How to Incorporate Video into Your Customer Communication Strategy

The customer experience is having a moment. According to Salesforce, 67% of customers have a higher standard for good experiences than ever before, and 80% of customers say customer experience is as important as its products and services.

But what does that mean for your brand?

It means that you need to craft your customer communication strategy to extend the good experience past the point of sale. By incorporating personalized touches – like video – throughout your customer communication strategy, you are well on your way. 

Here are a few steps you can take to personalize your customer communication strategy and experience by incorporating video.

Step 1: Evaluate your customer communication process

First and foremost, take a good look at your strategy and identify which areas will benefit the most from adding video. If you don’t already have an established communication cadence, you should put one in place. 

You may already have content you are using that works for your strategy. If that’s the case, don’t throw it out! You can repurpose it into a video or simply use video to introduce customers to the content. You don’t have to completely reinvent the wheel if what you are doing works, but a well-placed video can really help your customer communication shine. 

Here are a few questions to ask yourself when evaluating how to incorporate video into your customer communication strategy:

• How are you currently communicating with your customers?
• Which areas would benefit video in general?
• Which steps would benefit from a personalized video?
• Which steps would benefit from a demo?

After you have answered these questions and dug into your strategy as a whole, it’s time to determine which videos you want to use. 

Step 2: Identify the types of videos you want to create

Generally, your customer communication strategy will benefit from 4 types of videos: 

1. CSM introduction video
2. Training and onboarding
3. Product updates & demos
4. Follow-up videos 

While these 4 types are great as a basic template for your customer engagement strategy, it’s important that you personalize your videos to your brand and to your customers. Each new customer should get a personal introduction video from their Customer Success Manager and receive personalized training, onboarding, and follow-ups depending on how many users they have and their use case. Product updates and demos tend to do well as more general videos aimed at your entire customer base, but feel free to personalize them if your schedule allows.

Step 3: Start recording

Once you have identified the types of videos you want to create, start making a plan to record. While you may be tempted to just whip out your phone and hit ‘record’, there are a few steps to follow to ensure your video looks and sounds as best as possible.

Before you record, make sure you have your messaging down. Create an outline if you need to keep yourself on track, or if you’re more comfortable with a script, write one. 

Some videos, like product demos or updates, can be one-size-fits-all. Other videos, such as intros, training and onboarding, and follow-ups should be personalized to every customer. So keep that in mind as you begin recording. 

Step 4: Establish a sending cadence and plain text messaging

Like any other form of communication, consistency and timing are key. If you already have an established cadence that works, then don’t mess with it. However, if you don’t, you need to make a plan for when to send your videos and the email messaging you will send with it. 

Video email is by nature more engaging than plain text email, but you would be foolish to think you can send a video with no messaging whatsoever and expect your customers to open it. Craft a short, 2-3 sentence message to accompany your video that gives your customers enough information to pique their interest. 

Step 5: Pivot if you need to

Finally, don’t be so married to your communication process that you can’t pivot if necessary. Every customer is different, has different needs, different pains, and different ways of communicating. A communication style that works for one customer may not work for another, so be flexible with your messaging and cadence as needed. 

You may find that some videos resonate more than others, and it’s okay to get rid of the ones that aren’t working for you. Like any other strategy, a customer communication strategy needs to be flexible enough that you can adapt, but rigid enough that it accomplishes your goals.

We hope that you find these steps helpful for incorporating video into your customer engagement strategy. If you want more information on how to get started with video, we would love to show you how!