Welcome to the future: Of Customer Service

This immersive video solution provides customers with the personalized support they need at a moments notice.

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Inspiration

When we were given the problem statement: to build a video streaming solution, we immediately went out and started to do research into what CSG, the hackathon sponsor could actually use in their day to day business. What we came up with was a new take on customer service. Why not make it the most personalized interaction you can possibly have?

What it does

Our solution incorporates video in many facets to bring together companies and their customers in a very personal way. It is a 21st-century take on customer support. To seemlessly transition customer relations to an organic, mutually-beneficial and data-driven process. We brought together innovation, thinking, learning, doing, and just the right amount of coffee to create an absolutely stunning finished product.

Purpose

We set out to create a video streaming solution. What we came up with was way more than just that. We created a total platform based around video streaming. We created a revolutionary way for customer service representatives to interact with any customer in need. This site is a central hub for all customer service interactions -- a social media platform where customer and customer service representatives can come together and solve problems.

This site enables customer service representatives to livestream video to customers in need or to post videos regarding frequently asked questions -- there is no easier way to get information than to be told aloud. A phone call is impersonal and often involves robots and the iconic lady-computer voice. We ditched all that. We set out to put the personality back into customer service and there is no better way to do that than face-to-face.

How we built it

Using meteor.js for the backend, jquery, css, and html on the front end, and the stylus css preprocessor to turbocharge everything we brought together a few plugins, common-domain stock images and

Challenges we ran into

When connecting to another machine's local deployment the appear-in plugin does not allow you to share your camera. There was not a great workaround that we could use besides going to the actual appear-in website. Therefore we decided last minute to pitch this as a security feature for the customer and demonstrate it by using the workaround.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Champions of the CSG Hackathon 2017 Matt didn't die from an overdose of Redbull and Coffee shots We learned so much about rapid development that we are looking forward to taking with us in the years to come.

What we learned

Caffeine at 3 AM does wonders. Getting 1 hour of sleep is worth it. Building a solution in a hackathon that a company can actually use is a very good move, the judges understand the solution and empathize with your design. In a hackathon make sure you nail the visuals and idea first and then if you have time go back and implement more technologically challenging components.

What's next for Welcome to the future: Of Customer Service

Although this project was built as a minimum viable product in less than 24 hours, our affiliations with it did not end the minute we accepted our first place prized. Jake is working for CSG this summer and Matt will be joining them in the fall as he already had accepted an internship for this summer.

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