How Specsavers used remote access software to revolutionize its IT experience

The optometry firm Specsavers is a household name. With operations across the UK, Ireland, Europe, and Australasia, Specsavers employs 46,000 people across 2,293 and has a vast network of stores and support offices.

The company uses TeamViewer's Tensor and Assist AR solutions to remotely access and troubleshoot all of its machines, including PCs and medical equipment, ensuring minimal disruption to their operations. The firm leverages TeamViewer to ensure its stores worldwide operate smoothly and deliver exceptional customer service.

Before implementing these solutions, instore staff faced problems dealing with technical queries on a daily basis. This impacted their ability to complete tasks, caused frustration, and had a negative effect on customer relationships as well as productivity.

Gurdeep Dosanjh is the owner of Specsavers Dudley and Blackheath and has held the position of director at Specsavers since 2016. He explains to ITPro how his store was impacted by regular technical issues arising from legacy technology and a blinkered internal strategy.

“Prior to working with TeamViewer, our teams spent a lot more time dealing with IT challenges, rather than focusing on helping customers, says Dosanjh.

“In previous years, when we would experience a technological issue, we would all turn to our ‘resident’ tech expert. However, if they were busy, our whole operation would come to a halt.”

Neal Silverstein, head of technology customer services at Specsavers explains that stores suffered from a very siloed approach to technical support. It was problematic that in-store teams had to rely on phone calls for technical support, as voice-only communication is not the ideal way to explain technical matters to non-technical staff.

The shift to TeamViewer

Making a wholesale digital transformation across a multinational organization based on customer-facing, brick-and-mortar stores where technology is a central feature is not an easy thing to do. In the end, the pandemic created an enforced test case for TeamViewer and made its implementation more broadly easier to achieve.

“Around the beginning of the pandemic, we began using TeamViewer for its remote access technology at a very basic level,” Silverstein tells ITPro .

“Once the pandemic restrictions began easing off, we wanted to make this a priority.”

In part because of their prior deployment of TeamViewer, Specsavers was able to move quickly. “At the time, it wasn’t something we saw other people offering so it was really beneficial to be able to get up and running so quickly,” Silverstein adds. “We officially deployed TeamViewer technology across the whole of Specsavers in February-March 2022, meaning it has been in place for two years now.”

A game-changer in stores

Dosanjh tells ITPro that the effect on his store has been profound, with better access to technical support only part of the story. TeamViewer has helped staff to be more self-directed, and improved confidence. “Using TeamViewer has helped staff be more self-sufficient with tech, which has improved their ability to work more effectively overall,” Dosanjh tells ITPro .

There has also been a profound effect on individual’s confidence, he explains, describing how in the past “teams often harbored one or two people who felt confident using new technologies, while the remainder spent a lot of time calling up a service desk to get through to a colleague who would explain what they needed to do”.

The switch to TeamViewer has helped colleagues realize they are more capable than they think and able to use tools without the need for reskilling .

“Our colleagues have embraced the approach and been empowered to confidently tackle IT issues themselves as the whole process was easy to adapt to and made resolving issues simple.”

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Rolling out TeamViewer across tablets and smartphones has helped make the task of accessing IT support easier for staff.

“Conducting conversations face-to-face online is preferred over phone interactions,” Silverstein explains. “This shift from a distant, impersonal approach to a more personalized relationship enables us to collaborate effectively with colleagues in resolving their challenges.

This is borne out in Specscavers’ post-adoption figures. Silverstein tells ITPro that average handling time is down by approximately 15%, while contact resolution has risen by 64%.

“This is important to us because it saves us from having to take staff off the shop floor and removes the negative impact on our customers who would have been left waiting,” he adds.

Additional services on tap

The advantages TeamViewer brings have not stopped at improved access to technical support, as it also adds clinical features. Augmented reality (AR) can be used in appointments so that an optometrist does not have to be in the same room as a customer.

“This gives us business flexibility, which is crucial as we have over 1,000 stores,” says Silverstein. “If you've got more patients in one store, and you've got some spare capacity in another part of the country, it makes sense to redistribute the load.”

Dosanjh is enthusiastic about a range of new services that have become available. “Beyond IT support, we now have access to clinical expertise at the touch of our fingers, without the need to wait for a colleague in store to become free. With TeamViewer, you've got the ability to access somebody who can cast their eyes over an issue there and then, with just one interaction, meaning we can take action immediately.

"This is a gamechanger as it allows us to make the most of our countrywide expertise, deliver quality customer service and ultimately capture emergencies quickly.”

He has no doubts about how the advantages this has brought to his branch of Specsavers play out: “This all helps us to keep focusing on our purpose — to improve people's lives through sight and hearing.”