Sending a link to a customer is a great way to establish a Cobrowse session between an agent and a customer.
A common use case we find our customers asking is if it is possible to start a Cobrowsing session by sending a link to the customer for them to open and connect with an agent.
The great news is this is a fully supported method and in this article we will share some of the ways this can be achieved.
Demo
To help visualise the flow please view the video below. The agent on the left generates the URL and when the client, seen on the right, opens that link consent is asked and then the session starts.
Generating the link
The first step is to generate the link that can be sent to the customer. To do this you can use our Agent SDK and follow the steps below:
- Authenticate the Agent SDK
- Create a new session
- Identify the session with a custom ID or use the session ID
- Build up a URL for your domain using the session identifier set in the step above and send to the customer
- Connect the agent to that session
This URL should be recognisable and trusted by your customer but might also require to be short enough to send in an SMS. Below are some example structures of the URL to share with your customer replacing <ID> with the session identifier you used in the previous steps:
- https://example.com/session/<ID>
- https://example.com?s=<ID>
- https://expl.co#<ID>
With the URL generated you can now share this with your customer. Some common ways are via online chat, SMS or email.
Connecting customer with the agent
The customer at this point has received the link and when they open it are taken to a web page that you own.
The responsibilities of this web page are to:
- Parse the <ID> from the URL
- Use the <ID> to find the session for that <ID> using the client SDK
- Connect the customer to that session
Mobile apps
The same flow can work for mobile apps and if you configure the URL correctly the link shared to the customer can detect if they have your app installed and launch it allowing for a session to start. If they don't have your app installed then it would take the user to your website where the session can start using their mobile browser.
To do this you will need to correctly setup your mobile app and domain.
Apple platforms
Please follow Apple's Developer guide for setting up Universal Links.
Android
Please follow Google's guide for setting up Android App Links.
Once you have your app correctly responding to the deep link the link should hold the <ID> as detailed in a previous section. Parse this ID and then use the Cobrowse SDK to start a session with that ID.
Need help?
If you have any additional questions please reach to by submitting a support request.