Your customer service representatives don’t want to feel like a broken record.

Yet, more often than not, your reps are answering the same questions over and over again. This kind of repetition represents a significant number of call center inquiries, and also a significant operating cost.

First time call resolution is an important goal for any call center, not just for employee efficiency, but for customer retention. Bored reps are not always the most responsive reps, and your customers know it.

A recent Accenture study cited:

• Of the consumers who switched to another provider due to poor service, more than 80% said they could have been retained if their issue had been resolved on their first contact with the company.
• Consumers between the ages of 18 and 34 (those who have grown up immersed in digital technologies) are 2x to 3x times more likely to desire digital interactions than consumers older than 55.
• These same consumers want more digital interaction than companies currently support.

What are some first steps at tackling these issues? What can your company do to relieve stresses on your call center, cut down bottom line costs, and keep your customers happy?

Interactive video is your savior.

• Want to reach customers suffering from call avoidance? Video.
• Want to reach out to customers and offer simple first-time resolution? Video.
• Want to answer commonly asked questions without frustrating your reps or your customers? Video.

And when you add interactive video to the mix, you can track more than just how many times the play button has been clicked. You can control the viewer’s experience and behavior, and you can track their every move, increasing efficiency and ultimately tightening your bottom line.

Take a look at five ways interactive video puts a new spin on customer support:

1. First time resolution - Clicking play on a video is not enough. Knowing if your customer’s problem has been solved is key to knowing whether your support is where it needs to be. Interactive video puts the “case closed” button right on the player, allowing your customer to execute a final click showing their problem has been fixed, and allowing you to know your systems are working.
2. Measure effectiveness of existing content – With video, how do you know what content is working and what isn’t? You can’t. But with interactive video, you can track resolution completions. Only at 25%? Then you know you probably need to look at revising the content and testing something else.
3. Downloadable documentation – Want to assist customers who have more complicated issues? Embed downloadable links right on the player, and use the subsequent analytics to hone your messages.
4. Next steps – If your customer has a complicated case… if she needs additional information or guidance, interactive video allows you to guide her directly to the next video, and potentially to the downloadable information she needs.
5. Order parts/set up service – Your customer needs a hardware fix. He needs new service. There are a myriad of ways your interactive video can help your customers order and/or schedule parts and services, from directly within the video.

Customer service is just that… service. It is an extension of your products and services. Your customer service is the true test of your ability to reach, mollify, and maintain your clients. But what about your employees? Imagine a way for you to take your most successful reps’ best practices and impart them upon your other employees? What if you could take smart, necessary guides and instruction and use them to more efficiently ramp up new hires? Using interactive video within your call center helps with all of this.

Take everything a step further and ask yourself this: is there truly a closed loop process between your field service reps and your engineers? Do the reps really fill out the forms? Do the forms really get back to engineers? And if so, how long does it take? Now imagine if your service reps simply recorded videos in real-time in the field while addressing an issue? The engineer could not only see what was going on but hear feedback from the rep.

Interactive video is an incredibly useful tool for your customer service departments, both externally and internally. And uStudio makes the tools you need to implement these videos in a seamless, simple way. Our interactive offers customizations and extensions that are limited only by imagination. And our plug-and-play solution gives you the muscle, while we take care of the back-end brainpower.

Reduce churn, both among employees and customers; reduce cost; streamline services. Interactive video is the efficient tool you thought was the future, but is actually available right now.