Helping online customers quickly and easily find the right answers first time and on any device is an increasingly difficult challenge for Transversal’s clients. The company provides a range of self-service and contact centre solutions for businesses, including Levi Strauss, Nissan, Barclays and Mothercare, whereby customers use online tools to raise support queries and problems.

While providing a standard experience was not too difficult in the desktop age, the surge in mobile ownership and the multitude of form factors means that delivering an experience that works for every user is a growing challenge.

With such a wide array of mobile and desktop devices available today, customers logging support issues can do so across devices with many different specifications and capabilities. The results from delivering support content, via video, written articles or images can differ greatly depending on the customer’s device and its capability, so Transversal is always looking for ways to improve and personalise the support its clients provide.

“Many of our customers utilise our solutions to allow their users to get in touch via the web if there is a technical issue with their service,” said James Leslie, VP Professional Services at Transversal. “They currently have to input their details, including information about the device they are using, which can be quite time consuming and awkward, especially on a mobile device. As part of Transversal’s mission to create a new generation of knowledge solutions, we wanted to be able to use a service which could automatically detect the user’s device and non-personal attributes, such as the specific model, screen size, CPU and accurately submit that information to the client without any effort from the user.”

Transversal’s goal is to reduce the number of customer escalations and improve online satisfaction. Rather than simply throwing more content at its clients’ customers, Transversal wanted to take a more personalised and intuitive approach, anticipating what customers are likely to be looking for, based on their device and content, and how they can be served the best possible experience. With that in mind, Leslie and his team selected Netbiscuits Device Detection after an internal testing programme that featured a number of industry tools.

“We had heard of the potential benefits of device detection, and, after creating a shortlist, road tested a number of industry solutions,” said Leslie. “Netbiscuits was comfortably the most accurate in our internal testing, and it also covered the broadest range of devices, including TVs, which some of our clients need information on.”

What Transversal is doing with Device Detection:

Device Detection diagnostics
Netbiscuits tool helps Transversal accurately detect a visitor’s device information and log this data within a support form. This removes the need for the visitor to manually type this information, streamlining and improving the experience by providing in-depth details such as browser version and plug-in compatibility.

Broader awareness of visitor devices to shape support content strategy
By understanding which devices visitors are using to access its clients’ support services, Transversal can provide crucial information back to clients on which content will be the most effective and engaging. This may include delivering video to those on desktop PC’s with high bandwidth and fast connections, while creating a low-res version for mobile users with limited connectivity, without reducing the visitor’s choice.

“Ultimately, we’re trying to build up the complete picture of how visitors behave online, and how both their device and how/where they use it impacts their engagement. By doing that, we can provide our clients with better insights into which content works best for different customer segments, resolving queries more quickly and reducing the number of support escalations,” said Leslie.