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Lights, Camera, Action – Why Video is Customer Service’s Rising Star

Customer service8 MIN READJul 14, 2022

Lights, Camera, Action - Why Video is Customer Service's Rising Star

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Video has, for some time now, been a key part of marketing toolkits. 

However, until recently, it didn’t quite have the same fanfare in the world of customer service.

But that’s all quickly changing. Today, we can see more and more support teams adopting video to deliver their customers fast, useful responses with a human touch.

So, you might be wondering — what led to this sudden explosion in the use of video for customer service? 

Well, that’s exactly what we’re going to be exploring in this article! 

We’ll go through the six of the biggest reasons why support teams are wholeheartedly embracing video, along with our top tips and examples for you to effectively include video in your very own support process! 

The best part? We’ll be video every step of the way! 

Faster resolutions

home office

Trying to explain problems or deliver solutions, especially to technical issues, via text can be a nightmare for both customer and agent. 

It usually involves huge blocks of text, multiple back and forths, and in the worst cases, a whole lot of misunderstanding. 

But what makes video so pawsome is that you can communicate large quantities of information in a relatively short time!

What might have taken hundreds of thousands of words to explain can often be said in a video which is about a minute long. 

Moreover, by using things like annotations in your videos, you can significantly reduce miscommunication by showing customers exactly what they need to do rather than have them go through a super-long support article with tiny screenshots of the UI. 

All in all, the process of sharing information for all parties is a lot easier. Which ultimately translates to faster resolutions!

🌟 Need some help creating your videos? Wistia’s Getting Started with Video articles are a treasure trove of super helpful and simple tips. And for companies looking to take it to the next level, their Show Business video course is absolutely ameowzing too! 

Highly shareable

Carrying over from the first point, let’s use another example:

Your agent has a lengthy phone call with a customer describing a highly complex issue. The agent tries their best to simultaneously listen to the customer’s problem while they also frantically scribble down notes. 

However, by the time the message actually reaches the engineer who needs to make the fix, half the communication has been lost in transit. Sounds familiar? 

On the flip side, if you’re using video it’s as simple as asking the customer to record a quick video and then sharing it with the relevant engineer. Significantly easier, right? 

🌟 Using video as part of your support process is a two-way street. Creating a ‘video-first’ support culture involves encouraging your customers to share videos of the issues they’re facing as well.

Improved agent productivity  

There’s nothing that kills agent productivity and motivation levels quite like having to respond to repetitive queries all day. 

In fact, it’s one of the biggest challenges faced by support teams. 

But two relatively straightforward fixes can help save your agents a ton of time and allow them to focus on more important tasks. That is, creating:

  • onboarding videos that take customers through the basic setup process. 
  • knowledge base videos addressing common questions that every single customer will have about your product.  

This is an extremely effective way to scale your support and just doing these two things alone will significantly reduce the number of repetitive queries in your support inbox. 

And the results are there to see: 73% of customer service professionals agree that investing in self-service options for customers has reduced their support workload

🌟Need some inspiration for creating your onboarding videos? Check out Loom’s onboarding course that’s built entirely out of Loom videos!

More personalized interaction 

Your agents probably have access to all the basic information about your customers and their history with your company. 

However, if you’re going to provide personalized support, you’re going to need more than just that. You’ll also need to know more about their personality style, their level of comfort with your product, their emotional state when they’re reaching out to you for support, etc.

A lot of these may not explicitly be stated by your customer but rather communicated through the actions and non-verbal cues they display. 

A medium like video gives you the perfect opportunity to go beyond the words they’re using to get a clearer picture of the situation and the customer you’re dealing with at any given moment!

And understanding exactly what your customers are going through is what will eventually help you provide solutions tailored around their very specific needs. 

Additionally, besides giving you a chance to get to know your customers better, adding a face, a voice, a smile, etc. through the use of video also allows you to share a little more about yourself and build a more human connection with your customers. 

tuna

🌟 To add a personalized touch of having yourself in the video alongside the screen recording or presentation, a tool like Loom, Mmhmm, or Wistia’s Soapbox might be a good fit – they’re all beginner-friendly!

Consistency across your support team 

seems good

As we’ve mentioned before, videos are an easy and engaging way to educate customers and help them fix problems on their own. 

The same logic holds true for your support team as well. 

Videos are an extremely useful training tool to get all your agents on the same page while empowering them with the information they need to deliver exceptional service. 

For example, whenever agents aren’t entirely sure of something, they can quickly refer to a training video you’ve created or deflect the ticket altogether by sending the customer a link to the relevant video. 

🌟 We don’t just meow the meow, we put our money where our meow-th is! So if you need any more proof that we really love video, feel free to check out an entire video course on support quality assurance that we’ve created! 

Lower support costs 

As we’ve mentioned above, if you use video effectively, you can drastically reduce not only the number of tickets you deal with but the time you spend on each. 

And if you’re spending less per agent as well as per interaction, well, you’ll be reducing your expenditure on customer support. 

There isn’t a whole lot more to be said about it since the math speaks for itself!

eggsellent

Additionally, you really don’t need to break the bank on creating customer service videos. 

In fact, it really doesn’t make sense to spend a ton of time and resources on support videos (i.e., go into full production mode for months), especially in the SaaS space, as most software products get regular updates. This means your videos will get outdated pretty quickly anyway!

Even the free software that comes ready to use on whatever system you use is more than enough to create helpful videos for your customers. For example, if you use a Mac, Quicktime does the job for capturing screen recordings and iMovie for making simple edits. 

For a bit more context, here’s the process we follow at Klaus whenever support recognizes a frequent topic/question: 

Simple, straightforward, and cats the job done!

May the force be video!

may the force klaus

With all the benefits to be had from adding video to your customer service arsenal, you can see why so many support teams are jumping on the video bandwagon!

If you haven’t made the switch yourself, making the transition might seem a little daunting. But anything that improves the customer experience while bringing down costs is certainly worth the effort!

And hopefully, we’ve given you enough of a framework to get cracking with your own customer support videos! 

If you have any other questions regarding using video for customer service, come say hi in our CX-obsessed community Quality Tribe. And if you can’t get enough of all things video, check out our video course and become a QA wizard while you’re at it! 

Written by

Jay
Jayanth Padmakumar
Jay loves all things mindfulness, sports, and craft beer. Sometimes, he also writes.

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