Improve your customers’ campaigns: use video in your marketing mix!

Summary:

Taking care of customer service departments is one of the top priorities of all types of companies today.

This is because, in terms of revenue and turnover, it is much more convenient to retain a customer than to win a new one; it also has an important return in terms of brand image and reputation.

The most effective digital tool for improving customer service is undoubtedly video: for its diffusion, its ability to engage and attract attention, for its immediacy in fruition. The best results, in particular, can be obtained with personalized videos, which adapt to the characteristics and navigation choices of those who view them.

Today, the customer is the center of business: you will have heard this concept repeated many times. It’s something profoundly true, but the risk is to turn it into a superficial slogan, one that is meaningless and empty in operational terms. This would be a huge mistake!

In this post, we’ll take a close look at the theme of customer centricity. And we’ll do so in a very concrete way. We’ll focus first on the fundamental importance of customer service departments in the digital age, without too many theories, but relying on data and statistics. We will then tighten our focus on how to improve a campaign, with the most effective tool for improving the relationship with our customers: we’re talking about video.

Finally, we’ll focus on personalized videos, the ultimate boost for customer communication, and Customer Care more generally.

Let’s proceed in order.

The importance of Customer Service…told through numbers

As promised, it will be the numbers and statistics to to tell us the absolute centrality of Customer Service departments in any kind of business today.

Let’s start with a well-known study, conducted by Bain & Company: for a company, winning a new customer costs 6 to 7 times more than retaining one through a satisfactory Customer Experience (inc.com).

It’s no wonder then that, according to a 2017 survey conducted by Gartner, 81% of marketers expect Customer Experience to be the main aspect on which the top marketing challenges will be played in the immediate future (gartner.com).

Let’s move on to the customer front itself:

– For 90% of Americans, the quality of customer service is a deciding factor in choosing to purchase products, services, or subscriptions with a company (Microsoft Dynamics 365 – Global State of Customer Care).

– 89% of customers are more likely to make another purchase with the same company after a satisfactory customer service experience (Salesforce – State of the Connected Customer).

– An even higher percentage of consumers (93%) are more likely to make repeat purchases with companies that provide excellent customer service (hubspot.com).

– Conversely, 50% of people are ready to switch brands after just one bad experience with a company. After more than one bad experience, the percentage of people who decide to switch to a competitor soars to 80% (Zendesk Customer Experience Trends Report 2020)

These numbers are clear, and the lesson that emerges is also very clear: to put the customer at the center, to do it concretely and go beyond mere slogans, you need to focus on improving your Customer Service.

But what are the guidelines? Let’s be clear: there is no universal recipe, but everything depends on two decisive factors.

The first is taking advantage of the best digital tools.

You have to have always-on customer services that can’t just rely on old-fashioned call centers or cumbersome help request forms. This means aiming at effectiveness, clarity of communication, involvement; by optimizing expenses and investments on the company side.

The second factor is proximity to people, abandoning the one-size-fits-all approach and embracing the one-to-one, tailored, personalized approach.

The next two paragraphs address this very path.

Next, we’ll look at the effectiveness of video, the best digital tool in terms of effectiveness, clarity, and engagement. Then, we’ll look at personalized videos, which – as the name suggests – also add to the element of closeness to individuals, starting with their individual characteristics and behaviors.

How effective is video? Why is it essential for Customer Service?

Let’s start with a quick overview that gives an idea of the diffusion of video in the online world today and of its fruition:

– By 2022, 82% of online traffic will be video alone; in absolute terms, we’re talking about 15 times more traffic than in 2017 (cisco.com)

– 78% of people watch online videos every week. 55% watch them every day (socialmediaweek.org)

– The average user spends about 7 hours per week watching online videos (statista.com)

– YouTube is the second most visited site in the world, surpassed only by Google (hootsuite.com).

Now for a data point regarding the ability to engage and understand messages, which is also very telling:

– The user viewing a video understands and believes 95% of the message contained. For text-only communications this percentage drops to 10% (insivia.com).

It’s clear that, faced with this awareness, marketers are increasingly using this tool, which gives them the opportunity to reach a huge pool of people, with a high rate of involvement and attention, and without losing the effectiveness of the message.

This is not us saying it, but – again – the numbers, which have emerged from research focused on marketers. Here are the results that seem most significant to us:

– Today, 86% of businesses use video as an important tool in their marketing mix. In 2020, the percentage was 85%. In 2016, it was 61% (smartzer.com)

– 87% of marketers said they were satisfied with the ROI related to their video campaigns (hubspot.com).

– 94% of video marketers say video has helped increase audience understanding of their products and services (hubspot.com).

Let’s dwell for a moment on this last statistic, which touches on a more specific but interesting point: we are referring to the so-called “how-to videos.” It is an increasingly common experience to watch videos that explain how a product or a service works in a simple, direct, and detailed way (one that remains interesting for the viewer).

The “how to” category is in the top 4 of searches on YouTube, for this very reason (thinkwithgoogle.com). Moreover, 68% of people prefer to solve a problem by watching a video instead of going to a company’s support team (wyzowl.com).

All of this can be exploited by brands that, by putting on track a good how-to video campaign, will see an improvement in customer satisfaction, with a simultaneous lightening of the load for Customer Service channels.

So, the main benefits of a good video-based Customer Service can be summarized around these points:

• Cost savings.
• Time savings, thanks to faster and more satisfactory ticket closure.
• Improvement in customer satisfaction, where customers really feel at the center of the company’s focus and no longer just a number–people and not “paperwork to be done.”

The consequence of all of this is the increase in the rate of customer loyalty, but also an improvement in their reputation. They are both elements that translate into an increase in revenue and turnover.

It’s now time to add a small but decisive extra step, closing the post on what is the ultimate boost for video-based Customer Service: personalization.

The personalized video boost: What it is and how to improve a campaign with it

Personalized videos are videos built based on the characteristics and past behaviors of the recipients they’re targeting. They also adapt to navigational choices in real time.

And that’s not all, the personalized videos provided by specialized platforms such as Babelee are also interactive. Therefore, they overturn the classic dynamics of communication, which finally becomes bi-directional.

The starting point is data, that is, the digital traces that we all continually disseminate when we surf online, when we search on Google, when we interact on social networks, when we geolocate… and when we communicate with companies.

In this sense, the first step – for companies – is to set up a smart and efficient CRM system, which can then be integrated into the digital Customer Service processes.

When it comes to personal data, it’s good to take the utmost care: it’s a delicate subject, in terms of regulation and security.

First and foremost, however, keep in mind that 83% of people are willing to give up their data in exchange for a more effective and personalized brand communication experience (accenture.com).

In short, data is a company’s most valuable asset; however, customers want to see a concrete return when they give it up.

And that return must be in terms of personalization and the quality of experience.

What are the benefits of personalized video for companies?

Again, we’ll on some significant data:

• Personalized videos attract attention and engage the viewer 35% more than standard videos (hubspot.com).
• For some brands, there was an 8-fold improvement in click-through rates for campaigns that used personalized video (qoboweb.com).
• 88% of U.S. marketers noticed a marked and measurable improvement in the effectiveness of their campaigns because of personalized video (forbes.com).
• People who receive a personalized video are 40% more likely to switch to buying a product and service than those who receive a generic video campaign (webeo.com)
• Finally, 87% of consumers believe that personalized content positively influences their attitude toward a brand (outgrow.com)

In short, relying on platforms specialized in producing personalized videos like Babelee triggers a virtuous circle, a win-win situation.

For one, customers will be satisfied with the level of customer service they receive. At the same time, companies can count on a marked increase in the rate of loyalty, on more effective communications (also for up-sell and cross-sell operations), and on an improved reputation with an increasingly vast audience.