Book a Demo

Reducing Customer Support tickets using How-to Videos

In a world where companies have evolved into siloed functional units in providing services, it becomes more and more important to know that what’s better than acquiring one new customer is not acquiring two new customers but rather retaining an existing customer.
It is both easier and more valuable to understand your current customers and retain them rather than keep finding new ones who drop out after a while. While there’s a certain allure that comes with capturing new customers, keeping customers coming back will continually result in a greater ROI — and it costs 5-25X less.
Your customers are the source of your revenue. Without them, you don’t have much of a business so it’s important to keep them happy.

With the average ticket volume risen by 16% (Zendesk, 2021) since the pandemic and the impossibility of direct customer support or even remote ones turning out to be a difficult choice – we’re here to help.

What do customers look for in terms of support service

To resolve their problem(s) in a single interaction

Your customers have high expectations and if your business can’t meet them, they’re going to leave you for your competitors.The one thing that the majority of customers will remember in all likelihood is the direct interaction they had with your business. So it is imperative that you resolve their issues in the fastest and most efficient manner.

A knowledgeable representative

Often, complaints are the result of problems that need to be solved. Asking the right questions helps you get to the root of the complaint. A knowledgeable representative is always a customer’s favourite since they would be able to not only understand the customers problem easily, but resolve them soon as well.

Not having to explain too much in detail about their issue

The core value of outstanding customer service is centralized around attending to the needs and expectations of your customers through careful listening. In addition to getting a product or service that works for them, they want to buy from companies that make it easy to get help when they need it.

Getting their issues resolved without having to explain their problem in detail means they have to spend less time worrying about using your product and more time enabling themselves with it.

Finding information regarding their question without having to contact anyone

Customers today expect communication with service departments to be instant. In fact, they want immediate resolution of their concerns and this can be done way faster through text, graphics, faq’s and videos. Customers prefer to have their problem solved themselves without having to wait, interact and hope for a solution soon.
Convert your FAQ’s into How-To Videos in < 10 days.
The best way to beat customer churn would be to develop content based on support ticket trends.

The average number of support tickets that one technician can handle per day is 21 and according to Zendesk’s recent benchmark report, sophisticated companies see upwards of 20,000 support tickets per month, with TSIA reporting that 48% of these support inquiries are “how-to” in nature.

Different ways to resolve customer tickets would be:
Channel
Advantage
Disadvantage
Customer Support
• The user gets a personal specialist assist them. • The specialist will be knowledgeable and would provide the best solution • Minimal effort spent by the user
• Customer support specialists can handle a very limited number of calls in a day. • They have to have great product knowledge so as so solve these queries best.
Allow Users to Raise Tickets
• Allows the user to spend no effort other than raising their issue • It gives your specialists some more time to answer these queries
• It may take a while to answer tickets and hence queries are not solved immediately. • Missed out tickets can be a major issue leading to the user dropping out.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ’s)
• Can help users solve problems then and there • Involves a with a simple search. • They are most commonly occuring problems and hence have detailed answers on solving them
• It requires a lot of research and well thought out answers to FAQ's so as to explain the solution in the best possible way
Communities
• Communities, once well set can grow by themselves. • You can enable your own expert users to answer queries • Makes your query database always updated with the latest answers. • Can easily pinpoint common user queries by analysing community threads.
• You require a specialist to build and nurtute the community. • Not all user's would want to respond to questions from other users. • Community moderation might also be required
Automate Workflows
• User's can see and follow steps live. • Shares a clear understanding of the whole tool without having to move out of your website at all.
• This would force the user, no matter their skillset, to sit through the whole workflow which may actually annoy a busy user who does not have the time for a basic walkthrough that he is already aware of.
How-To Videos
• They can visually explain the whole process • Can be targeted towards a multitude of problems • Can reach hundreds of customers without using any manpower. • They can be shared which really helps when working in teams. • They are direct, easy to understand and allow the user to solve problems by themselves • Do not waste much time.
• They have to be well thought out and cover all aspects. • They should be engaging very clear so that the user understands well. • These videos might not be able to cover every single topic and really niche problems may still persist

1. Customer Support

Your customer support team works as a traditional safety net for your clients. Customers reach out for help and your support agents assist them with their needs. Customer support acts as a sense of physical assurance that your issue will be resolved without you having to search for anything or worry further.

2. Allow Users to raise tickets

Allowing customers to raise tickets is very beneficial since you can now use your product documentation to respond to repeated requests from different users while also giving you a small timeframe to understand the problem and answer them.

However, you should be careful when dealing with tickets. tickets need to be answered asap. Respond and let the customer know the case is being handled. Constantly update them on the progress and try to close it as soon as possible in order to let them have a great experience.

3. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ’s) and Communities

A series of faq’s or self-service support portal empowers customers to find help on their own terms. This not only allows users to find and resolve issues by themselves, but also helps you guage customer behaviour, product hotspots and a lot more!

4. Automate Workflows

Zach Hendrix of GreenPal said that they used a combination of contextual and personalized automation to scale customer support while reducing average response time by 77%.

Workflow automation is not only about eliminating the tedious parts of your job. Automation rules allow you to stay on top of incoming requests, ensure tickets are assigned to the right person or category, while sending out notifications as soon as a ticket becomes overdue.It minimizes human error.

5. How-To Videos

Thoughtfully designed training modules can help proactively address these common issues, thereby reducing support ticket volume. And the best way to do this would be to create a series of How-To videos.

How-To videos are widely considered one of the best modes of resolving issues because they have a wide outreach and you can both textually and visually explain the process, making it much easier for the customer to understand their issue and how to resolve it.
While there is a debate around which is more effective text or video-based support content it’s generally best to combine both. People learn in different ways some prefer to read, while some prefer to watch.
What’s important here is not just understanding the power of How-To Videos, but also understanding where to use them. They should be easy to find and access, simple to sort and find your particular issue as well as gain enough traction and visibility to help you reduce tickets at a higher rate.

Now these videos can be used on your website, blogs, emails, community, social media or even right on your website soon after signing up, but you have to put some thought into it.

Ask yourself this single question to help you better decide where you should be using your how-to video:

Which channel is most used by my customers to resolve their current issues? It may be your website (Customer Service), It may be communities on stack overflow, reddit, quora etc. It could also just be google or youtube. Accordingly try to analyse your customers and where they head so that you can post the most relevant videos there, hence resolving issues much faster.
You can also analyse any communities or groups where your ideal customers would be active to actively share helpful how-to videos there, to help users gauge your product as well as understand it.
Where can you use your How-To Videos
Value
Soon after onboarding
• Usually the videos used here explain the basic steps for setup and to get your user started. • They make user onboarding much smoother as the user now already knows a lot about how to use your product
Emails
• These can be used best when solving customer tickets. • The customer support specialist knows the exact problem faced by the customer and can share the right video
QnA
• This allows you to solve the most common problems with ease directly on your website
Blogs
• Customer support blogs go into detail and it can get monotonous sometimes. • Videos in these blogs can summarise, share tips and tricks or even just educate people, enriching the article along the way.
Directly post on YouTube or other social channels
• This allows the user to directly search for their queries and have them solved immediately. • These can easily be consumed, shared and are of great value
A video enabled knowledge base allows you to reach a wider audience while reducing confusion of complex steps. It allows you to bridge language barriers, knowledge/skill level barriers, as well as some accessibility barriers.

Video removes these barriers by showing and not telling. Research has shown that searches related to “how-to” on YouTube are growing 70% year over year.
– Craig Stoss, Vidyard

So here’s 5 of the top "How-to" videos we analysed that reduced Customer Support Tickets

Today, people prefer to answer any questions they have on their own and as soon as possible. They’re more likely to check a website’s frequently asked questions before contacting customer support directly. And hence why most customers expect multichannel support and become frustrated if their preferred method isn’t available, “how to” videos can be channeled into various platforms from text to online social media.

The speed of today’s business means some issues can’t wait until the next day. Real-time support is imperative, so you need to reduce multiple barriers and help in real time, swiftly.

1. Onboarding Video for Lawcus Client Portal

Analysis:
  • Duration: 2 minutes 52 seconds.
  • It is a simple screengrab video
  • It walks the customer step by step through the process.
Conclusion: The video basically guides you through the step-by-step process effectively because of the visual element of the UI mixed with the voiceover for an added benefit of understanding better.

2. Onboarding Video for Kissflow

Analysis:
  • Duration: 3 minutes and 28 seconds
  • Relatable series of videos with a storyline to keep it engaging
  • Minimally designed, simple clear steps to best help the customers understand and solve problems with ease
  • Takes you through the tasks one by one, helping you complete set up seamlessly in under 10 minutes.
Conclusion: Keep it simple. Your customer just needs some help understanding your product, and not an extremely creative and visual video. Make it interesting, show some real footage of the service/tool so the customer can easily grasp the concepts.

3. Setting Up a Team with SurveyMonkey

Analysis:
  • Duration: 2 minutes and 25 seconds
  • Segment wise split where they show ‘Setting up a team’, ‘Creating a team’, and the ‘Analysing stage’ in a single video but a clear visual split at 0:04, 0:21, 1:06 and 1:27 respectively.
  • There are stages in the video which makes it clear how difficult it would be to make one understand the process of maneuvering from one step to the next with word of mouth alone.
  • In the visual medium you get to highlight a particular section by zooming-in etc., like they did in 0:33
Conclusion: What may have been a complex, lengthy and incoherent conversation has been represented in a two minute “How to” video without a hitch. Using smart techniques to boost your video can really help you and are cost effective as well.

4. Onboarding Video for Tapclicks

Analysis:
  • Duration: 3 minutes and 23 seconds
  • Showcases a real person speaking to you, making the experience more relatable and wholesome.
  • Shares shortcuts and tips which can be very valuable to the customer.
Conclusion: The idea of having a real person, makes it feel more realistic and the whole experience is then enhanced. Sharing tips makes the customer use your software better, in turn making it a very valuable tool for them since it is saving a lot of time.

5. Onboarding Video for Taskworld

Analysis:
  • Duration: 1 minute 41 seconds
  • Smart usage of basic motion graphics help you showcase which element or button you are talking about, in turn helping the customer understand more clearly.
  • Takes you through the whole setup process in under 2 minutes while showcasing all things and highlighting key features.
Conclusion: What may have been a complex, lengthy and incoherent conversation has been represented in a two minute “How to” video without a hitch.

Final Words

Statistically, how to videos have proven to be one of the most powerful ways to solve problems and reduce customer tickets, but if you want your video to perform well, here are some tips:
  • Keep your videos short and to the point. Remember that you are trying to help your customer, not acquire new ones.
  • Group all similar issues and make a number of videos, each solving the issues of a different group.
  • Explain an entire segment once, end to end but don’t make it too long. More than 10 minutes can be daunting for someone looking to solve a small issue.
  • Make sure to show screen recordings of how to conduct the task, so that the customer is absolutely clear on how to proceed since they can see and replicate the process to solve their problems.
It would be impossible to go through all of this in the form of a tele conversation, because the video can be paused and played back whenever, can be referred to again and you can comment under the video where anyone can get back to you.

Moreover, one video can help hundreds of people and does not need any manual caretaking thereafter. So to me, it seems like a no brainer!

Ready to get started?

Convert your product docs into How-To Videos in < 10 days.
No Comments

Related Post

Drift Insider Breakdown
Pipedrive Academy Breakdown
Top 7 agencies for your B2B Saas Onboarding Videos
Content Beta

I hope you enjoy reading this blog post.

If you want my team at Content Beta to help you improve product usage, just book a call.