Video is powerful - here's why...

Video. Now there’s something that’s on a meteoric rise in availability, utility, and popularity. 

Through YouTube, and the evolution of social media such as Facebook and TikTok, vast numbers of people have become familiar and comfortable with short, snappy videos as entertainment and education. In particular, the rise of the ‘how-to’ video is worthy of note, because so many of us choose a video like this over text heavy instructions.

It probably shouldn’t be that surprising, since seeing an item or watching a process being demonstrated is a far more natural and intuitive way for a person to understand it compared to being handed an instruction book. 

How does video fit into contact centre communications?

So video is powerful. Video is omnipresent and at the fingertips of anyone with a mobile device. It’s just waiting for contact centres to properly exploit.

More than ever before, we’re on the cusp of a potential video explosion in our space, with the expansion of chatbots and live chat. These are two channels where it’s the simplest thing in the world to add a link that will take a customer to a handy how-to video. You don’t even need their phone number, because they’ve opted to engage - they’ve started the journey via chat and the link just pops up in front of them.

Already far more widely deployed are email and SMS messaging as customer service channels. These too are channels through which it’s well established that links and other information can be sent to customers. 

Deployment

For a host of excellent reasons, many organisations aim to reduce or even eliminate paper comms to customers. Where they are still desirable, QR codes are a perfect way to make video easily available to a reader. They’re far faster and easier for savvy customers to pick up from a paper document than manually typing in a complicated URL address, and if it’s easier, people are more likely to do it.

I’ve mentioned a lot about sending URL links to customers. Clearly, it’s a lot easier to send a link than to embed video all over the place, or to try to send even short video files via the likes of MMS. Trying to deliver megabytes of data to hundreds of customers could quickly rack up costs in some channels. Using a link also means lots of people can be accessing a single video, rather than there being endless (potentially out of date) copies of the file floating around. The same link can also be shared across multiple channels – so it’s easy to deploy.

The video does need a place to live of course, and for customer-facing content you can choose from your YouTube channel, your website (particularly FAQ pages) or social media - all platforms that are likely to already be operating within established budgets.

Getting a return on your video investment

Okay, so we can agree that there are multiple ways to deploy video from the contact centre and that it’s relatively simple to achieve if you have the channels in place. Video content has to be created and there will be costs involved in terms of money and effort. So what’s the ROI here? As ever, it depends on what you’re trying to achieve.

People like video and they like good service, so video content that enables customers and provides them with solutions is good CX. Here, we’re looking to improve CSAT scores, and to this end another plus for customers is swift service. 

A short video is a lot simpler than trying to follow step-by-step instructions – which is good for the customer, as they devour that information more quickly, but also liberating for agents in the contact centre who are no longer laboriously talking through instructions. That means agents move on more quickly, so more customers and queries can be handled by the same sized team. Moreover, those instructions or explanations are now available to that customer to review at their leisure, making a repeat call on the same topic less likely.

FAQ videos

The bane of the contact centre are those FAQs. Agents endlessly churning the same answers to the same basic queries, when what we really need them doing is answering and dealing with the more complex questions that really impact customers. Having a suite of videos that tackle these can provide a fast way for agents to deal with these repeat offenders. It’s quick and simple to send a link as part of a call or chat, or to direct a caller to the FAQ page on your website, far faster than to talk through every item in real time. Again, the agent could be moving onto another query, instead of being stuck.

Video content drives better customer experience and contact centre efficiencies

In this context, video content can also feature in a prevention strategy, where you’re looking to keep customers from escalating queries to live chat or a phone call. Well deployed explainer videos on FAQ pages or available through QR codes on bills and other documents provide an engaging, go-to source of information that answers the most common questions.

Customers that feel informed don’t need to go that extra step. If they do still feel the need to escalate, it’s more likely that it’s due to a more complex question, which is exactly what we want staff to be helping them with.

It doesn’t stop at FAQ’s of course. Any topic which informs customers could have potential for a video treatment. Topics that also inform our own staff or colleagues within the wider business can be equally valid. With systems that are accessed by staff and customers now converging, you may even find that a customer facing video with instructions about your online portal, is equally valuable to new staff members as a training tool.

In all of these cases, the potential for better service (and therefore better customer experience) and the potential savings in time and resources are waiting to be realised.

Barriers to implementation - and how you can work around them!

We’re well-established providers of video content and we specialise in the contact centre space. We realise that despite the above, there are real barriers for getting video into contact centres. Three do seem to come up a lot and we’ve been thinking hard about tackling them.

Budget – for both money and time: Traditionally, video has been seen as expensive to produce. The idea of having a video strategy that encompasses a wide-ranging and far-reaching range of topics tends to put worrying cost figures in mind. That’s often because the style of video being considered – sleek, ultra-high-end, stylish productions - come with high price tags. In terms of time: Busy contact centre managers don’t have the bandwidth to be deeply involved in the scripting, storyboarding, endless meetings, that this sort of project will require.

Longevity: There’s a sense that once videos are created, they’re stuck in a moment of time, can quickly go out of date and are therefore inflexible. Money spent on them can feel like it’s gone. 

Speed of delivery: Contact centres move fast. The problems they’re facing can change from day to day or from one activity cycle to the next. A tactical approach is often needed and videos can feel like they’ll take weeks to produce. By the time a video is created, it could already be out of date.

How Premier CX can help

As I’ve noted, there is a tremendous amount of value to be had in deploying the right video content in contact centres. We’ve been putting together a new video proposition based on tackling just these issues.

Videos tailored to the contact centre, with a pricing model that fits, and a simplified process that delivers faster and demands less of your time and resource. Short, targeted, agile, and cost-effective content, available in packages that include the ability to either create new or update previous videos within the original budget. A proposition that allows for effective longer-term planning and budgeting, but with flexibility to produce strategic content as needed.

With all of that, you’re still tapping into the extra resource, professional copywriting and production talents, contact centre know-how and creativity of the Premier CX team.

We’d love to talk to you about it, answer your questions and most importantly – discover together how it could deliver on your challenges and targets.

If you would like to know more, check out our Video Services page or give us a call at Premier CX.