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If you’ve been thinking at all about implement video into your sales process, your customer success playbooks, or anywhere else along the customer journey — and let’s face it, you pretty much can’t be a video denier anymore — you’re going to love this episode.
There’s been a ton of talk about video lately – and the conversation’s changing. It’s not just about that highly produced video with fancy lights, expensive equipment, background music, and a team of hired hair stylists. Instead, you’re seeing and hearing more about simple, personal videos. Think about these casual and conversational videos as video voicemails used for 3 main reasons:
- to communicate more clearly
- to connect with people more effectively
- to convert at a higher rate
This style of video is something that I have been working on with the team at BombBomb for about 10 years now. We literally wrote the bestselling book on it (Rehumanize Your Business, Wiley, 2019). We’ve got about 1,000 people in our database who’ve sent 1,000 or more videos each. And I’ve recorded and sent 10,000 myself.
This approach to video messages applies to you whether you’re involved in sales, marketing, CX, leadership, management, or recruiting and employee engagement. What I’m saying here is video is for everyone.
Simply put, video makes a nice add to the phone calls, emails, text messages, and social messages that you’re relying on every day to be successful. Video supports a human connection, which leads directly to clearer communication and thus higher conversion. Video has a measurable impact on both micro conversions (email replies, returned phone calls, and clicks to fill out that form) and macro conversions, like signed contracts.
I’m going to tell you where to start. So, if you like the idea of video but you’re not sure where it belongs, here are areas to consider:
- Prospects. How you generate awareness, get people to set appointments that they actually show up for, and view you as the preferred supplier for whatever product or service you’re offering.
- Customers. Onboarding, engagement, activation, expansion, renewal, upsell, cross sell, and all those other things that make our businesses successful.
- Recruits. What it takes to recruit and engage and select and hire.
- Employees. What it takes to onboard and train and make new team members productive.
As you look at all you different touch points, you’ll immediately find some spots that could use a more human touch. Also notice that we’re talking customer journey and customer experience here, but these ideas also apply to the employee journey and employee experience. This employee/customer parallel is one of the emerging themes here on the podcast.
Read on to learn 3 specific places to implement video and pro tips for how to make your videos more effective.
You’ll also hear:
- Why video is great for apologies
- Why you don’t need a script (and what you need instead)
- What “evergreen” videos are and how they benefit you
- How video shows that you care in a way that can’t be faked
I also discuss tips like when to use a screen recording and how to maintain eye contact.
Whether you’re in marketing, sales, or customer success, you’ll learn how and where to incorporate video in your communication to improve the customer journey.
Video Belongs In These 3 Moments In Your Customer Journey
Video clips, highlights, and writeups of every episode of The Customer Experience Podcast are available here on the blog, but you can also listen in your preferred podcast player.
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You can also listen to the episode on this post. Learn 3 moments in your customer journey that benefit from a video message right here…
1 Video To Build Human Connection
Ask yourself this: Where in the customer journey should we create a stronger human connection?
There are moments along the journey when it would be valuable to have your customers or future customers on the other side of a message feel like they knew you before they ever met you. I’m talking about initial outreach or cold prospecting, reaching out to engage and recruit a potential employee — these early-in-the-process moments. In addition, it’s getting back in front of a customer, or congratulating an employee — anywhere where that human connection is valuable is a great place to stop relying exclusively on plain, typed-out text and instead be truly personal.
Look someone in the eye through a web camera or smartphone in a casual, unscripted way to build human connection with them. It’s a nice add to the brand experience and customer experience that helps customers and future customers feel valued and appreciated.
Ultimately in a sales process, whether it’s recruiting an employee or generating a new customer, the goal is to get to a face-to-face meeting. We do that a lot on Zoom because we work nationally and internationally here at BombBomb. If your customers are spread out geographically, you probably do the same, and if you’re more local, you probably physically get together with people. Why? It’s how we connect and communicate most effectively.
Why wait? Get face to face earlier and more often with a simple, personal video. You can start building that trust, rapport, and relationship faster and earlier.
Video allows you to humanize yourself and humanize your business. You’re no longer an email signature. You’re no longer a faceless company. You’re a real person with real opportunities and real solutions to their challenges.
One of the most powerful things with video is that time and attention are gifts, and they cannot be faked. When I look you in the eye and send you a truly personal video answering your question or patting you on the back or helping you take the next step forward, that time and attention cannot be faked.
It allows someone to know that they’ve been seen and heard and felt and understood, and that’s all any human wants, period. What we crave as humans is the time and attention of other people – their validation and affirmation of who we are. Video delivers that in a way that other media just can’t. It’s the new handwritten note.
By the way, if you reach out to me with a piece of feedback about the customer experience podcast, email me at ethan@bombbomb.com and I’ll send you a personal video back.
2 Video To Manage Emotion and Tone
Video is there for you when you need to manage an emotion or a tone in a piece of communication.
Positive Emotions
Ideas: A message of gratitude, a message of congratulations, or a message on a holiday or special occasion – either personal or professional.
If you see on LinkedIn that someone just got a promotion or a new job, you could click like and add a comment. But how much more meaningful would it be if you looked them in the eye for 35 seconds, congratulated them on that move, and made yourself available if they need any help in the transition?
In video, your positive emotions are delivered in a way that a little typed message with an exclamation point and emoticon simply cannot do. Caution: you must be sincere in these feelings for them to come through; everyone can sense emptiness and insincerity.
Negative Emotions
Ideas: Breaking bad news, apologizing, or defusing a sensitive and charged situation.
Especially in customer service, customer support, and customer success, people are confused, frustrated, and sometimes even angry. How do you reach out in an empathetic way to defuse that situation and help people take a step forward? Well, video is a great way to do that.
There’s an interesting reason why negative emotion videos are so successful: bad news is cognitively more engaging. It’s heavier and takes longer to process. So when we reach out with bad news directly on the phone or in person, we’re expecting a response to the bad news in that moment on the spot. If, instead, you record a simple message, you can manage the tone properly, empathize with the person, and let them know that you see and hear them.
Pro tip: Use an email open alert or a video play alert to know that they’ve received it. Give them some time to process what they heard and then reach out. You’ll be starting off on a positive foot.
Sales — and we’re all in sales — is fundamentally the transfer of emotion. When you want to capture and convey emotion, video is a great way to do that. It’s easier and more effective than typing out the same message. And it’s as easy as and more effective than leaving a voicemail.
3 Video To Manage Detail and Complexity
When there’s detail or complexity, there’s usually friction, which is a customer experience killer.
You and your customers are often dealing with messages that have detail, nuance, and complexity at least at some level. If we respond to a customer or a prospect inquiry with a four paragraph email full of links to support articles, we’ve just sent them a giant homework assignment. Instead, we could just help them. Click record, speak to them in layperson’s terms, and explain the situation.
Just talk to people. It’s so much more effective. It’s easier and faster than typing and embedding links and taking screenshots. Most importantly, it’s a better experience for your customers. They understand the information better because of your tone, pace, inflection, face, body language, and all those other rich elements. It’s not just what you say, but how you say it that gives meaning to the message.
When you have a document, spreadsheet, or presentation on your screen, screen recorder videos are a great way to show and tell in a way that helps people understand the detail or complexity involved in that report.
Pro Tip #1: Always keep your face on the screen. Even if you have a split screen with fullscreen document and your face in a little bubble, stay face to face.
Pro Tip #2: After you’ve made an important point, stop, look directly into the camera, and restate yourself. This emphasizes the point and reminds the viewer that you’re the source of value and benefit.
Eye contact and casual presentation are powerful to build you up as the trusted advisor and to help people feel more connected to you, the company, and the information you’re presenting. When you’re doing a screen recording, the natural tendency is to look at the screen and break eye contact with the camera. But eye contact is what solidifies the human connection, which is video’s greatest strength.
“Evergreen” Videos
When are there signs that video belongs in the touchpoint along the customer journey?
- when you want to build human connection and have people feel like they know you
- when you want to manage emotion and tone – positive or negative
- when you need to reduce friction by tackling detail and complexity
Now, not every single one of these videos needs to be truly personal where you greet one person by name and speak very specifically to him or her. You can find points for evergreen videos, a video you record once and use over and over as the situation comes up.
Think about key points of transition or important moments along the customer journey – moments that happen over and over again as customers move through their relationship with you, your product, or your service. What are the frequently asked questions at those points? Where do people slow down, get hung up, or even leave? These are great spots to consider recording a video once and using it hundreds or even thousands of times as necessary.
Ultimately though, if you want that engagement, for people to truly feel seen and to know you value and appreciate them, that one-to-one video is by far the most powerful.
Connection, emotion, detail. Three signs to look for.
The Big Gap In Your Sales Sequences: Your People
This 3-part framework was one of several apsects of a Sales Hacker webinar I recently delivered called “The Big Gap In Your Sales Sequences: Your People.”
Jump in at the 20-minute mark to see it. Or take in the entire training. It’s embedded right here …
More From The Customer Experience Podcast
Our goal with this show is to enhance the conversation across marketing, sales, and customer success and from the front desk to the C-suite about the single most important thing we can do today … create and deliver a better experience for our customers.
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Related episodes to check out:
- The Science of Video (and the New Metric That Matters Most
- How NOT to Use LinkedIn Messaging for Prospecting
- Rehumanize Your Business by Building Relationships Through Video
The Definitive Guide to Simple, Personal Videos
Learn how to use videos in your day-to-day communication to build human connection, manage emotion and tone, and manage detail and complexity.
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