A wise person once said 'a picture is worth a thousand words'. The likes of YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat tell us there must have been something in that. People are using infinitely more imagery now than they ever have – with the picture leading the message and text only in supporting commentary, if at all. Video too is growing at a phenomenal pace, with over one billion hours watched on YouTube each day. Amazingly, over 40% of people now prefer to start their product search on YouTube rather than Google.
This visual culture has been facilitated through vast amounts of digital technology, making it easy for consumers to show and tell. Consumers have a great enthusiasm for image based communication and organisations need to embrace imagery and video creatively when building their customer relationships. This might include product demonstrations or 'how to' footage to help customers assemble flat packed furniture or install new TV equipment.
Live video is becoming the norm in every day activity. Skype, Facetime and video conferencing at work has made people more comfortable with seeing themselves on screen. It's a very small step to go from using video in our personal lives to maybe using similar steps to show an engineer a malfunctioning washing machine, or a tour operator the poor state of your holiday apartment.
Customers may also like to escalate voice calls to video calls in some situations when dealing with contact centres. For example, queries that start on webchat might reach levels of complexity that would be better communicated through a voice or video channel. The ability to switch from one channel to another, seamlessly, is key to making sure customer experience is optimised and not compromised.
Video traffic is set to increase significantly in the next few years, and your organisation will need to think about the impact that this has not only on your customer journeys and customer engagement, but also your network and IT infrastructure.
We've been running an extensive global research programme since 2010. We want to know what digital channels and devices customers are using to communicate with companies and if their expectations are for these communication are being met. Our latest output from this research programme is 'Chat, Tap, Talk. Eight key trends in Digital Customer Care'. Download your complimentary copy here.