Customer experience is becoming increasingly important to business success. In fact, 73% of customers point to experience as a primary factor in their purchasing decisions, just behind price and product quality. Because superior customer experiences are something customers are willing to pay more for, customer service strategies and technologies that help engender such experiences can add perceived value across your business.

Enabling video calls across all customer support channels managed by your contact center or call center is an innovation that has been building strong momentum in 2021. A relatively new feature in customer service, video chat can bridge the gap between an organization and its customers by providing a personalized customer experience. Video allows contact center agents to connect with clients face to face and resolve issues quickly and efficiently.

These are the top benefits of video-enabled call centers and some of the customer-centric industries that stand to benefit most:

6 benefits of video call centers

Video call centers (sometimes shortened to VCCs) allow your agents to communicate better with your customers. Here are six of the most prominent advantages:

Enhanced real-time support

Lack of visual contact has always been a major challenge of call center interactions. Industries that involve hardware installation or maintenance, such as internet service or utility providers, can find it particularly challenging to deliver superior customer support. Diagnosing an issue is largely dependent on the customer’s ability to accurately relay equipment status and information, and voice calls or chats alone come with many limitations.

Enabling video calls as a support option not only gives your call center agents the ability to directly observe equipment behavior and issues in real time, but also dramatically improves the efficiency of your customer support, contributing to boosted agent utilization and profitability across your contact center.

Personalized customer experience

Pioneers like Zappos and Amazon have grown tremendously by focusing on the customer experience, and personalization has become a key facet of CX. As seen in this study from McKinsey, customers’ desire for personalization in their shopping experience is becoming a point of differentiation in many industries. 

Video chat support inherently delivers personalization. Because customers can see your call center agents face to face on live video, they can connect with your brand on new emotional and non-verbal levels. Contact center directors and managers can even use video calling as a criterion for routing customers to particular agents based on the customer’s personal communication preferences and the agent’s personal skillset.

Faster resolution time

Customers often get frustrated trying to explain problems they’re facing, while agents lose valuable time trying to understand the issue. With video, customers can use their camera, screen share or co-browsing to show their issue to the agent, increasing the likelihood of first call resolution (FCR) and cutting down average handle time (AHT) while leading to higher customer satisfaction. In turn, this also dramatically frees up agents to focus on other customers, reduces the caller queue and helps prevent customer abandonment or churn.

Increased revenue

Implementing video in your contact center can also have a direct impact on sales by allowing your call center agents to identify new upsell and cross-sell opportunities. During a typical inbound phone interaction, it’s not easy to move beyond the customer’s initial issue. But video empowers your agents to establish a firm dimension of rapport, observe context clues and even demonstrate new products as a natural part of the conversation.

Reduced costs

Operational efficiencies and reduced contact center costs are often realized with the introduction of video calls to your omnichannel support flow. Because video calls can be an effective substitute for in-person meetings or truck rolls, your agents and technicians don’t need to go out on field visits as often, saving on employee and travel costs. This added channel also gives call center supervisors and managers new variables for tuning escalation paths and managing volume across support tiers.

Interwoven brand marketing

Using video in call centers is a great way to market your brand. During a video call, the customer gets a glimpse into your organization’s atmosphere. A clean, well-lit background, professionally dressed agents and clear communication go a long way toward improving your brand image. Combined with swift issue resolution, this encourages customers to recommend your brand, products and services to their friends and families or to share their customer support experience on social media. Presentation is key, and video chat is a perfect opportunity to impress your customers.

It is also a fantastic avenue to extend your brand voice through human-centric interactions. Your customers are more likely to relate to your brand during face-to-face conversations with your employees. Video can help show your customers the similarities between them and your agents, fostering human connection, familiarity and loyalty.

6 industries that benefit from video call centers

Call center software that leverages video can be a valuable asset to organizations across verticals, but certain industries would benefit from a live video feature more than others.

Telehealth

According to the American Hospital Association, 76% of U.S. hospitals already use telehealth technology. Telehealth increases access to physicians and helps ensure that patients have the best possible healthcare without causing inconvenience. Video is essential to providing proper remote care, which often routes through a contact center-like environment. Secure, HD-quality video allows telehealth providers to deliver timely and convenient care, including remote technician assistance, medical device support and nurse and doctor visits.

For instance, high-quality video helps doctors review X-rays, CT scans and other diagnostic reports remotely with their patients, without the patients having to leave their homes. Of course, the actual diagnostic procedures need to happen onsite, but the follow-up appointments can be conducted over video.

Professional services

Many professional or business services would benefit from implementing video in their call centers, from consulting to real estate to legal. Trust is an important element of the relationship between clients and professional service providers. Video can play a role in building that trust by allowing fast, personalized and convenient attention. For example, a consulting business can conduct meetings with their clients through video to provide real-time guidance while keeping the consultation a part of the client’s interaction history and customer record.

Financial services

The financial services segment must provide ultra-secure support to cultivate trust with their customers. Face-to-face video interaction with clients for transactions or brokerage advice builds more trust than contact over the phone. With video, financial services firms can offer premium white-glove customer support to high-value clients, ensure secure, encrypted communication, and review financial documents or data together in high resolution.

Insurance

Insurance firms can save on costs and improve the claims process by introducing video into their contact center workflows. Faster claims resolution improves efficiency and customer satisfaction. With video, loss adjusters don’t have to travel to the site. Instead, customers can show the damage through their smartphone or personal device and file claims more effectively in a way that makes them easier for adjusters to handle in real time.

Manufacturing

Manufacturing companies can work with customers via video to prioritize critical issues and resolve them efficiently. Using video support, agents can better understand the issues customers face and either provide solutions on the spot or give technicians background information with video snapshots. Video also enables technicians to conduct a pre-visit assessment, so they’re ready with the right tools ahead of time.

Retail

With video, retailers can provide personalized setup and product assistance beyond YouTube guides, live chat or phone support with live demos and detailed assembly instructions. Video also allows retailers to extend customer support throughout the product lifecycle and minimize costly returns due to setup or technical problems.

Create a video call center with Lifesize CxEngage

Lifesize is on a mission to help enterprises communicate, collaborate and foster personal connections with their customers. Lifesize CxEngage Video is our cutting-edge, native video solution for cloud contact centers. 

Enhance your customer experience by implementing high-quality video in your call center with CxEngage Video. No matter what industry you’re in, a video-enabled call center offers major benefits, including streamlining contact center interactions, reducing costs, increasing trust and personalization, and ultimately improving customer retention and brand loyalty. Consider investing in video to take your customer service operation and business to the next level.