To address those needs, successful companies have adopted a hybrid model towards product support—specifically one that provides a mutli-channel experience. In fact, PWC found that the number of companies investing in the omnichannel support experience jumped from 20% to more than 80% in 2020 report. One increasingly critical support channel is video. When a business has the option of a video call for customer service, it reduces the customer drop-off rate by up to 70%. In this post, we’ll cover five key benefits of video support, and why it’s a vital part of a successful hybrid support model.
Overview
Before we get into the details, here’s a video that gives a quick overview of why and how video support makes a difference for product support.
5 Key Benefits to Video Support
1) It’s faster than email and live chat
Video support is a much more humanized and rapid response than live chat or email support. For email and live support, a customer typically will have to tediously type out the problem and go back and forth with the support team to fix an issue that could quickly be resolved with video.
Using video support, customers have the ability to instantly speak to a real person that can see and experience the same issue they are. Rather than typing for ages to describe in detail how and where a device is broken, a customer can just pop it into frame and show the agent. Visual interaction helps in learning the complexity of the problem and remotely guiding with the stepwise solutions to fix the issue effectively.
Empowering your customer service agents and customers with video chat technology enables the overall support process to become faster and more efficient. Video support helps solve the root cause of the issue in the first conversation rather than in multiple conversations.
2) It improves customer satisfaction
Customers pay the most attention to the quality of your service when they're trying to fix an issue with your product. Even if your support team can't resolve the user's issue, they can make a personal connection through video to salvage the customer relationship and increase customer satisfaction.
How does video support increase customer satisfaction even if the user's problem is not resolved?
When users connect directly with an agent, it humanized them in the eyes of the customer, and helps users recognize that your support team is there to work with them to resolve any issues. Regardless of the outcome, video support more frequently puts the customer at ease and provides a positive overall experience. This instant connection means problems are often solved faster and more personally, which helps customers feel like your company cares about them.
3) Video drives more resolutions
Video provides features that enable video support to both reduce the time of solving your customer's issues and increase the overall resolutions of their problems.
For instance, if a customer has an issue with a product and identifies it on video chat, the agent can visually guide the user through the steps on the video chat that may otherwise have been misinterpreted via live chat, FAQ or even by phone.
In addition, features such as drawing on the screen or sharing images can enhance video support to pinpoint the user's issue and where the agent can help resolve it while simultaneously decreasing the time-to-resolution .
Both improving the guided experience, and decreasing time-to-resolution ultimately means more customer issues get resolved in a given amount of time.
4) Customers prefer it
The efficiency of video support is not unnoticed by customers. A recent Accenture customer service study found that 85% of respondents found video chat helpful.
Customers appreciate that video is efficient. Instead of scheduling a service appointment or submitting a ticket where resolution is delayed, escalation with video enables resolution without delay.
In fact, 57% of US adults are even willing to pay more if it means better customer service, so it pays to invest in preferred support channels like video.
5) Video enhances a hybrid-support model (the gold standard setup for tech support)
The best support teams in the world employ what’s called a hybrid model. A hybrid model does not rely on one support channel and instead optimizes the experience for both customers and the company by leveraging different channels to provide the right level of support at the right time.
This hybrid approach removes the core challenges associated with stand-alone self-service solutions (having coverage for every problem, managing excess content, long implementation times) and remote service (high cost of human resources, off-hours and peak times), allowing much more efficient allocation of support resources.
For example, for repetitive troubleshooting issues, both customers and companies would prefer users be able to fix problems on their own. Microsoft found that over 90% of customers want a self-service-first support option. But for more complex issues that require a live agent, providing the right channel for remote support is key, as with each successive live channel utilized, companies incur exponential support costs.
That’s where video’s efficiency and human experience come in. Video provides the customer with the best chance to both quickly resolve outstanding issues remotely—thereby reducing the company’s cost to support—while providing the human element that raises customer satisfaction. No need to waffle around with ticketing systems that create overhead for agents and downtime for customers. Escalating straight to video for quick resolutions is a win for all parties.
Video support is here to stay
To provide genuine customer satisfaction with your product support, you need to be on the channels that your customers use and offer the features they need to fix their problems. Video is the go-to-method for communication for everyone in the foreseeable future—not just because of its human element, but also due to its efficiency—and that’s why video support is here to stay.
But remember, video is just one important part of a successful support model. Don’t rely on any single channel or feature. Optimize your customer support by adopting a hybrid support model that takes the customer seamlessly between self-service, chat, and video, without losing one bit of information along the way and finding the most suitable path to the solution.
Implement video support with Mavenoid's hybrid model today!
