Providing quality, timely customer support is one of the keys to customer satisfaction and retention. For decades, customer support meant a paper instruction manual and a telephone line, and for most companies, things haven’t really changed much from that model. Sure, we now have knowledgebases, support forums, and iMessage chats, but ultimately, most customer support is still either conducted via direct communication with the user or as written materials.
These methods are still very important, but with the vast majority of people now preferring to watch videos over reading online text, more and more companies are adding tutorial videos to their support materials – and are getting some amazing results.
How You Can Use Video for Support
The best way to start using customer service videos is to provide answers and solutions to the most common questions and issues your customers ask.
One of the most obvious places to put videos is right in your documentation. You can do this by adding video to your help pages or FAQs, or by creating a dedicated support videos section of your website and link it to the existing documentation. We’ve created entire video instruction manuals for clients to ensure their customers can learn everything they need to know about the product in one place.
Beyond use as documentation, videos can be a great tool for new-user orientation or onboarding. These videos can be embedded directly into an app or software, and play the first time a user opens it. Onboarding videos can help users get started on the right foot – especially if you have a feature-rich or complex system.
We’ve also created videos for use as contextual help. These sit right in the interface (either visible, or behind “more info” buttons) and act as enhanced tooltips or explanations. For example, a bank website user who is having trouble making an external transfer could watch a short video about how to accomplish that action right on the “transfers” page.
Video doesn’t always have to be strictly “video” either – GIFs can be added to instructions or documentation to illustrate individual actions or sequences as users read about how to complete them. This is a great way to clearly explain something in small, repeating pieces to help improve comprehension.
How Customer Support Videos Can Help Your Business
While there’s certainly an initial investment in the making of the videos, you’ll save money in the long run by reducing the load on your support team. If you include videos in your FAQ and Help sections, you’ll likely find the number of inquiries dropping off because your customers are able to find the answer to their issues themselves before having to contact customer support. This will allow you and/or your customer service representatives to focus on the more difficult or unusual issues and problems (which makes a support person’s day-to-day activities more interesting).
Video can also make you able to respond to simple customer service inquiries much faster – you can send a short response with a link to the appropriate video, increasing the volume of simpler requests a representative can get through in a day while potentially also decreasing follow up questions from customers.
It’s entirely possible that good support videos could actually increase revenue, as having immediate answers to questions and issues will improve customer satisfaction. In fact, if a customer can quickly and easily find a video that addresses their issue, they may not feel like they had much of a problem with your product at all. This can then raise the average review score of your app and increase your potential to benefit from word-of-mouth referrals.
By giving users a choice of reading instructions or watching a concise instructional video, you’ll make your support materials more accessible and user-friendly. If you’re ready to include video in your customer support strategy, get in touch – we’d be happy to work with you to determine how and where to incorporate it into your current customer support offerings.