Visual support on demand

Describing the goal of making the world more accessible for blind or partially sighted people, Hans Jørgen Wiberg, founder of Be My Eyes, says: “Being visually impaired myself was my inspiration for creating Be My Eyes. Our aim is to help people quickly solve daily tasks by connecting blind or partially sighted app users with sighted volunteers, and with company representatives and contact center agents.”

The Be My Eyes app was released on 15th January 2015, available on iOS and Android devices. Today, the app has more than 420,000 blind or partially sighted users, over 6 million volunteers, and 50 company partners. It has become enormously popular for a wide variety of use-cases sighted people may take for granted.

 

Video Support for Accessible Customer Interactions

One widely overlooked use-case involves customers who require sighted support while interacting with a company representative. Purchases, returns, billing, and other common customer interactions can be quite difficult without sighted assistance, and corporate teams often struggle with how best to serve their blind customers in general. As the largest online blindness community in the world, Be My Eyes represents a holistic solution: Companies can join without needing to create entirely new strategies for reaching and marketing to this demographic, and the video-calling technology that powers Be My Eyes makes these customer experiences comfortable and efficient for both user and agent.

As a premium AppFoundry partner, Be My Eyes puts the power to better serve blind customers directly in the hands of contact center agents using Genesys Cloud.

 

Empowering everyone with empathetic experiences

In contact centers, delivering empathetic customer experience is a hot topic. Yet, in today’s resource-starved environment, little attention has been paid to the needs of blind and visually impaired contact center agents.

Thanks to the ingenuity of Genesys and its partner, Deliberate GmbH, this conversation is changing. Based on the Genesys Cloud environment and available from the AppFoundry marketplace, the Deliberate solution is called shortyDings +[assist]. shortyDings provides visually disadvantaged agents with the benefits of mouse-less efficiency, and access to a new generation of empathy-friendly apps, all within the Genesys Cloud environment familiar to agents.

With over 250 million people worldwide needing sighted support, that’s great news both for potential employees and firms looking to access new talent pools.

 

Offering flexible read-out and call-handling options

As an example, agents can initiate video calls using mobile cameras. That enables them to seek a meter reading or help triage a fault code on a domestic appliance. Thereby saving a callout or site visit. Additionally, agents can work on other systems with Genesys Cloud running in the background.

Things get even more interesting with the shortyDings +[assist] iteration. User-configurable hotkeys provide text-to-speech input confirmation of a called function for barrier-free working. Agents can even work in their CRM application and receive, forward and complete calls using wrap-up codes without having to visit the Genesys Cloud interface. That effectively turns Genesys Cloud into a fully functional workstation for visually impaired or blind people. And that creates for them new job opportunities.

Register today to see a demo of the shortyDings solution. Click here to download the Be My Eyes mobile app.