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Do Customers Actually Find Your Support Videos Useful?

Congratulations if you’re among the thousands of businesses that have created a library of customer support videos! Just don’t celebrate too hard—creating them is only the beginning.

Like any product, your videos are targeted to solve a specific customer problem. You can’t know if you’ve achieved your purpose and whether they are measurably impacting your support metrics until you start looking at the data. Data which, if you’re using a video support platform, you should have access to a treasure trove of through your analytics.

Log in and let’s take a stroll through how your customers use your videos so you can optimize them for impact.

How to know if your customers find your videos useful:

Find out what they’re watching and where

Knowing how, when, and where your customers consume your videos can tell you a lot about what they’re seeking. Take location or device data, for example:

• Customers from different countries may have different language preferences
• Urban and rural customers are likely to have different questions
• Mobile and desktop customers are likely to have different viewing habits

These differences can be illuminating, and if you don’t tailor your videos to your audience, customers may not find the answers they’re seeking.

Just consider the phenomenon of the silent mobile video. Over 85 percent of videos on Facebook are viewed without sound. Why? Because most Facebook users are on mobile, most people on mobile are in public, and most people in public don’t want to bother others. If most of your viewers are on mobile and you don’t include subtitles, they probably won’t watch your support videos.

Always collect post-video feedback: Use a pop-up to query customers on whether videos sufficiently answered their questions. Learn more here.

Identify all the location, language, and device characteristics of your customers and review your videos to make sure they’re a match.

Find out who is watching what

Filtering your customers by customer persona can reveal a broad range of viewing habits. You may find that certain complaints are specific to specific industries, such as banks being overly concerned with data security or software startups being ravenous for technical details. You may find that new users commonly exhibit a deep interest in setup videos while long-time users are far more interested in upgrades, workarounds, and patches.

Write down the viewing habits of each persona and compare those to their support metrics. Are videos having an impact on case deflection, first contact resolution, NPS, or average handling time? How might you incorporate them more fully to empower your agents and improve results?

Find out how they watch

Use persona-based viewing data to compare individual videos to each other. Do customers commonly watch some videos all the way through and not others? What’s the difference? Do they seem to find some lengths or styles preferable? Begin a list of best practices and come up with questions for customers.

For instance, what is happening when multiple customers re-watch a particular video segment? Are they finding it so useful they’re rewinding to show others or are they confused and unable to understand?

Here are a few areas you might explore with customer research:

• Ask customers how they feel about self-help videos
• Track how customers find your video. Are they optimized for SEO?
• Track video as a touchpoint in the customer journey
• Ask customers how you might improve their usage of support videos
• Track whether video resolves complaints or serves as a precursor to a support call

With data in hand, you can start to optimize and improve your video library.

Use the data to improve future videos or tweak current ones

With a laundry list of improvements, it’s time to reassess your video library. Is it accomplishing its job? Are these videos garnering relatively high engagement and completion rates or are they just adding more complication to the customer support journey? How else might you improve them? What videos are missing from the library that should add?

Turn these questions into edits, and you’ll be well on your way to optimizing your support video experience to truly serve your customers.

Want to increase customer satisfaction too? Watch our Chalk Talk, Increase Customer Satisfaction and Reduce Support Load with Video.

The post Do Customers Actually Find Your Support Videos Useful? appeared first on Vidyard.

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Last Chance to Register for Fast Forward on November 29th & 30th

Fast Forward is less than a week away, and we’re more excited than ever about what our speakers are planning to talk about. From seasoned sales leaders taking their teams to the next level with video, to marketing trailblazers that wrote the book on driving more conversions with video, there’s something for everyone at Fast Forward. Whether you’re new to video, or you’ve been pressing record since before you could walk, this event is for you!

Register Now

Join over 1,500 Marketers at Fast Forward 2017

Register Now

But don’t take our word for it–let’s dive into what our keynotes and panels are going to share with you:

For Sales Leaders:

How Our SDRs Tripled Response Rates with Personal Video Messaging  – Ryan Vitello – Terminus
Video messaging has transformed our outbound prospecting (and our results)! See exactly how we do it, how we trained our team, and what we’ve learned so far.

 

 

 

 

Proven Ways to Use Video Throughout the Deal Cycle to Boost Close Rates – Doug Davidoff – Imagine LLC
When it comes to B2B selling, video is the next best thing to being there in person. Learn how to use video throughout the deal cycle to close more business, faster.

 

 

How We Use Video to Convert 25% of Trial Leads and Accelerate Inbound Sales – Dylan Hey – Leadfeeder
Learn how LeadFeeder uses inbound marketing and video to convert 25% of their sales leads to revenue by enabling sales professionals to build relationships with prospects.

Plan your day

See more Sales sessions and plan your day!

Plan your day

For Marketers:

From Tactical to Strategic: Our Path to B2B Video Marketing Maturity and ROI – Michael Ballard – Lenovo
From YouTube and views, to Personalized Video and real pipeline. Learn how Lenovo’s B2B Demand Gen team has taken video from a tactic to a core strategy.

 

 

 

Just Do It: Video Production 101 for ANY B2B Marketer – George B Thomas -The Sales Lion
Video doesn’t need to be hard or expensive. Join inbound marketing ninja George B. Thomas to see how anyone in marketing can start creating great videos today.

 

 

Storytelling with Video: Creating a Narrative to Disrupt and Drive Action – Michael Margolis – Get Storied
Video isn’t just a new way to tell the same story. Narrative strategist Michael Margolis shares how to create a new narrative through storytelling that inspires action.

 

Plan your day

See more Marketing sessions and plan your day!

Plan your day

For Vidyard Users:

How to Generate Leads from Video Using Vidyard’s Interactive Player- Stephanie Yi – Vidyard
Lights, camera, call-to-action! Get the latest tips on how to use embedded forms and interactive video to generate more leads and accelerate the buying journey.

 

There are over 20 speakers to learn from at Fast Forward, and you’ll be joining over 1,500 marketers, sales professionals, and customer success superstars for 2 full days of virtual video learning. So what are you waiting for? Register now!

The post Last Chance to Register for Fast Forward on November 29th & 30th appeared first on Vidyard.

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The 9 Secrets to Making Video Dialog Sound Natural

How can something that each of us spends thousands of hours practicing every year be so devilishly difficult?

We’re, of course, talking about dialog—that simple back-and-forth between human beings that’s one of the trickiest parts to nail in your marketing videos. A dearth of spoken sincerity can cause the whole production to come crashing down and feel stilted, and even multimillion dollar movies and A-list actors are guilty of it (Looking at you, Keanu).   

And just as in Hollywood, lousy video marketing dialog can be an ROI killer. Here are some tips for writing more believable banter:

The nine secrets to making video dialog sound natural

 

1. Read it out loud

Consider this your first line of defense against dialog disaster. You’ve already poured years of practice into the spoken word, and by listening to yourself, you’ll hear what does and doesn’t work. As you say it, rewrite a new version.

 

2. Use contracted dialog n’ such

There’s a pretty big gap between how we write and how we say things. That’s because when people are speaking, there’s a wealth of subtle cues in the form of tone, emphasis, emotion, and body language. “Are you serious?” can be communicated with a furrowed brow. “That’s horrible,” can be said with just a raised upper lip. Replace words in your script with these stage directions.

Also, speed up the rate of which people say things. We talk fast—at 145 words per minute versus 40 for reading. To try and fit it all in, people contract just about everything that can be shortened. ‘Do not’ becomes don’t, ‘cannot’ becomes can’t, ‘it will’ becomes it’ll, and most transitions such as ‘but,’ ‘if,’ and ‘whereas’ merely get dropped. Write for speed and cut the fluff.

 

3. Eavesdrop on real conversations

Curious where to use those contractions? Go back to basics and do some good old-fashioned people watching. Try it right now in your workspace—stop and listen to how coworkers converse with each other. Note how rarely they speak in cliches such as “ace in the hole” or “as luck would have it” compared to how often these phrases show up in scripts. Spend time playing office stenographer, type up conversations, and correct your dialog accordingly.

 

4. Leave out the boring stuff

After collecting reams of real, recorded inter-office dialog, cut out all the pieces that are unnecessary or boring. Real people use lots of, um, filler words and drop into unrelated tangents. For the sake of your marketing video audience’s limited attention span, streamline the script and keep things moving.

 

5. Don’t overuse names

Most of the time, we don’t address each other as anything. We just start talking. According to Angelo Perra, playwright, and author of Making Character Dialog Sound Natural, that’s because “it sounds silly. (Mary, you look great. Thank you, Tom. Do you want to watch a movie, Mary? Yes, Tom.)” Use names only sparingly, if at all.

 

6. Treat it like tennis

Most writing, especially in marketing, is a long, sustained, unidirectional rant. This article, for example, leaves no room for you to butt-in, and though you’re probably writing this way, that’s not how dialog works. It’s more like a tennis match. People trade quick, broken sentences back and forth, back and forth.

 

7. Keep your characters busy

Ever notice that in the movies or TV shows, characters are always doing something like chopping vegetables or fixing a car while they talk? That’s because, in a real conversation, adults rarely stand, hands at their side, taking turns making declarations. Get your characters engaged with something and you’ll relieve the uncomfortable tension of two people acting like human chatbots.

 

8. Weave in multiple threads

In real life, we like to multitask topics. According to the Creative Writer’s Guild, “It’s entirely normal for participants in a conversation to maintain multiple threads of dialogue. They can simultaneously be talking about the meaning of life, what they had for lunch on Tuesday, and how stressed they are about homework—and none of this is a contradiction.”

When writing dialog for your marketing video, get at least two threads going. If the characters are going to talk about how frustrated they are with their budget planning, also weave in something about inter-office politics or a universal frustration, like teleconferencing software. It’ll make things feel less forced.  

 

9. Bury your agenda to avoid the consumers from Mars effect

We have all seen a consumer from Mars: they’re the people on infomercials whose emotions are vastly more potent than the situation warrants. They rave about how a good product like dish soap positively saved their marriage. They sound, as Robert Cialdini, Ph.D. and author of Influence says, “like people not from this world.” Give your characters realistic reactions to the situation.

The dialog doesn’t seem half as daunting now, does it? Just read your stuff out loud, listen to how people talk and keep the conversation going back and forth, sometimes across multiple threads. Do that, and you’ll write more like people speak, yaknow?

And now, here are one and a half minutes of everything we’re trying to save you from genuinely awful commercials.

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Is Your Marketing Ready For The New Millennial-um?

Generals always prepare for the previous war. Cities always build for the most recent earthquake and regulators always prepare for the last big crash. But does our past really predict our future?

Rarely, especially in marketing. Over the past two decades we’ve evolved from snail mail and billboards to handheld supercomputers and AI ads—and the rate of change is only increasing. Any marketers planning for next year based on yesterday’s data are going to miss not only the dramatic channel changes but the demographic changes as well.

Millennials—oh yes—are about to complete their sweep. By 2025 they’ll account for 75 percent of the workforce (read: buyers) and they’re about to upend your marketing like a digital native hurricane.

The future is bright, loud, and interactive

What does the next generation of B2B buyers love? While it’s impossible to say on an individual basis (your marketing tools will have to tell you that), broadly, they’re in love with new mediums: messaging apps, social media, and of course, video. When Forrester asked whether they prefer video content, three generations responded in this fashion:

• Millennials: 71%
• Gen Xers: 58%
• Baby Boomers: 54%

There are several reasons for this. Millennials spend more time on mobile and more avidly adopt new mediums than other generations; however, they’re also chasing a human connection that Baby Boomers and many Gen Xers prefer to find in-person. 

For millennials, video, be it live or asynchronous, is the next best thing to face-to-face. It offers connection but affords them the mobility they value so deeply.

While many companies are adopting video, they’re doing it carelessly and still facing poor results. Some 54 percent of B2B buyers report that much of the marketing materials that vendors give them, including video, is useless. And in a recent study, only 23 out of 60 companies got a passing score for using video to engage their audiences.

What’s the disconnect? Well, it’s that today’s marketers are preparing for yesterday’s market. Luckily, Forrester is here to help marketers adapt before it’s too late.

What’s your blueprint for B2B video success?

To make the most of video, marketers need to unlearn what they know, and get out of their own way. Millennials and the Gen Zers hot on their heels have little tolerance for video done wrong. In an exclusive new Forrester report, the research firm cites three ways most marketers mess it up:

1. They over-complicate video production

Few things say, “I don’t know what millennials want” like using costly 4k cameras and expensive lighting in late-stage funnel content. High-production value video has its place, but most marketers are mired in the past and haven’t adapted to a new world where less can be more. Lower production-value video can have a greater impact because it has much higher perceived authenticity.

2. They create poor-performing content

In Forrester’s words, most marketers “produce a haphazard flood of content” which gets soundly ignored. They fail to target it properly to their buyer personas or adjust content types to different buying funnel stages. On the flip side, this creates an immense opportunity for those marketers who get video right and break through the noise with something targeted and differentiated.

3. They fail to attribute video properly

How does video influence buying cycles? And what videos perform best and where? Most marketers, including those who create an ample amount of video, can’t say. That’s because it wasn’t until recently that the technologies around hosting, sharing, tracking, and analyzing video consumption became accessible. Now that they are, not all marketers are using them, and few are sure how to weigh these calculations.

So, how can you avoid these video marketing pitfalls and preparing for yesterday’s market? Forrester has a plan.

Download their 2017 report A Blueprint for Successful B2B Marketing to learn:

• The perfect content type for each stage of the funnel
• Optimal parameters, like video length
• How companies like KPMG and Polycom dominate with video marketing

With this blueprint, you’ll far better prepared to adapt to the new millennial-um.

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Welcome to the Age of Intelligence (and What it Means for Video)

Dreamforce 2017: Through the Video Lens

Last week, the spectacle that is Dreamforce engulfed the city of San Francisco bringing together tens of thousands of business professionals, app developers and members of the tech community. It was another impressive culmination of all things digital in modern customer experience, reminding us how far things have come, and how far we have yet to go, in the evolving worlds of marketing, sales and customer service.

If you’ve never experienced Dreamforce first-hand, here’s a taste of our experience at the event:

This year’s keynote by Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff anchored the idea that we’re now entering the fourth industrial age, the age of Intelligence. For those not keeping track, this follows the industrial ages of Steam (transportation and heavy manufacturing), Electricity (the light bulb and a much better way to shave), and Information/Computing (you know – Buzzfeed, Pinterest, Netflix, Emoticons). This new age of Intelligence brings us deep learning algorithms, artificial intelligence (AI), and other innovations that help to ensure that autonomous driving vehicles stay on the right path.

But what does this have to do with video? Hold that thought.

Salesforce made many announcements around its Einstein platform, which is the backbone of its AI strategy. Einstein Bots to power automated chat services, Prediction Builder for predictive modeling and automated workflows within marketing and sales, and myEinstein to make all of this accessible to us mere mortals. At the heart of all this innovation is one core idea: to help businesses deliver more personalized and relevant digital experiences that create higher engagement, more sales opportunities, and increased customer satisfaction–and to do it at massive scale with hyper-efficiency. But how compelling will these services be if they don’t deliver experiences through the most engaging content medium?

Video must evolve to keep up with the machines.

As we march into the age of intelligence, video content, technologies and strategies will need to evolve to better align with how we do business. Whether you’re part of a production agency, a B2B business or a video technology provider, consider the following implications and predictions for video given what we saw at Dreamforce:

1. Video will need to become tightly integrated with other business applications to make it easy to index, search and present in an automated way. Chatbots, automated nurtures, and triggered workflows will need to identify and surface the most relevant video content to answer specific questions or to engage potential buyers in a fully autonomous way. YouTube no longer cuts it as a video hosting platform for businesses.
2. Video content libraries will need to expand quickly to support this degree of personalization. Whether for marketing, sales or customer service, businesses will need to accelerate video creation to build libraries of content that answer a broader set of questions. Without the necessary content to surface to the customers, automation and AI are all lights but no action. The good news is that most B2B companies are already ratcheting up their video libraries with a 30% increase in video production year-over-year and more than 90% now creating video content in-house.
3. As an extension to the prior point, expect to see new solutions emerge for real-time customization and personalization of video. Perhaps we don’t need 1,000 new videos to address every question; maybe we only need 50 pieces of micro-content that can be merged, customized and personalized in automated ways to effectively give us an infinite bucket of content? When this technology shift happens, you can be sure it will impact what videos we produce and how we create them.
4. Audio transcriptions and rich meta-data will become a critical part of video content management. This type of information is necessary to enable the machines to analyze libraries of videos to identify contextually relevant pieces of content (like surfacing a video on Product X for Industry Y and Company Size Z). Expect video platforms to offer more robust and more automated solutions for transcription, keyword analysis, and tagging.
5. Video analytics will need to connect to customer relationship management (CRM) and other key applications. This connection will help surface additional insights about each video, like how audiences are responding to them (i.e., average engagement time) and how well each video is producing the desired conversion (i.e., new lead generation, influenced revenue, or impact on customer retention). Combining this data with the meta-data described above will help businesses quickly surface the videos that are not only the most contextually relevant, but are also most likely to produce the desired outcome.

Welcome to the age of intelligence. It’s time for businesses to get serious about how they manage their videos, how they connect back to systems of record, and what types of insights and analytics they can capture. Simply put, it’s time to build more intelligent video strategies. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is Dreamforce 2017 through the video lens.

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Confession: I Don’t REALLY Care About Blogging

Yes, you read that correctly. I don't really care about Blogging.

I know what you're thinking. This blog is called Become a Blogger. I HAVE TO care about blogging.

If that's what you're thinking, don't worry – I understand. But I'm going to encourage you to listen to today's episode.

Listen to This Episode

In the episode, I get kinda personal and share the journey I've been on for the last few weeks.

There are certain things changing in my life, and I'm happy to share a little bit of my story with you.

This is not one of my typical episodes, but I hope you get a different kind of value from it.

Enjoy!

– Leslie

Here's the video I referred to in the episode:

 

The post Confession: I Don’t REALLY Care About Blogging appeared first on Become A Blogger by Noemi M.

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