Help Lightning - Best Mobile Operations Management Solution

Company: Help Lightning, Birmingham, AL
Company Description: Help Lightning is a SaaS company from Birmingham, AL that is solving the problems of a worldwide pandemic. Help Lightning's Remote Visual Assistance software allows colleague separated by oceans to work together as if they are side-by-side. With obvious applications during social distancing (and incredible customer service), Help Lightning usage has grown over 417% since March of 2020.
Nomination Category: New Product & Service Categories - Business Technology
Nomination Sub Category: Mobile Operations Management Solution

Nomination Title: Help Lightning's Remote Assistance Software 14.0

The latest version of Help Lightning (14.0) was released on Friday, Feb 12, 2021.

When someone encounters a complex issue, they often need an expert to be onsite immediately. Waiting for a technician just isn't an option sometimes; this fix needs to happen right now. Help Lightning's Remote Assistance Software provides video collaboration services that enable a company’s experts to work virtually side-by-side with anyone needing help, anywhere in the world. The company’s cloud-based solution applies augmented reality features, including the merging of two video streams and the use of 3D annotation to improve real-time communications and solve difficult problems. Help Lightning is used for the installation, inspection, training, servicing, and repair of complex equipment and products.

Using augmented reality features, Help Lightning blends two real-time video streams, that of the agent and of the customer into a collaborative work environment. This technology allows an agent to virtually reach out and touch what the customer is working on. The expert’s hand displays in the customer’s field of view where they can annotate, use hand gestures, and even bring in tools, parts, images or instructions to quickly resolve the problem. Also, users can capture pictures, session recordings, and call data, which all become part of the call record for later review or training purposes.

Help Lightning hasa strong customer renewal rate of over 90%. That's because Help Lightning solves problems at all levels of an organization, from sales to margins to customer success to employee satisfaction. One Help Lightning customer, BD, achieved their highestNet Promoter scores ever: a perfect 100%, and that's at the height of the pandemic! Eduardo Bonefront of BD said, "Help Lightningwas not just something nice to have, but a key tool in order for us to be able to serve our customers."

Help Lightning featured heavily in an article written in theWall Street Journal about new use cases for augmented reality. The article goes into detail about how useful the software is, especially in the era of social distancing and travel restrictions. The article quotes Len Barlik, chief operations officer of Cox Communications, who says that Help Lightning "is absolutely essential to how we’re operating."

Help Lightning was listed as Capterra's Best Ease of Use Collaboration Software in 2020, in addition to a perfect 5 star review score. Users of Help Lightning leave glowing reviews, praising the software's intuitive UX design and couldn't-be-simpler set up. When all a customer has to do is click a link and immediatly start recieving help, it feels like it should always be this easy.

Help Lightning also won big at the ISG Digital Business Summit. Help Lightning was voted the winner of the ISG Startup Challenge in a live audience poll. Shafqat Azim,a partner atISG Digital Strategy and Solutions and host of the event, seemed fairly confident in the result. “As businesses and employees reimagine the way they work and leverage smart technologies that can help in real time, Help Lightning isn’t just a bandage on our pandemic circumstances, it’s an improvement,” said Azim. “Service representatives dial into Help Lightning on an existing device or browser and show, not just tell, users how to resolve a problem. Even from a thousand miles away, this is a faster, easier way to improve customer satisfaction.”

In an end of 2020 press release the company announced the following:

New customer acquisition increased 110%
Customer usage (measured in call volume) increased 457%
Enterprise users increased 133%