With smartphones, social media, and chatbots, it may seem like we’re more connected than ever before – instantly, constantly, and digitally.
And yet we feel as disconnected and lonely as ever. On average, we have fewer social contacts and meaningful relationships than we’d like; we don’t feel known and understood. The result: we’re more sick and stressed than we should be.
Longitudinal studies (like this one at Harvard) and meta analyses (like this one at UNC Chapel Hill) confirm that our relationships are the key to long-term health and well-being.
There’s a better way to live and work than the status quo.
There’s a better way to connect with our customers, team members, partners, vendors, and other people who matter to our businesses.
And there’s an easy way to get started.
In this episode of The Customer Experience Podcast, listen in on a presentation I delivered shortly after the release of Rehumanize Your Business: How Personal Videos Accelerate Sales and Improve Customer Experience, a book I co-authored with Steve Pacinelli.
You’ll get three fundamental truths that came to the forefront of our minds during the process of writing and publishing the book. Plus, you’ll get specific recommendations on how to build relationships more effectively with simple, personal videos.
Rehumanize Your Business: Build Relationships Through Video
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Here’s a video recording of the presentation on which this podcast episode is based …
Relationships Are The Whole Point
While the entire human experience is about relationships with other people, meaningful interactions and deep connections can be difficult to come by in a world where everyone is at your fingertips.
Think about all the people whose contact information is in your phone. Or everyone in your CRM or database. Or your social media connections. When you’re really honest, you probably haven’t talked with or truly connected with more than a small fraction of these people recently.
Connecting is about more than just having the ability to reach out, it’s about actually making the effort, day-in and day-out. It’s about being seen, heard, and understood – and about making the other person feel seen, heard, and understood.
Most people think that a text message or email is easier and less intrusive. But relying on faceless, digital communication comes at a cost.
I’ve found that a better way to connect with people and build business relationships comes as a surprise to a lot of people.
To Sell is Human … and Humans Need Face Time
Daniel H. Pink the bestselling author of To Sell is Human says we’re all in sales. Each of us needs to influence, persuade, and cajole people. Each of us needs to advance ideas, projects, or sales opportunities. Each of us needs to move people in thought and/or in action.
Pink says that video gives us an efficient and effective way to do these things.
And we’d agree! In fact, his words grace the back cover of our book, Rehumanize Your Business.
Because we are here to be in connection with other people, we must not let relationships fade in importance.
Our stories, our experiences, our failures, and our wins make us human beings first – and working professionals second.
Somewhere along the way, business became the focus, and our relationships took a backseat to KPIs, analytics, quotas, and bottom lines.
As the next-best thing to being there in person, video gives us a more effective way to communicate, connect, and convert every day. Adding some video into our day-to-day communication gets us face to face at scale. It allow us to create an “in person” moment any time from anywhere with anyone.
Through the simplicity, honesty, and authenticity of casual, unscripted videos, we also get a more satisfying way to work.
Authenticity Is The Key
When you’re sincere and when you’re present with them, your customers will feel a connection to you, your company, and your brand. The same is true of other people in our lives.
What would happen if you took just 5 minutes each day to send out two videos? Not scripted, produced, and edited videos, but rather simple, personal videos. No lights and no cast members required – just you, your webcam or smartphone, and your message.
What would it mean if you committed just 5 minutes a day most days of the week and most weeks of the year? Could you check in with a customer? Or say congratulations to a team member? Or connect with a former colleague whose family member is sick?
What would that do for your business?
Even more importantly, what would it do for your life?
When we’re authentically ourselves and when we’re sincere in our outreach to people everything changes … for the better.
But authenticity isn’t easy.
How to Get Started With Video Messaging
Curious as to whether you’re capable of communicating and connecting through video? Worried about what to do about your face and voice? Anxious about people judging or even rejecting your appearance and delivery?
This is completely natural. Getting started with video puts you in a vulnerable position – a position characterized by risk, uncertainty, or emotional exposure.
But every good moment in our lives is characterized by vulnerability. So, take the risk. And know that it gets easier and easier.
Also know that you won’t be perfect out of the gate. You have to start before you can improve. It’s an iterative process, just like everything else – including writing a book.
To illustrate this start-then-improve approach, here’s one of the mantras we lived by as Steve and I assembled the 70,000 word manuscript for Rehumanize Your Business …
If you’re interested in video but still sitting on the sidelines, you may be telling yourself something like “I’m not a video person.” Instead, try this on: “I’m not a video person … yet.”
When you add in that little word, “yet,” it makes such a big difference in your mindset. Almost instantly you go from someone who can’t, to someone who has a new possibility.
This simple shift is all you need to start having the confidence to test out sending two short video messages a day, and connecting with people on a greater scale.
A couple of short, personal videos a day adds up to more than 500 videos a year.
Is that enough to rehumanize your business?
This post reflects just a handful of the ideas captured in this episode of The Customer Experience Podcast with the show’s host, Ethan Beute.
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Other places to hear The Customer Experience Podcast beyond Apple Podcasts include Spotify, Google Podcasts, or Stitcher.
More from The Customer Experience Podcast
Listen Right Now to Fellow BombBombers:
- “Connecting with Customers Through Shared Beliefs” with Steve Pacinelli (CMO, BombBomb)
- “Rehumanizing Business (and the World) with Better Communication” with Darin Dawson (Co-founder and President, BombBomb)
- “The Best Customer Experience Delivers an Appropriate Experience” with Jonathan Bolton (SVP of Operations, BombBomb)
- See them all by clicking here
Subscribe To Hear Soon:
- Director of Customer Experience Luke Owen (Formstack)
- Chief Education Evangelist Jaime Casap (Google)
- Intellectual property and marketing law advisor Sharon Toerek (Legal and Creative)
If you’ve got podcast guest recommendations or questions, please email me!
Ethan (at) BombBomb (dot) com
The Book This Episode is Based On
Learn how to use videos in your day-to-day communication, no matter your industry or your role by picking up the Amazon #1 bestseller in Business Sales, Business Communication, and Customer Relations, the 800-CEO-Read #1 bestseller in its opening month of release, and a Barnes & Noble bestseller it its opening week of release.
