages with data-coview-noclick so an agent can never press it.

What the customer can always do

• Say no. Deny is on every request, and the chat carries on.
• See who. A pill at the top of their page says who is helping — “Linh is showing you on this tab” — and the agent's name rides on the cursor.
• Stop it. Esc or the Stop button ends it at once. Only the customer's own key counts: a key sent by the agent can't stop or start anything.
• Draw back. The pill's Circle button lets the customer point at things too.

What gets recorded

The session recording shows the co-browsing session as it happened, with masked fields still masked. The audit log keeps who asked to help, at which level, and when it ended — so an admin can answer “who touched this account?” in a minute.

Who may do what

Watching, drawing and taking over are separate permissions on a role. On the Business plan you can make your own roles — for example, letting new agents draw but not take over.

Some problems are faster to talk through: call from the same chat. To see co-browsing on your own site, book a demo or start free.

coview team

We build coview: session replay, co-browsing, chat and calls for support teams. Questions about a post? Ask us from the contact page.