The Essential Guide to Use Video Chat for Customer Service

Businesses place a great deal of importance on meeting customer expectations. Customer demands are expeditiously changing from reactive channels to proactive for getting real time assistance. And customer experience (CX) has become the key reason to choose a brand. 

According to Microsoft, “30% of consumers expressed that not being able to reach a real person when they needed to was the most frustrating part of a poor customer service experience”. 

It is where visual engagement tools make an entry. Businesses can use video chat for customer service to make conversations interactive, personalized, and deliver a delightful user experience. In today’s time convenience is of the utmost importance, video chat for customer support helps to deliver faster responses that boost customer satisfaction and improves brand credibility.

Here are the top reasons why customers get frustrated and what forces them to switch brands.

How are businesses transforming customer service with voice and video chat solutions?

By using video chat solutions, clients can directly connect with the customer service agents in real time and get their queries solved quickly. Video chat has replaced reactive customer support channels (phone and email) owing to the numerous benefits it offers.

Let us discuss the pivotal role played by voice and video chat technology to deliver exceptional customer service and reduce customer churn.

1. Resolve issues faster with lesser touchpoints

Undoubtedly it can be frustrating if you had to make multiple touchpoints for getting the right solution for any issue. 

According to HubSpot research, “33% of customers are most frustrated by having to wait on hold and by having to repeat themselves to multiple support reps.”

Businesses can use a video chat for customer service to identify the issue and deliver faster solutions. 

• Agents can diagnose the root cause of the problem and provide the right solution in the first go, which reduces the number of touchpoints.
• A live video chat platform is perfect for complex technical issues that need visual understanding, which is difficult to explain reactive channels (phone, email or text ). 

Hence, a live video chat solution is a great way to deliver an undiluted customer experience.

Goldsmiths, the famous jewelry brand uses live chat with voice and video chat support for better customer communication. The jewelry retailer added this feature in order to mimic the personal service that it offers in its physical stores. It’s a great way to fuse the physical & digital experience and deliver a consistent customer service experience.

2. Cut down your customer service costs

Customers usually hang up because of long queues or out of frustration for not getting an effective solution in a reasonable amount of time. According to Flavio Martins, “34% of customers who hang up never bother to return back again.”

Businesses that use live video and voice chat save up to 50% or more on support costs versus other methods. 

With the help of video and voice chat engagement, you can provide immediate assistance and reduce the number of support requests significantly. It is the best solution to combat challenges such as long queue time, multiple touchpoints, and communication issues.

Here is how voice and video call support helps to balance business costs.

• Reduce the number of touchpoints: Using video chat for customer support helps to identify the exact problem in real time and deliver immediate solutions. Delivering effective solutions reduces customer touchpoints and improves first contact resolution. 
• Save customer service costs: When you use video chat to handle customer queries there are fewer chances of follow-ups. It reduces costs in terms of hiring more agents, infrastructure to manage conversations.

3. Boost customer satisfaction rate

Visual engagement is a widely adopted trend by businesses to raise their customer service standards and improve customer experience. Engaging clients with video chat and co-browsing guides customers through tricky situations in real time, unlike reactive channels.

Live video chat resulting in 73% satisfaction levels – the highest for any customer service channel as compared with 61% for email and 44% for phone, it’s likely to be the service that consumers are drawn to the most.

Video chat being a proactive support channel allows:

• You identify issues faster in the first go and provide effective responses.
• Significantly reduce the number of touchpoints by delivering contextual solutions.
• You can personalize conversations with customers and build trust.

Hence, using live video chat software, empower customers to seek out real time solutions to problems that need urgent assistance. It also helps customers to troubleshoot software issues, transactional queries, complex issues that need professional expertise. Quick and effective responses increase customer satisfaction.

Note: Measure your customer satisfaction scores (CSAT) with key metrics like NPS and CES. It can be done by asking a simple question “How satisfied were you with your experience?” at the end of every conversation or checkout.

4.  Deliver higher brand equity

Brand experience is extremely crucial. Delivering a positive customer experience allows companies to stay competitive and increase customer loyalty. 80% of consumers would pay more for products or services to ensure a superior customer experience.

Businesses that focus on customer engagement strategies are very much focused on the value creation of the brand. They provide end-to-end customer experience via interactive conversations and real time customer support. Video chat for customer service allows friendly conversations that build trust and credibility.

Happy and satisfied customers have a positive impact on brand value. Let’s find out how:

• Happy customers are more likely to be loyal to your brand and make repeat purchases.
• The customers develop trust for your brand and retain for a longer time.
• The satisfied customers’ advocate your brand by sharing their success stories with word of mouth.

5. Use video recordings for audit purpose

Video chat is beneficial equally to both customer care and for improving team productivity. The advanced video recording feature empowers your team to record conversations for quality assurance (QA) and regulatory compliance.

One of the best ways to understand your team performance is to record all the voice and video conversations. With voice & video call recordings, you can understand how your team has been handling the conversations and gather feedback on the areas to improve. 

It is always good to keep a record of video conversation for internal quality purposes and other valuable reasons such as:

• Better quality monitoring –  The recordings of the video and voice conversations can be used for quality monitoring or future references.
• Access agent performance – Call recording helps businesses to access and improve the agent’s performance. The training managers can listen to conversations between the agents and customers and prepare notes to enhance the customer experience.
• Team training – Call recordings enables businesses is to provide feedback to the support team on how to handle customer conversations. It gives an opportunity for managers to help teams improve their communication skills, and overall performance.
• Offer personalized support – Video recordings can be gone through again so that nothing is missed out and customize support for customers.

6. Better remote technical support

Remote technical support is a win-win situation for both you and your customers.

When you empower customer service reps to have remote access with video chat technology or co-browsing, the support process becomes faster, easier and cost effective. The root cause is diagnosed faster and the right solution is offered in the first contact.

Visual interaction helps in learning the complexity of the problem and remotely guiding with the stepwise solutions to fix the issue effectively. 

The remote technical support process hastens when the issue is viewed practically by the agent. 

Pro tip: Choosing the best remote assistance software is critical, as the right solution can impress both customers and your support agents. It reduces the gap between agent and customers and delivers a virtual in person experience.

7. Improve customer service metrics 

At times, customers encounter complex technical issues that need visual understanding, which is difficult to explain reactive channels (phone, email or text ). Video chat is the ultimate solution for such scenarios and delivers undiluted customer experience.

With voice and video chat support, you not only increase user engagement but also improve your business metrics and KPIs. Tracking and measuring the KPIs will help businesses to improve their features and functionalities. 

So, what are the key customer service metrics that are impacted by video chat support?

FCR (First Contact Resolution)

Measuring first contact resolution ensures that you are responding to customers at a minimum time with a live video chat solution, without escalating the chat for further follow-up. 

Average Resolution Time (ART)

Video chat for customer service improves the average resolution time ( from the first contact made until their issue is fixed) of the issue. If the resolution time is high means you need to look at it to improve it.

8. Onboard your customers with product demos 

Customer onboarding is an important part of businesses as it showcases the strategies to build effective relationships to acquire and retain customers. A great onboarding refers to quick and effortless answers to key questions asked by your customers.

Customer onboarding in a product based organization is all about:

• Providing a helping hand to your new customers
• Demonstrating the value of your product
• Understanding and adapting to your customer’s needs

Using video chat solutions for product demos makes the onboarding process seamless. It proves beneficial especially while you are communicating important information to a new user.

Onboarding customers is about mapping the customer journey and engaging them in a better way. Video chat helps in educating the user base about the product features and functionalities hassle-free. The direct interaction delivers consistent customer experience.

Check out how QuickBooks leverages the power of product video during the onboarding process. They embedded the below video right into the new user dashboard to help first-time customers acclimate to the interface and complete a few introductory actions.

9. Accelerate live customer engagement

Business growth is greatly impacted by effective customer engagement. By using live engagement tools like co-browsing, video and voice chat you can not only accelerate live customer engagement but also witness significant growth in new as well as loyal customers. 

Here are the key benefits of real time customer engagement.

• Better understanding between customers and agents during interactions
• Ability to connect more emotionally between customer and agent
• Improving first call resolutions
• Reducing potentially frustrating and stressful situations
• Overall improvement in customer service metrics

You can combine co-browsing and video chat and make the real time error resolution process interactive and more effective. You can get clear knowledge of the error in the first contact and provide a meaningful response that reduces the number of touchpoints. 

With co-browsing, you can share and take over control of your customer’s browser and guide them through complex form fillup and application processes. The product demos and technical support with video chat are very much effective in customer onboarding and sales conversion.

10. Personalize your interactions with customers

One of the key aspects of business success is to personalize your customer care interactions. It makes customers more attentive towards your saying. According to Forrester’s research, “Visual engagement drives relationships and revenue for customer service.”

Video chat solution is the best way to engage customers via face to face conversation and strengthen trust. Allowing customers to know more about your brand via visual communications can give them the reassurance to build trust.

Take this point in contrast with voice communication or email correspondence. 

Having live video conversations with customers is worth more than a million words. When you have direct communication, you can work the charms of body language, which is important in business and other activities involving human interaction. 

When your customers see you talking to them it entirely changes the nomenclature of a conversation, be it for business or in a personal relationship.

Final thoughts on video chat for customer support

More and more businesses are knowing the importance of delivering great customer experience. With voice and video chat for customer service, businesses will be able to deliver faster service and boost customer satisfaction. 

Building personal relationships with customers develop trust and credibility that go a long way in maintaining your brand image. With video chat technology, you don’t miss out on any opportunity to delight your customers by coming up to their expectations.