As contact centers race to embrace AI, it’s easy to overlook a channel that hasn’t played a big role in customer experience (CX) until now – video CX. There is a growing use of digital channels, which reflects the broader world we live in. Conventional channels such as voice and email remain important, but the adoption and preference for digital channels is increasing, primarily on social media, chat, SMS, and video CX.
Video is the ultimate digital channel: immediate, familiar, ideal for digital-first support, and should be natural for digital natives when seeking customer support. Personalization is very important, and the immersive nature of video supports this in ways other channels cannot. While video might not be suitable for routine inquiries, it plays a crucial role in high-stakes interactions, making it a key part of a modern CX strategy.
In this regard, contact center leaders should view video in a broader context, where customer engagement involves both agents in the contact center and front-line personnel who also interact directly with customers or patients. To illustrate, here are three leading use cases for video.
1. Live Video Support for Day-of-Travel CX
All travelers have had to contend with unexpected developments such as flight delays, cancellations, missed connections, and lost or damaged luggage. When travel issues arise, customers are usually away from home and reliant on their mobile devices.
These are all anxious scenarios where time is of the essence, and travelers often feel helpless. They don’t have the luxury of waiting on hold or the patience to deal with IVR menus. In these stressful moments, customers need the assurance that someone is with them and they will get a timely resolution. Video CX enables meaningful and human support where eye contact and the body language of a calm agent can manage those anxious moments.
The intimacy of video makes it easier for agents to connect with customers in a way that keeps them calm while getting a resolution in place. This can be difficult to convey with non-visual channels. For customers not expecting video as an option, this can be a great way to elevate day-of-travel CX.
2. Real-Time Video for Remote Healthcare
Remote forms of healthcare have been in use for some time, but primarily via telephone or text-based channels. As operational costs keep trending higher, healthcare providers face similar challenges to contact centers – it is not practical or possible to handle every interaction with a live person. Patient care, like customer care, requires a personal touch and professional expertise for each situation. Some forms of patient support are clinical or transactional and can be automated, but others require personal interaction.
Video is an effective form of communication for patient support, like reviewing test results, diagnosing a medical condition, administering medications, and collaborating with remote caregivers. With video, healthcare providers can offer face-to-face communication, like the care patients receive in person. Video becomes even more useful in a healthcare setting for patients in remote areas or those who are physically unable to travel to a doctor’s office.
Whether patients interact with healthcare-based contact center agents, nurses, therapists, or medical practitioners, the needs are the same. With video being accessible now on all types of endpoints – and at low/no cost – there is a wide range of use cases for this channel in the healthcare vertical.
3. Live Video CX for Immediate Technical Support
Remote technical support is more of a horizontal use case, where all types of businesses have technical support needs that are difficult to address via voice or text. These scenarios are usually too complex for customers to figure out on their own, and video can make all the difference. At face value, having a customer show an agent what their issue is, or having an agent show customers what to do, would be enough to support the use case for video.
That may be sufficient in a practical sense, but video is uniquely powerful in other ways as a communications channel. When complexity becomes an issue for customers, they become anxious, which often happens when trying to do something important or time-sensitive. Aside from this becoming a bad product experience, it could also become a bad brand experience if technical support falters. As such, the stakes are high, but so is the impact of using video to manage that anxiety.
As products and services become more technology-driven, which will only accelerate as AI becomes mainstream, a certain level of technology literacy is needed from customers. In many cases, that level won’t be enough, and that’s why technical support is so important for brands.
For long-term success, it is in the interest of brands to either make their offerings easy to use or provide the right kind of technical support. Since the former is more the exception than the rule, the onus falls on the contact center to keep customers happy and the brand strong. Video CX may be just one tool in the kit for contact centers, but in the case of technical support, it could be the most important one.