What comes to mind when you think online customer service? When it comes 
to dealing with businesses on the web, customer service is usually handled by email, chat, company website FAQs, and phone calls (maybe, if you’re really lucky.)
What if a business chose to put a face on their customer service? Sure, there’s Skype, but what if all parties are not available to chat at the same time? Since it’s probably not feasible for companies to send customer service reps to a customer’s house, video is the next best thing! The latest data from comScore states that YouTube served 12 billion videos during the month of November 2011. Needless to say, people prefer video to text!
Below are a few best practices for businesses looking to take customer care beyond impersonal text-only email:
- Have representatives designated to handle your video customer care and if possible, have one of those team members handle an individual customer issue from start to finish. This establishes a relationship and gives your customer a go-to person.
- Create time frames for response. Decide if you will respond within 24 or 48 hours, even if it’s just to tell the recipient that you’re looking into their issue and will video email them shortly with a full reply.
- Determine if your video representatives will be in-house or outsourced. Whether reps are in the building or elsewhere, they should be trained in proper protocol on how you want your company to be presented. Send them training videos demonstrating proper dress and lighting techniques.
Using video for customer service:
- Send a welcome video via email to new customers to let them know you’re available if they have any questions.
- Create how-to videos that can be sent after a purchase.
- Make special offers to select customers based on their buying habits or current product owned. If they haven’t purchased from you in a while, send them a video message describing new products, features, and services and ask them for their business.
- Offer video customer service as a premium for exceptional customers.
- Encourage recipients to send you videos back. This is especially helpful if they’re having a problem with a product and might be better able to show you than try to explain the situation in a text email. Think of the time that won’t be wasted if your company reps know immediately what the problem is and can find an immediate fix!
- Create a video community page, which will allow users to share experiences, help one another, and yes, complain. Note: Make sure you assign a moderator to monitor the page and address grievances and acknowledge issues. A problem quickly address and fixed can sometimes be more valuable than no problem at all.
With business environments becoming more competitive and with more people taking to the Web when they have a negative experience, it’s worth it to gain the edge that video offers. Earlier, I mentioned that many company pages offer FAQs, with mailVU’s Business Plan you can turn those text FAQs into embeddable videos for that page. Additionally, the Business Plan lets you send out videos with your company’s logo and links to your social media channels. Use Pinterest? mailVU’s Business Plan videos can be pinned to your boards. Check out mailVU’s awesome Pinterest boards!
Try it out and let us know what you think!
Special thanks to mailVU’s West Coast-based Business Development Manager Jim Gillis for his help and expertise on this post. If you want to know more about the role video can play in your company’s customer care organization, contact Jim at jgillis@mailvu.com.
Thanks Jim!
-Kamilla
