Emaar

Optimising customer service with a flexible remote desktop solution

Emaar Properties (Emaar), located in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), is one of the largest real estate developers in the UAE and is known for various large-scale projects such as developing Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world.

To bring their services closer to their clients they have placed 10 customer service kiosks, which allow Emaar clients to sell or purchase property, in 10 different locations within the UAE. In order to optimise the costs, they opted for automated self-service computer stations connected with a call centre, where Emaar’s customer service professionals are available for prompt assistance.

Emaar needed a remote desktop solution that would allow their operators to connect to an unattended computer remotely whenever a client required assistance.

“ISL Online software was able to successfully provide the software we were looking for, including all our security-related requirements,” said Umair Iqbal from Emaar.

Once a client needs assistance, he/she can start a video call with an operator, who immediately connects to the computer station and can see its screen, but not control it. By using pointers or drawing on the remote screen the operator can help the client to finalise his/her transaction. Disabling the remote desktop control function was explicitly requested by Emaar due to security reasons.

“At first, we have tried with Microsoft’s Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), but in their case, once an operator connects to a remote computer, the screen on the remote computer locks up and the client can only see a black screen, while we want our client to see the screen and end the action by himself/herself,” explains Umair Iqbal.

Establishing remote connections without being connected to the Internet

There is another peculiarity in the Emaar use case: for security reasons their computer stations are not connected to the Internet. Offering a self-hosted remote desktop licence, ISL Online came out as a winner also on these grounds. Emaar set up their local server and kept all the remote desktop sessions data completely private and in a controlled environment, establishing connections without the internet being active.

Emaar solves 25% of their kiosk-related workload remotely by using ISL Online remote desktop software. This means they annually support around 150 clients, which saves them almost 384 hours. Instead of visiting locations physically, they can connect remotely and monitor multiple sessions at the same time.

“ISL Online plays a considerable role in our work process optimisation and we would highly recommend this remote desktop solution to anybody,” says Umair Iqbal.