Customer preferences and needs change over time. Among the recent rising consumer trends is the demand for self-service options.
The reasons for this increase in popularity are many, but in general, it saves web users time from interacting with a business. The usual scenario is when customers seek quick solutions or answers to simple questions. The power of customer support videos lies in the fact that they make it convenient to satisfy customers’ search intent. When added to your customer portal, they can not only have a positive impact on customer experience but also increase your retention rate.
Before we discuss the tips you can use to create support videos for your customer portal, let’s review the criteria to consider when choosing the most suitable software.
Choosing the Right Customer Portal Software
A customer portal helps you scale support offerings as your business grows. Therefore, it is vital to choose the best customer portal software that will meet your needs and expectations.
To begin, we recommend looking at the system’s features and cost.
Among the core features of a customer portal are:
- Knowledge base
- Custom branding
- A customer forum
- Tracking and filtering of tickets
- Live chat
- Advanced privacy and security options
- Centralised dashboards
The best customer portal software can be customised and integrated with other software tools to boost customer experience. Choose software that easily blends with your existing workflows to help streamline your team’s activities. On the same note, the cost of customisation should be reflected in the pricing plan.
Not all customer self-service portals are the same, but the ideal solution is one with the most relevant features to satisfy customer expectations.
Customer portal benefits
A customer web portal allows users to access numerous self-service options 24/7, making it a valuable resource, even more so when it’s optimised for search and web indexed.
Upon logging in, customers can, for instance:
- Create support requests
- Review the status of submitted support tickets
- Look up invoices and quotes
- Check updates on new products or services
- Fill out the feedback form
In many cases, it also links to a knowledge base with helpful reference materials — FAQs, community forums, product documentation, how-to guides and video tutorials.
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It’s ultimately more convenient for customers to find video answers in a knowledge base search instead of waiting for support to get back to them. As a result, your support agents’ productivity will increase, and they’ll have more time to concentrate on complex inquiries that directly impact customer satisfaction.
This direct contact line to self-service options saves customers time, decreases the need for support calls, and ultimately reduces your company’s customer support costs and ticket resolution time.
As self-service grows in popularity, online customer portals are now considered essential components of any customer service package rather than an optional feature. This package would be incomplete without quality support videos.
Why Bother With Customer Portal Videos?
Most businesses expect that improving their customer experience will result in higher customer satisfaction scores and a higher return on investment. It could range from small companies to large B2B organisations.
As customers have become more technologically adept, it is now more common for them to search for information online before deciding whether or not to call for assistance.
The ease with which we can create and view videos today is unprecedented. Creating a great piece of video content does not require you to have a degree in film-making. Nowadays, even your phone has embedded in it the capability of creating videos.
Traditionally, videos were considered an advertising and promotional medium, but nowadays, they are an integral part of customer service strategy and online marketing.
Video content improves customer understanding of a company’s products and services, reducing calls to call centres by as much as 73%. By watching customer portal videos, customers learn the exact steps needed to resolve issues. The video also breaks down complex terms into easier-to-understand segments for the viewer as you can see in the video below.
It is vital to create a personal experience for the customers when interacting with your company. The presence of a human element in videos adds to the overall experience. One idea is featuring actual agents in video tutorials, explaining the subject matter, for a more relatable approach, but you can also accomplish a similar “human touch” with personalised voiceover.
Having someone directly answer their questions makes users feel like they’re getting the information they’re looking for from a real person, not a bot.
Are you ready to boost your customer service portal experience with video content? Here are 5 effective and practical tips on how to make customer portal videos.
Tip #1 — Have the Right Equipment To Make a Quality Production
As mentioned above, agents can be a great addition to customer portal support videos. However, poor video production can lower the value, undermine the desired effect and diminish the credibility of your brand.
Your support agents need to have professional video production gear to prevent this from happening. Having a webcam with HD (720/1080p) capabilities and a high-quality microphone is a plus.
A computer or mobile device with a built-in microphone needs to be tested to ensure the audio isn’t distorted. Carry out a training exercise where you record your agents talking about a new product or service. Then replay the video back to them to determine its quality.
Be sure to remind the agents making the videos about the proper lighting setup. Low lighting will reduce the amount of information a camera can capture. Adding a few lamps around the camera will improve the picture quality.
Tip #2 — Make Sure the Videos Are Relevant and Relatable
When developing ideas for your customer support videos, you need to consider whether the topic is meaningful to the viewer. Try to map out the various concepts first and understand the links between them.
For example, if you have a new product in the market, you can add a video tutorial on how to use your product in the “getting started” part of your customer portals. Find out where in your knowledge base this video tutorial will add the most value.
In addition, content in this section can focus on troubleshooting, user roles and setting up an account. You can also add specific projects, customer segments or products to your customer portal.
Tutorial videos are one of the most effective instructional methods for educating and onboarding your customers. However, they sometimes lack a personal touch or have trouble keeping viewer interest. This happens when the presented content doesn’t correspond to the main topic.
It is, therefore, essential that your content is relatable and inviting, right from the title. Consider splitting the video into easy-to-digest lists and tips if you have a large subject to cover.
Create a public forum within your online customer portal where customers will be able to interact, share ideas, or send you feedback and suggestions. As a result, you will always know if the videos you produce are relevant, engaging and relatable to your targeted audience.
Tip #3 — Keep Your Video Short
Even though product videos are easier to consume compared to text, the video’s duration is a significant factor. Lengthy video presentations don’t entice customers to use a service portal.
It’s best to keep the length of your videos between 1-3 minutes. If your content is complex and the video has to be longer than 5 minutes, break it down into sections. You have two options for how to use those sections:
- Create a series, one video for each section. This works best when the section can “stand alone,” providing all the info a user needs for a specific topic.
- Include these sections in the same video with interactive chapter markers so viewers can jump ahead or go back to find what they’re looking for.
A script is essential to guarantee adequate use of time. It helps customer support representatives to stick to the topic and get straight to the point. However, the agents should avoid sounding like they are reading from a script. Looking at the camera as much as possible will help with this.
Tip #4 — Review Your Video Analytics
Keep track of what works and what doesn’t for your support strategy. If the context of your support videos is unclear to the user, it can result in negative feedback.
The good news is that, with the right video analytics, you can see when a user pauses, rewatches, and what portion of the video they watch in one sitting. Measuring the collected data can help you upgrade your output, evaluate your team’s performance, and set KPIs. In addition, the more information you collect, the better and more personalised video content you can create.
Analytics also provide agents with a rich source of insights that are crucial for improving customer satisfaction through appropriate training. Here’s how:
- If users tend to skip your intro sequence, it’s best to trim it down.
- If customers often watch a video on Feature A, more so than Feature B, you know to add more interesting content and agent support training on Feature A.
- If an agent’s video leads to lower handling time, you can use that to analyse what they are doing differently. Then share that information with the rest of your team
Tip #5 — Consider Live Video Support
Company websites can add live video support to a client portal. Pre-recorded videos don’t always do the trick. Seeing as the aim of support videos on a web portal is to foster a 1:1 connection with the customer, a video that allows for real-time interaction comes with invaluable opportunities.
Video chat allows agents to connect with customers to help, no matter where they are in the world. If you aim to make your company a global brand, this type of video chat support can be invaluable.
It’s a great way to engage with customers on topics that require more advanced troubleshooting than basic how-tos.
Pro tip: Look at your segmented customer demographics and geolocation to determine if you should have agents who speak different languages.
Wrapping Up
Now that you know all the benefits of customer portals and support videos, think about the tremendous value they provide to your business. With brands growing and making an effort to boost their online presence, they can’t afford to overlook providing high-quality support videos on their customer portals. We are now in the digital self-service era, and the more a company can personalise its product and services, the greater its chances of retaining customers.
