Co-browsing vs screen sharing: which do you need for customer support?

What is co-browsing?

Co-browsing is a shared view of one page on your own website or portal. The customer is already there, the agent joins from the interaction they are handling, and both see the same page. Nothing is installed. The view stops at the edge of that page: the agent does not see other tabs, other applications or the desktop, which is exactly why co-browsing is comfortable to offer on a public website. The customer is never asked to expose anything beyond the page they came to you for.

Genesys Cloud includes co-browse. It is configured on a Messenger deployment, it runs from the customer to the agent, and it is available on web messaging and on voice interactions. Genesys documents the agent's pointer and control modes and the masking of sensitive fields in its own help centre. For a question about a form on your own site, a field the customer cannot find or a step in your checkout that is not behaving, it is the right tool, and you already have it.

What is screen sharing?

Screen sharing shows whatever is on a screen, whichever page or application that happens to be. The customer picks a browser window, a single tab or the whole desktop, and the agent sees it. On TrueEngage the agent can also share back, and can draw on the customer's screen to point at the field or the button they mean. It works on chat, voice and video interactions that started through the TrueEngage widget, so a customer who typed a question into web chat, a customer who clicked to call from the page and a customer on a video call can all be asked to share.

The difference shows up the moment the problem leaves your website. We ran a proof of concept with a Polish hosting provider whose support calls were often about settings on the customer's side: a mail client, a DNS record in another provider's panel, an error from a desktop application. None of that is on the hosting company's web page, so co-browsing cannot reach it. Screen sharing can. The same is true in reverse: when the agent needs to show the customer where a setting lives in a portal the customer has never opened, the agent shares, and the customer watches.

What a session looks like, from both sides

From the customer's side, a screen sharing session starts with a request. The agent asks, in the chat or on the call, whether the customer would share their screen, and a prompt appears in the customer's browser. It is the browser's own dialog that asks which screen, window or tab to share, so the choice of what the agent sees is the customer's and it is made in a dialog the customer already knows from video meetings. The customer can stop sharing at any moment. Nothing is downloaded and nothing stays behind afterwards.

From the agent's side, everything happens in the TrueEngage Agent App, the interaction widget inside Genesys Cloud. The agent already sees the visitor's current page activity, their interaction history, location and device, and anything the visitor typed into a pre-interaction form. The screen sharing control sits next to the controls for upgrading a chat to voice or video. When the customer shares, the agent sees the customer's screen in the same place and can draw on it: a circle around the field that needs a value, an arrow to the button that saves the form. When the agent shares back, the agent's screen opens for the customer in a panel on the same page, next to the widget they were already using.

Co-browsing on Genesys Cloud follows a similar shape with a narrower scope. The agent proposes it, the customer accepts, and the agent sees the page. On a voice call the customer enters a code the agent reads out. The agent can point and, with the customer's permission, interact with the page, and the fields your administrator has masked stay hidden.

How does each one run on Genesys Cloud?

Both start from an interaction that is already queued and routed in Genesys Cloud, so the agent who picked up the chat or the call is the one who joins. There is no second queue, no separate login and no transfer to a specialist tool. Genesys Cloud co-browse is switched on in the Messenger deployment. TrueEngage screen sharing is an add-on to the TrueEngage layer, enabled per account; the Genesys iframe permissions for the TrueEngage Agent App include camera, microphone, clipboard and display capture, and the agent starts a session from the Agent App. It is metered at two tokens a minute from the token allowance in the TrueEngage subscription and billed through Genesys, on the Genesys invoice, like the rest of TrueEngage.

Interactions stay queued, routed, recorded and reported in Genesys Cloud in both cases. The supervisor sees the chat or the call in the same views as every other interaction. Neither tool creates a side channel outside the contact centre.

Where each one earns its place

Forms and onboarding are co-browsing territory, and they are the most common reason a customer asks for help on a website at all. An insurance application with forty fields, a loan form that rejects a date format, a registration page where the customer cannot see why the button is greyed out. The whole problem is on your page, and the agent pointing at the right field ends it. Co-browsing, with masking on the fields that carry personal data, is built for exactly this.

Device and account support is screen sharing territory. A telecom customer whose router settings page will not accept a password, a hosting customer whose email client is configured against the wrong server, an appliance owner whose companion app shows an error nobody can describe over the phone. The thing that is wrong lives on the customer's machine. Asking the customer to read out what they see is slow and often wrong; seeing it is neither.

Guided walkthroughs are where the agent shares. A customer who has to complete something in a third-party portal, a new administrator who needs to be shown a configuration screen once, a partner going through a setup for the first time. The agent shares their own window and talks the customer through it, and the customer follows along on the screen instead of in a PDF.

Verification sits in between. When a customer on a chat needs to show a document or a physical item, the right move is usually a video upgrade, which TrueEngage offers from the same Agent App, and screen sharing is the wrong tool. Knowing when to reach for which is part of the training, and it is a short part.

What to settle before you switch screen sharing on

The first question is consent, and the answer is already built in: the customer chooses what to share in their own browser's dialog and can stop at any time. What you add is a sentence for agents to use when they ask, so that the request is clear about why and about what the customer can choose to show. Agents who ask well get a yes; agents who say "share your screen" get a pause.

The second is scope. Decide which queues and which agents get the add-on. It is enabled per account on the TrueEngage side, and the Genesys iframe permissions for the Agent App have to include display capture, so the people who administer your Genesys Cloud environment are involved once, at setup.

The third is cost, which is simple. Two tokens a minute from the allowance that comes with the subscription, on the Genesys invoice. A team can see in its own reporting how many minutes it uses and decide whether to widen the rollout.

The fourth is the relationship to Genesys Cloud co-browse, and the answer is that nothing changes. Teams that add TrueEngage screen sharing can keep Genesys Cloud co-browse switched on and let the agent choose in the moment. One is for your page, the other is for everything else.

How to tell whether it helped

Pick a queue where visual problems are common, device support or account configuration, and compare the interactions where the agent shared or was shown a screen with the ones where the problem was described in words. Handle time on the visual ones is the first thing to look at, and repeat contacts on the same issue within a few days is the second, because a problem the agent could see is a problem that tends to stay solved. Agent feedback is the third: ask the people who used it which calls it changed. We do not publish numbers for this, because every queue is different and a number from one would mislead another; your own reporting in Genesys Cloud will tell you within a month.

Which do you need?

If the question is about your own website, co-browsing is enough and you already have it in Genesys Cloud. If the customer needs to show something outside that page, screen sharing is the tool. If the agent needs to show the customer something, screen sharing is the only one of the two that can. Most contact centres that handle anything technical will find they want both, and that the agent knows which one to reach for after a week.

One more thing worth knowing before you choose: what the market calls these two things and what they do are drifting apart. "Co-browsing" is the word people search for, and it is used loosely for anything where an agent sees a customer's screen. When you compare vendors, ask the concrete questions: can the customer share a desktop application, can the agent share back, and can the agent draw on what the customer shows? Those three answers tell you which of the two you are being offered, whatever it is called.

Questions people ask

• Co-browsing and screen sharing