Support iOS mobile devices now with Visual Guidance

You’re trying to provide remote support to a person using an iPhone. If you’re working in remote IT support, you’re probably all too aware that your options are limited. You want to remotely control the device? Unless you’re Apple, unfortunately not.

Basically, the only thing you can do is talk the end user through what they need to do. The problem is some users simply aren’t that tech-savvy, and you can’t really know if they’re following your advice. When it comes to guidance, they need a little more than voice support.

And you’ll be able to deliver it now that we’ve added unique Visual Guidance functionality to our free QuickSupport app. This allows you to finally share clear visual guidance with users of mobile iOS devices. As a result, they can grasp your directions much more easily and you can solve their issues with much less back-and-forth.

In this article:

• The iOS remote support gap
• Introducing Visual Guidance for iOS mobile devices
• The benefits of Visual Guidance for mobile iOS devices
• Summary

The iOS remote support gap

Right now, almost three out of ten users worldwide are using iOS mobile devices. This is a significant number—as well as a significant hurdle to delivering comprehensive IT support. With increased device diversity and as more and more users switch to iOS, the problem—a kind of iOS support gap—keeps getting bigger.

Our Senior Product Manager Massinissa Menas described the problem like this: “When connecting to an iOS, there is no possibility to remotely control it or use a whiteboard to annotate on the screen (except if you are Apple) ... leaving the supporter with only voice and screen sharing.”

This iOS support gap means that IT support workers are extremely limited in how they do their work. You can share your screen, and you can direct them through voice guidance. But the option of remote control—really getting into the device and figuring out the problem—is off the table.

As a result of this iOS support gap, you’re often unable to provide the kind of support you’d like to provide. You lose time due to miscommunication. Being able to describe a technical problem, after all, demands a level of technological literacy that some people simply don’t have. According to a recent EU study, approximately 32 % of Europeans still lack basic digital skills.

And this challenge appears all of the time. Massinissa put it to me like this: “When you are supporting someone on the remote device, most of the time the person is not tech savvy, (and) even what seems to be an easy task can sometimes become cumbersome.” All of which means a lot of extra work for the IT supporter, which often leads to an increased need for support staff.

Introducing Visual Guidance for iOS mobile devices

In response to this clear need in remote IT support, we developed Visual Guidance for the TeamViewer QuickSupport app. This is a smart, unique, and free feature that allows you to give and receive remote IT support to iPhones and iPads while also adhering to Apple’s strong security guidelines.

Visual Guidance works by creating a small screen-within-a-screen on the end user’s mobile device, just like the one you see with minimized multimedia content. This screen shows the end user exactly what the expert is doing in real time. They can then follow along with the expert’s guidance on their own device.

For experts and users alike, the Visual Guidance feature will help to avoid miscommunication—saving time, money, and a whole lot of frustration. Through it, communication is crystal clear, because both expert and user have a shared view of the steps needed to resolve the issue.

At the moment, no other solution (aside from Apple) offers this level of support for iOS mobile devices. And as part of our QuickSupport app, it’s completely free both for people who want help and those who provide it.

The benefits of Visual Guidance for mobile iOS devices