Frustrated with Webex

[Clifford McGlamry]

I am not a Webex expert by a long shot.  We use it for conferencing and remote customer support.  Usually, it works fine.

HOWEVER, I find myself extremely frustrated with the behavior of Webex, and can't seem to figure out if there is any way to fine tune it.

1.  I want the annoying screen that asks you to fill out who you are, who you work for, and the e mail address to GO AWAY.  This is NOT useful, and customer reactions range from mildly annoyed to outright miffed at this.  Common response "You know who I am...you INVITED me", and they are right.  I understood when Cisco initially launched this why it was needed, but it needs to go away.  Is there a way to turn this off?

2.  When running remote support, some customers find it difficult to impossible to get set up where they can share the screen with you.  I just spent 45 minutes on the phone with a not particularly tech savy person who could get past the annoying big brother info collection from #1 above, and then could not get past the next step.  They were trying to describe what they were seeing, and for the life of me I could NOT figure out what they were seeing, and consequentyly, what to tell them to do.  And of course, there is no published guide from Cisco that would TELL ME what a customer will be seeing.  Why does this have to be so hard?  There are other remote control products out there that work as well as Webex, that are FAR less cumbersome to set up.  What does it take to make this easier for end customers to use and for us to know how to guide them to get set up?

Any suggestions appreciated.  I'm at the end of my rope with this product and am ready to actively campaign for its replacement at our organization. 

TIA

Cliff

[dpetrovi]

Hi Cliff,

I am sorry to hear you are frustrated with WebEx. I assume you are using WebEx SaaS (in the Cloud) solution and not Cisco WebEx Meetings Server (on-premise) solution. Even though this community is for Cisco WebEx Meetings Server, and I am not an expert in WebEx SaaS, I do have enough knowledge from MeetingPlace/WebEx SaaS integration to answer your questions.

1. When an end user is invited to Support Center session, when they click on Join meeting link, they get to a page and are required to enter First name, Last name, e-mail address and Company name. This is the same across all the WebEx sites, and at this time it is not a configurable option nor it can be removed. If your customers are really annoyed with this, I would advise you to talk to your Cisco Account Team and submit an enhancement request to have this page either simplified to your likings or make it configurable in future releases. Unfortunately, at this time this is the only available option.

2. As for the customer's look and feel when it comes to joining Support Center session, here you can see how it looks. After entering needed information and joining the session, the customer will get the follow window:

They will see a Chat screen, and have the options to Join Audio portion of the session and Leave Session. At this point, the host/support engineer is the one that has to request Remote Control/Desktop Sharing by selecting option Remote Control on WebEx Tray:

The following options will be listed (might differ sligthtly based on your WebEx site and features provisioned):

Once you select the option you want (e.g. Remote Control), the request will be sent to the customer and they will have to approve it:

After they grant you permission to control their Desktop, you will be able to see it and take control over it.

Keep in mind that WebEx has multiple different Centers with different look and feel (Meeting Center, Training Center, Event Center, and Support Center). This specific look and feel is valid only for Support Center.

As for Meeting Center, once you join the meeting, you would have the same look and feel as the other participants in the meeting, so it would be easier for you to see what they are seeing and guide them through any steps needed.

For more information about using WebEx SaaS from end user or host perspective, please visit this page and check some tutorials:

http://www.webex.com/how-to/index.html

https://support.webex.com/MyAccountWeb/documentation.do?root=Tools&parent=Documentation

I hope these tutorials will have some information you didn't know about and will make using the product easier.

Kind regards,

-Dejan