How video can enhance self-service

When a customer hits a roadblock, often their first course of action is DIY. In fact, 91 percent of people we surveyed said they would gladly reach for a helpful knowledge center. Chances are, being able to quickly find what they need from your site without opening a ticket will leave your customers feeling good — about their own sleuthing skills, and about working with you.

That’s persuasive incentive for creating comprehensive support pages. All the better if they’re fun, too. We’d like to suggest a stellar tool: video.

One Psychology Today study reports that the human brain can process the video 60,000 times faster than text. That number might be hard to process, but the potential upshot of using video sure isn’t. For visual learners, video is a no-brainer. Your support pages, though, are about more than just delivering instructional information. With every crucial how-to interaction, there’s an opportunity to deepen your relationship with the customer.

Recently, Zendesk teamed up with our friends at Wistia, a professional video-hosting service that specializes in business solutions, to create a guide to improve customer satisfaction. Wistia found a dramatic difference between the time spent on support pages with video and pages without it (7:21 versus 2:48, nearly three times more).

Andrew Sapienza, Customer Experience Lead at SeatGeek, likes video for its ability to lend a better frame of reference. “One of the reasons pairing video with support has been so helpful is because it’s not abstract: you can show your customers exactly where things are.” Not sure what videos would work best? Start with addressing a frequently asked question or running through a killer tip. From there, experiment.

To learn more about empowering your customers with self-service, check out our 30-minute webinar.