A Beginner’s Guide to Remote Assistance for Your Business

Our physical world crawls closer each day to becoming indistinguishable from that of our virtual one. Our virtual world encompasses a global network of information both past and present, yet it can be reached and contained from any location on Earth. As our physical spaces become disrupted, we are forced to rely on technologies that breach the barriers of space and time.

However, our global community is now facing a universal threat to physical space with the introduction of COVID-19. As a result, businesses have fast-tracked their adoption of certain technologies and significantly improved upon others. This article aims to explain why remote assistance is becoming a necessity for businesses, even post-pandemic.

What is Remote Assistance

Collaborating with people online is not a new concept, as real-time remote assistance could encompass something as mundane as speaking with an employee over the phone regarding the easiest way to unsubscribe from an email newsletter. Nonetheless, the applications for remote assistance have developed to include highly complex solutions in places like factories, where an entire team of remote specialists might be required to sufficiently solve issues relating to advanced machinery.

Remote assistance solves a myriad of growing issues mainly because of its locational attributes: it has infinite reach and can be accessed immediately.

Investing In Remote Assistance Right Now

Our world is essentially an intricately connected network of people joined together through virtual spaces like social media, chat rooms and video meetings. Remote assistance takes advantage of our status as interconnected beings and bypasses all the physical obstacles we may face. Distance and time are the foremost important obstacles in the equation, as they most drastically hinder people’s ability to collaborate and fix problems that exist in a physical space.

In some instances, an employee at a factory must wait for an engineer or technician (sometimes a team of technicians) to travel great distances before arriving on site and repairing complex devices. The resources sacrificed (time, money, raw materials/ waste) in order to summon a specialist are immense.

As you can see, remote assistance eliminates many crucial obstacles and provides immediate help to customers who may be simply unqualified or ill-prepared to handle certain complex and time sensitive tasks. Since remote assistance is currently functioning as a major defence against issues spawned from social distancing, the time has come to follow in the footsteps of larger companies and invest in remote solutions.

Of course this example is larger scale, but with the introduction of a global virus, we are seeing a similar model being applied more forcefully towards everyday activities.

The Everyday Pro

If you’re someone like a handyman or small business owner, you know the importance of generating leads and building a community for the survival of your business. So what does remote assistance have to do with you? `

Not everyone works at a large manufacturing plant, but many people need help when it comes to working from home, shopping, house hunting, installing or fixing appliances, and anything else requiring people to challenge their comfort zones and seek an advisor. Small-time business owners and professionals have a big-time role in making all of this happen.

In other words, there is a demand from consumers for more efficient and remote-friendly solutions for everyday tasks. More specifically, we can look at the exploding home improvement market and see that there has become a great need for people to solve problems while avoiding physical contact with others. According to Statistica, nearly 80% of people have made at least one home improvement during the pandemic.

Moreover, many projects are DIY in nature, as home improvement stores like Lowe’s and The Home Depot have reached record sales. The Home Depot, specifically, recorded year over year increases in sales of 23.4%. With such a large section of the population investing in their new DIY quarantine lifestyles, it’s no surprise that demand for remotely accessed expertise has skyrocketed.

How AR (Augmented Reality) Plays a Role

For those unfamiliar, augmented reality is “a technology that superimposes a computer-generated image on a user’s view of the real world, thus providing a composite view.” -Oxford Languages

Augmented reality technologies and their useful coalescence with mobile devices, like smartphones, play a major role in bringing remote assistance solutions into the mainstream. Emerson Automation Solutions is one great example of how AR- powered remote assistance tools boost productivity and offer a way for people to cope with pandemic-related issues. Emerson Automation offers workers AR tools via phones and tablets, but many other companies out there are reaching further and incorporating AR glasses and goggles.

Augmented reality is not only taking the remote assistance industry by storm, but it is slowly proving to be a disruptive technology capable of infiltrating any company and delighting customers with engaging experiences. Businesses of all sizes are using the powerful combination of AR and remote assistance to get ahead of the curve and continue driving sales regardless of the physical barriers COVID-19 creates.

While hugely popular online resources like Youtube can typically guide you through just about anything, nothing quite competes with immediate, personalized, and real-time help from an expert. Previously, individuals and enterprise customers could summon professionals to their homes or businesses to get the job done. While physical help is temporarily not an option, remote assistance solutions are solving market pains and proving that there are better ways to do the things we’ve become accustomed to. Do not be surprised when companies continue investing in remote solutions long after the pandemic has ended.

So what does this all mean for you and your customers?

From the perspective of small business owners and professionals struggling during the pandemic, utilizing remote assistance gives you the chance to chase leads from the comfort of your home and keep operations flowing. You are essentially broadening your professional reach by expanding into a virtual platform while simultaneously speeding up processes like troubleshooting and lead generation with the power of growing tools like AR. Don’t forget that you are also avoiding travel times and expenses entirely.

The pros aren’t the only ones benefiting, since customers also reap the benefits of being connected with safe and efficient service providers. Typically, customers are burdened with wasting their time watching videos online and spending far too long explaining issues to pros over the phone. Customers who turn to remote solutions avoid all uncertainty around social distancing and are rewarded with immediate service backed by newer technologies. Like we’ve said before, nothing quite competes with immediate, personalized, and real-time help from an expert.