The troubling reality for today’s support teams is that customers are demanding faster, higher quality resolutions by the day - and for some businesses, this is becoming increasingly difficult to deliver. Research shared in this report demonstrates how teams are being asked to up the ante with outdated resources and limited time.
This can be problematic for businesses that rely on repeat business and customer retention, for example in the SaaS sector - particularly if they have a small party dedicated to customer support.
Every single interaction your brand has with a user influences their opinion of you. Positive experiences transform happy customers into lifelong advocates for your brand.
SaaS marketing teams and customer support reps under pressure to provide the best calibre service (in high volumes) can benefit from video support. How-to videos that tackle customer FAQs delight customers, resolve issues and save your team time and money.
Why should you use video?
It can be difficult to explain complicated processes or products by phone or email. Content often falls short, and images can be unclear or misleading. Insufficient help can be frustrating, and poor explanations can lead to an increase in support tickets and a slower resolution rate.
The human brain processes video 60,000 times faster than text, and that may be why so many of us are visual learners. When faced with a problem, most people would prefer to watch a troubleshooting video than read a lengthy article. Perhaps this is one reason why how-to videos are among the fastest growing categories on YouTube.
By incorporating video support into your SaaS content marketing strategy you can reduce the time it takes for your users to get answers to their questions. Remember, the experience directly following their purchase can make or break a customer’s opinion of your company. The ease at which they can find assistance, if required, is a major factor.
In the SaaS industry, user experiences that can dictate spending and churn rates cannot be ignored. You want to demonstrate that your team genuinely cares about their experience with your product.
If you can create video material that helps to speed up the on-boarding process, your team can give more attention to difficult cases or focus on building and maintaining better relationships with customers.
The easy way to resolve issues
Written responses take time to write, and it can be laborious for your support staff when the same question is asked repeatedly.
Video can help create a middle ground, and it feels much more organic to be forwarded useful material than to receive a template answer.
In research by Wistia, 40% of support tickets that were answered using video ended up being one-touch responses. Video is best used to solve support tickets that would otherwise take two or three replies to explain something to a customer. Sending a screencast is highly effective and helps show a user exactly what to do to solve their problem.
Accompanied by text and tailored guidance, a video is the best way to deliver instructions online without confusing your user. Whereas written and spoken word can easily be misinterpreted, a show and tell exercise is clear and easy to follow.
Keep users on site
When encountering problems users will commonly navigate to your website or search engines for help. When that fails, they contact customer support.
Let’s say a client wants to find out how to log into your software: if they are contacting your team directly, it’s likely they have already reviewed the onboarding instructions and did not find them easy to follow.
Language can be troublesome in this scenario. If your description differs from what the customer sees onscreen, your instructions will flounder.
SaaS interfaces are designed to be intuitive - there is typically a heavy use of symbols and streamlined menus. Take a standard ‘settings’ buttons, for example, this is often displayed as a gear icon, and while that may be obvious to many, it can be confusing to users who have not encountered this iconography before.
Video is more precise as it leaves no room for interpretation, it is a step-by-step visual demonstration. Video can replace or enhance:
- Screenshots
- Phone calls
- Remote login
Furthermore, sending a video also removes the wait for customers to return from inactivity during live support.
Keeping users on your site keeps you front of mind and makes sure that it is your business who delivers the solution, not your competitors.
Enhance support and documentation pages with video
Documentation is a key component in the support process because users who are experiencing trouble with a product look for solutions that are immediate and easy to find on their own.
This is why user guides, tutorials, and FAQ pages are popular.
Another benefit of using video is that users can rewatch your video again and again until they have the concept down to a tee.
Coupling video with this documentation reduces the amount of copy your customers have to read through, and videos hosted on your support pages can help make your content pop. Videos have been shown to increase stay time on page. It also allows your customers the freedom to choose how they learn.
Take, for example, the challenge of explaining how to tie your shoelace. This is not a complicated task, but it is much easier to teach by demonstration. Imagine the way you would describe this over the phone - it has the potential to be unnecessarily slow and tedious without using a visual reference.
Ultimately, your support team is striving to prove to your customers that they've made the right decision by coming to you, so give them the tools for the job by prioritising video content.
If you are hosting a video on one of your site pages, make it easy for users to find and play by following some simple rules: make sure your play button is above the fold. Your video should be large and easy to see, and the purpose should be clear.
Try your best to keep the focus of your video narrow; this will make it easier to describe in your title and meta description. You may want to include bullet points about what your script will cover.
Measure the impact of your video
You can use video content to collect data about interactions. Unlike static forms of support content such as emails, portals, PDF guides, and FAQs - video can highlight exactly where users are struggling, rewatching, and pausing.
Video can also help you identify common queries and collect information about what customer’s found most helpful.
Use your video marketing metrics to find out how you can make even more of an impact. Are people skipping that 5-second intro in your support video? Is your sting turning people away? Cut it out and get straight to the point.
If a customer doesn’t find their answer in your support video, they can be prompted to reach out with a video CTA, or directed to further content via useful links.
There is an easier way for your team to guide customers through the ins and outs of using your product: video content. Producing a video that battles user issues can increase customer satisfaction, minimise the time spent on support tickets, speed up the path to resolution, and significantly reduce the cost per issue.
