I’m a visual leaner, which means that I learn best by seeing or watching how something is done. And a quick Google search tells me that about 2/3 of the population falls into this category of learners, so there are quite a few of us out there.
So imagine my disappointment when I tried to find some visual assistance (read: how-to videos) to repair my washing machine and only found the product manual on the company Web site. I’ll get back to my washing machine in a minute, but first why don’t companies have how-to videos on their sites for customer support?
Now, if this were 2001 I could understand some of the common arguments for not putting video online:
1) It’s expensive to create & upload
2) It takes up a lot of space
3) It’s slow to download for the user
Well, guess what? None of those arguments hold water in 2011.
1) Almost every device sold (smartphones, tablet computers, mini camcorders) records high quality video.
2) Capacity on sites & computers is only increasing, and with the advent of Cloud computing this becomes even less of a concern.
3) Everyone streams video from everywhere … smartphones, tablets, laptops, etc.
So with those obstacles out of the way, what’s the holdup? Why don’t companies help prevent phone calls from disappointed customers by uploading user-created videos of how-to videos?
Now, the conclusion of my washing machine repair story: Even though the company Web site didn’t have any videos, I was able to find a user-submitted video (on a third-party site) on how to fix the washer (turns out there were a lot of baby socks clogging the drain) & I saved myself the cost of a repair bill, not to mention the time and energy to set-up the appointment & wait for the repairperson to show up and complete the work.
And that wasn’t the first time I’ve used user-submitted videos to make repairs (thanks YouTube!). But why can’t I thank the company site? It seems like such a no-brainer to load videos, even user-submitted ones, onto the site if it’ll help resolve customer issues & prevent live interactions.
Sites like Facebook & Google+ seem like the perfect place to house these videos, and, as my colleague mentioned in a recent post, Google+ offers a good spot for user-submitted videos with their Hangouts, but I haven’t seen many companies embrace the user-submitted videos that are already out there. British Telecom is an exception, as they mentioned in a recent social media webinar that CCC hosted, that they’re planning to post YouTube videos to assist their customers with support. But they are definitely the exception, not the norm.
We’ve seen companies use discussion boards to leverage customer-generated solutions, but not much in the way of video. So what’s keeping your company from using these videos on your site?
Related posts:
on October 14, 2011
Respond
It seems a no brainer to enhance knowledge articles and documentation with more video content as opposed to plain text and pictures. We at salesforce publish Youtube videos for frequently asked questions, How to’s as well asbest practices for product/feature adoption.
on January 25, 2012
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[...] With technology enabling the world to better capture, store, and share video content, we’ve certainly seen a rise in the number of organizations wondering how they can use video to serve their customers—we’ve even blogged previously about the idea of using self-service ‘how-to’ videos and customer-generated content. [...]