Friday, January 29, 2016

8 Ways to Use Video for Customer Success, Education, and Advocacy

Video is the modern web browser’s medium of choice. And not just while they’re scrolling through Facebook or spending hours on YouTube; studies have shown that even at work, people prefer to watch video than read text. And that means you! And more importantly (no offence), your customers.

So give the people what they want! If you want to build a customer base that’s learning, growing, getting the most out of your product or service, and loving you while they do it, video is the way to go! If not … well, you might want to see someone for that.

Let’s take a look at eight ways to use video to support your customer relationships:

1. Onboarding Videos

Script it, record it, ship it. And then ship it over and over and over. The beautiful thing about onboarding videos is that you can record them once and use them multiple times. And sure, the same thing goes for text-based onboarding, but since video is so much more captivating and keeps viewers engaged for longer, why not start your customer’s journey off right?

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The better you can make the first few weeks of your customer’s journey and the faster you can get them up and running, the more likely they will be to use your product or service effectively and see positive results. And that means there’s a greater likelihood that you’ll retain them long-term. In other words, the lifetime value of a well onboarded customer skyrockets far beyond the opposite.

The well-renowned Uber created an onboarding video for their drivers to learn how to use the app and how to become a well-reviewed driver. Check it out:

If you want to make the process a little more personal, you can always shoot an additional 10-30 second clip to add to the beginning of each onboarding video that addresses the unique customer.

2. Knowledge Base Videos

Your knowledge base is a hub of documentation around frequently asked questions, instructions for completing common tasks, or options for troubleshooting issues. It’s sole purpose is to help customers self-serve. Video should be a part of this.

But don’t get too trigger happy with video, because it really is best as a supplementary component to your knowledge base. Some people may not be able to listen to audio at the moment when they’re self-serving or they may be looking for one specific step of the process and scanning text is easier for this. An easy way to get around this is to include a video at the start of the article and add the transcript of the video below, like Unbounce does.

video in knowledge base

These types of videos are often comprised of on-screen text and screenshares. Consider adding a more human element every-so-often and show the face of that lovely voiceover! … like our Ji, our Manager of Customer Experience, did in this recent video!

Ji bought a teleprompter that works with his tablet (the R810.1 Universal Android Teleprompter) for this shoot. This allowed him to script his lines beforehand but avoid spending hours memorizing them the night before the shoot!

3. Meet-the-Team Videos

People like to work with people. That’s why people-skills are so important in Customer Success roles, duh. For many companies, the customer team has long term relationships with their customers — but it’s so often limited to a purely phone-based relationship. Open the doors and allow your customers to get to know a little bit more about who they’re working with. Check out the video that DoubleDutch, a mobile app for events and conferences, put together called “Meet the DoubleDutch Customer Success Team”:

As an alternative, you can showcase your team from different angle and do a higher production film that shows the ‘real’ side of your customer team or your whole company while having a little fun! At Vidyard, we put together a few videos like this every year. Most recently, customers met the Vidyard Family through our version of the Adams Family Theme Song!

4. Support Video Calls

It’s a lot easier to build a relationship when visual cues are involved. Imagine dating someone for a year, but for this year you only ever spoke to them on the phone. You never got to know what they looked like, or evaluate whether they were really into you by their body language. It’d be hard to grow that relationship! And just think, what would you picture when you were day-dreaming about them?

Not that your customers are going to be day-dreaming about you, but the ability to see you on calls can still help to build a strong bridge between your support team and your customers.

support video call

5. Live Stream Updates

Sometimes, another email update about what’s going on at your company is not what your customers are looking for. Whoops! Did I actually write that on the web? There are just so. Many. Emails!

So why not think outside the box and host an update for your customers on a live stream? That way they can get a real, unedited view into who your team is, where you work, and what’s new. Jeff Saunders, an Account Manager at Vidyard, recently hosted one of these. He invited his accounts to join him live for a coffee and quick discussion with Ji, Manager of Customer Experience, Jeff, Director of Product Marketing, and myself.

6. Customer Stories

Who said customer stories are only for prospects? No one, that’s who. Sharing the stories of customers having success with your product or service with other customers is beneficial for three reasons:

  1. Reinforcing the benefits of your offering
  2. Helping them understand how to best utilize your product or service
  3. Laying the path for upsell opportunities

So spread the love. Get started by checking out these 7 tips on creating believable video testimonials and keep in mind that if you’re creating stories for customers, you’ll want to dive deeper than the value prop of your product; your customers already know this!

7. Customer Webinars

Generally speaking, your customers will have a different level of knowledge in your area of expertise than higher funnel prospects. So invite them to their own webinar where you can dive deeper into a niche topic and even talk specifically about how to use certain product features. Getting on a webinar and sharing best-practices, demonstrating how to do a task, and opening the floor to questions in real time is the perfect way to help your customers get the most out of your product, feel supported, and build connections with your team.  

After you’re done your webinar, consider chopping it up into shorter segments and posting the webinar recordings in a customer hub or help center!

8. Personalized Campaign Videos

Your name is your identity. And the same goes for your customers and their names. So imagine you could send your customers specialized marketing messages that really connected with them by bringing them right into the story and adding their names within personalized videos.

personalized videoSince they’re already your customers, you have a detailed profile already built out in your marketing automation and CRM platform. Put these into play for video campaigns promoting your latest learning session, webinar, or knowledge article and take your story to a whole new level with personalization within your videos.

Are you using video for customer education, success, and advocacy? Tell us how in the comments!

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