Adding Video Chat to Your Customer Service Offering

Not many are doing it and even the big guys have not really walked down the road to full-fledged video customer support.

Let’s talk about some of the reasons why it’s pretty cool. We have a client that we’re doing this for right now. We’re looking at some of the pluses and minuses of using it and testing it for this client whose pretty forward-thinking and wants to do some unique and different things with their support cycle and customer journey.

Bonuses of Implementing Video

A unique experience. Unique experiences can be good or bad. A lot of early adopters enjoy unique experiences but the majority of us have a wait-and-see approach. The cool thing about video is that we all FaceTime, right? Every single one of us has an iPhone or even if you have an Android device you’re using some type of video to conference and to talk to your friends, family, and kids. There’s a comfort level that’s been developed and programmed into enjoying and having video be a normal part of our lives.

It’s as easy as being across the United States. I can read a bedtime story to my daughter when I’m in California and she’s in Pennsylvania. The option is there for one and two-way video. It doesn’t have to be a two-way video which I know a lot of people freak out about. I think there are some pluses and minuses to that. We’d want the customer to see the customer service or sales rep yet it’s not always appropriate to see the customer on the other end unless the customer opts-in. It’s something that you can differentiate and be cutting-edge with.

Buyer Urgency

When somebody goes on Amazon, eBay, or other sites online, they scour the sites to look for the best price or go to another site. When you’re in a store and you see a product and hold it in your hand, not saying that you don’t care about price, but there becomes an urge to buy because of the tangible product in front of you. You can have a sales rep that comes up and talks to you about it. It’s more than just doing research on your own and reading reviews and maybe the first reviews are bad so you move on to the next one.

With video, we can really push that urge to buy. We can create that sense of an in-store experience without being in-store. We know malls across the United States are closing. Everyone is talking about what experiences can you give the customers now. Even when a store opens, it’s not normally just a store that you walk in and then pick something up. There are displays and different things that you can interact with. They’re trying to make it really cool so that it drives you to that store.

For those of you who have customer support- maybe you’re a B2B, or a totally online company, it’s very difficult to give an in-store experience. But with video, we can present that. It’s pretty cool for your service and your sales by trying to help a customer out through a sales call where you show a product through a quick demo. I would say the urge to buy is the reason that we can increase conversion rates on any product using video because customers are starting to buy into that.

The Technology Is Here

A couple of years ago with webRTC or specific plugins, it was kind of a painful experience. If you wanted to do video you had to download the plug-in and sometimes there was waiting and it just made the customer experience poor. But now, with the technology that’s out there, we’re able to route face-to-face with the customer and the associate in a way that’s totally seamless. Your website may have a click-to-call button and now you can have click-to-video. We can have an interactive video experience with that customer.

Here’s the other thing with the technology, the customer that we’re doing video with is using co-browsing as well. So basically while you’re doing a video and you’re browsing their website, we can actually be going on to the same website, circle things, and talk about things from a face-to-face standpoint. You can use not only just video but co-browsing technology with video to create a really cool experience where basically the customer service rep is “sitting next to the customer” and going through the website with them and showing specific things. Maybe they even have a couple of physical pieces of that product that they can show.

So I think technology is adding a really unique customer experience and not enough of us from an organizational standpoint are taking advantage of it because people are still nervous about it. The cost of video customer services is super cheap. With the technology of today and doing video over the Internet; it’s not very expensive.

From an outsourcing standpoint, there’s no extra cost for most outsourcers. If there is, they’re probably ripping you off. But we don’t charge anything extra other than what we normally do for voice and chat because the cost is actually a little bit less. You’re probably paying for a higher-end rep because you have to make sure that they’re looking the part within your demographic. It’s not just what they say but how they look as well. If you’re trying to do this in-house, it’s the same thing. There may be a little bit more cost but from an actual technology standpoint, the cost is nothing compared to what voice is.

Video Can Be Fun

This reason is awesome. It’s one of my favorites and why it can be so much fun especially when you’re in a group of people. This can be confused with video conference, but you can basically have a link that you can sign up on a customer’s or company’s website and get a group together. Let’s say it’s a bridal party and it’s two weeks before the wedding. You go on to this website and your whole bridal party does a really fun group session because you’re all in different cities all over the United States. Maybe even somebody’s in Europe. You can have a video chat with a beauty consultant to talk about makeup and hair. The company can actually sell the products directly to the people that are involved in that bridal party right from the website. They can take orders right there through the website or through some kind sort of co-browsing.

You can imagine and see the fun that this can add. When scheduling a trip with a consultant that’s on a ski slope, they can explain the backdrop and different types of events that you can take part in with your family members that are all logged in. It opens up the imagination and that’s what’s really cool about this from the customer support and sales side. When you can show how unique and cool you are; getting that urge to buy becomes so much more prevalent. And if you can have a really cool experience with that customer you’re going to end up selling them something that’s extremely profitable for you. 

Everybody’s trying to make their call center into a profit center and anything that we can do to increase conversions is a huge plus.

Augmented Reality

Through video, you can set up some things to show a customer what something will look like before they buy. Furniture stores can take you through a tour of a living room showing what the furniture will look like as you’re talking to the customer service rep while having the augmented reality part of the video piece. These experiences are unique and show the value of your product before the customer makes a purchase.

Don’t Miss Out

What ties this all together is that it’s cutting-edge. Very few companies are embracing this technology so it is one of the few times in business where there is a chance for your company to truly innovate and to really be on the cutting edge of the market. So many of you are going to wait until the cool factor of this is done and you’re going to end up implementing this after so many other companies have. Especially if you’re in a larger market where there’s a lot of spending that can go into some R&D from a customer service side. You’re going to be behind the times.

You don’t have to get crazy with this and do a full rollout. Not many of your customers at the beginning are going to take advantage of it until you can really show the value of it and word of mouth gets out. I would highly suggest in your 2020 year planning that you plan for a small rollout of a 2, 3, 4, 5, 10 person team and start to look at how you will add the technology. If you have any questions about the technology I’d be more than happy to help you.

Nice inContact has an advanced chat feature that also allows for video depending on where they click or what they would like to talk about. You can do a lot of easy programming with that too.

Test, Test, Test

There are some things that you need to do to prompt your customers into talking to them about what the video experience is like, but once you get a couple of them using it, you want to make sure that you capture those experiences. Send out some surveys and try to get some reviews on Facebook to talk about the video experience in hopes that it was positive and try to build the trust factor with your organization.

Something else for you to think about for your 2020 planning-I love technologies that aren’t static. There are technologies that you can really use your imagination with. There are so many different ways to use it for different types of clients.