Where video meets customer experience

Gary Bennett at Enghouse Interactive explains why today’s tech-savvy consumers expect far more than voice-based interfaces at contact centres and describes the benefits that video communications can bring

 

For organisations to improve the overall customer experience (CX), they must first understand and engage with their customers by actively listening to their needs and pain-points. They must also put in the effort to identify customer behaviour patterns and their communication channel preferences to make it as easy as possible to interact and seek assistance if needed. If they don’t, someone else will.

 

The truth is today’s customers are more tech-savvy than ever before and expect companies to leverage technology to deliver CX-excellence across multiple channels. Moving away from the good old phone in favour of more video-based tools is the latest CX trend that shouldn’t be ignored as it can bring tangible business benefits.

 

The new face-to-face

As technology adoption increases across all industries, more businesses are presented with the opportunity to leverage video and make it an enabler of a more customer-centric future. Driven at first by the need for socially distanced relationships during the pandemic, customers have embraced video communication not just for work Microsoft Teams calls, but also to get in touch with customer service.

 

Video isn’t just another customer communication channel though. It’s the new face-to-face that blends the trio of speed, convenience and empathy much demanded by customers today. Incorporating video into customer service expands the choice of communications channels customers can engage with.

 

Aside from replicating face-to-face interactions without customers and agents having to be in the same location, video offers the unique benefit of exposure to non-verbal cues and gestures, giving a richer experience than just voice on its own.

 

It gives customers the chance to not only explain the problem they’re facing but also show the issue, for example a part that’s missing, where components don’t fit, or car accident damage.

 

By the same token, agents can use video to demonstrate how to do things, such as assembling a product or updating the software on it. If done right, this can result in higher first call resolution and reduced average handling time.

 

In addition, video conversations mean an opportunity to deliver greater personalisation and deepen their relationships with customers, which can then easily translate to improved customer engagement, brand advocacy and loyalty.

 

Extending video into customer service

Adopting video conferencing solutions for the purpose of enhancing CX can help organisations drive significantly better business results and improve competitive advantage. Customers that feel more connected and emotionally involved with customer service representatives are less likely to take their business elsewhere.

 

By incorporating video solutions into multiple touchpoints like websites, mobile apps or an in-store kiosks, businesses can offer seamless communication experiences at the point of customer’s choice.

 

However, to create a truly seamless CX, agents shouldn’t treat video as a standalone channel, or it will turn into a silo. Instead, they should be able to easily escalate between video and other channels, with the ability to see a single view of all the interactions in the customer journey, both those parts that happened on video and on email or on the phone. This is crucial to avoid frustrating customers who simply do not want to repeat themselves and want to resolve their problem quickly.

 

From an organisational perspective, video can easily be provided by cloud delivery technologies and empowered by the high capacity networks that now underpin them to promote productivity across customer service agents.

 

This also has the benefit of improving staff utilisation and efficiency by making it easy to seamlessly bring in subject matter experts or trouble-shooters, wherever they’re located, to handle specialist customer queries. That smoothness in internal interactions in the reason why cloud has become the preferred deployment approach for video and all other communications channels in the contact centre.

 

Meeting customer expectations

The rapid adoption of smartphones and tablets in the consumer market has transformed realities and expectations. Consumers use video daily in just about all their communications, so why wouldn’t they want to use it to contact customer service and resolve their queries.

 

Organisations should treat it as an opportunity to truly transform their contact centres, using cloud-based integrated technologies to capture valuable customer data and deliver excellent experiences.

 

Building a better CX with video communication is not, however, a short-term initiative. It should be approached on an ongoing basis, with the deployment of the right tools that are fit for purpose to support collaboration between agents. That enhancement of internal communication plays a crucial role in providing front-line agents with instantaneous access to experts who can resolve customer issues faster.

 

Only that way can organisations realise the tangible benefits of improved CX, including increased customer satisfaction, retention and revenue.

 

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Gary Bennett is VP of Sales, EMEA at Enghouse Interactive

 

Main image courtesy of iStockPhoto.com