Today’s global health crisis prompts consumer quests for up-to-date information from the brands that play a key role in their everyday lives. And while brand communication pushes are happening as fast as their ongoing business operation changes during this uncertain time, there remains an engagement problem that leaves many customers feeling lost, uninformed, and uncared for.
In a recent article by The Wall Street Journal, COVID-19 has caused an overwhelming increase in customer-service call volume. “Customers who call airlines, retailers & financial-services firms encounter hours long wait times, hear a recording that help is currently unavailable or are asked to manage issues online. Some companies even suggest that they hold off on seeking assistance altogether.” If you reflect on your own customer experiences surrounding COVID-19 updates from brands, you’ll agree that the abundance of text-heavy emails and website prompts intended to inform us, are instead getting lost in the shuffle.
…there remains an engagement problem that leaves many customers feeling lost, uninformed, and uncared for.
Delivering the right message at the right time, and in the right format is all crucial for differentiation, but as brands look to accomplish this when modifying customer communications, they should prioritize three things:
- Compelling & Engaging Digital Experiences
- Genuine & Helpful Content That Evokes Customer Sentiment
- Content Velocity—the ability to swiftly create and update messages (due to ongoing global health developments directing operational changes and customer needs)
Let’s dive a little deeper into each topic, and how SundaySky’s Video Experience Platform can help brands quickly modify their customer experience and communication strategies.
1. Compelling & Engaging Digital Experiences
With the drastic rise in call center volume, digital transformation is accelerating at a rapid pace. To do this effectively, service providers — like insurers and financial services— are putting dedicated teams in place to identify the most prominent contact reasons, then proactively push those messages digitally to help customers avoid the 2+ hour wait times over the phone. But as digital transformation takes place, it’s important to remember that if the customer can’t easily consume it, even your best efforts will fall short.
Brands who prioritize digital transformation partner with SundaySky to strategize contextual video experiences that address complex questions in their automated service agent (chat bot) as a response to COVID-19. Upon viewer input of a topical issue, like internet speed, they’ll instantly receive a video experience that offers education in a more engaging format, ultimately saving the customer from needing to call the service center.
SundaySky’s Video Experience Platform enables brands to create, manage and optimize digital experiences that engage customers with effective information. Each video-powered experience comes to life when individuals hit the play button, instantly activating targeted business logic, data, and creative needed to transform that moment for the customer. Additionally, multiple types of video-powered experiences from dynamic, interactive, contextual and individualized, each feature different levels of personalization. This flexibility enables engaging customer experiences interdependent on the speed you want to go live, business goals, communications channel(s), and the available data.
Regardless of your video experience choice, the focus is always on providing value and long-term customer relationships by delivering powerful CX and breakthrough outcomes at points across customer journeys when they matter most.
…if the customer can’t easily consume it, even your best efforts will fall short.
2. Genuine & Helpful Content That Evokes Customer Sentiment
As brands become more in-tune with how they’re engaging with their customers, today’s high-anxiety health crisis places an emphasis on communicating with empathy. Content that promotes specific products, or informs customers about business changes, needs modification. Whether it’s new business hours, digital services, waived fees, or payment options, customers engage and respond when brand information is communicated in a tone that evokes emotion.
Real-time data & logic is the key driver in providing customers with the most relevant and helpful information in their time of need. Sources can come from multiple avenues, like site behavior, CRM data, 3rd party audience data, and product information, for example, and be leveraged to connect with viewers on a human level. As mentioned above, once a viewer engages in a brand’s video experience enabled by SundaySky’s platform, they instantly activate targeted business logic, data, and creative needed to deliver real-time content that’s proven to leave customers educated, inspired to take action, and feel increasingly satisfied with the brand.
3. Content Velocity
The ability to swiftly create and update messages as business goals evolve over time—let alone throughout ongoing global health developments—is like magic, but at SundaySky, we call it modular video. When modularity is applied to video, every element is dynamic—from creative content and assets to story narrative and scene sequencing—transforming video into a contextual, personalized digital experience. The result is a hyper-relevant message to the individual customer, built on a platform of content flexibility and velocity to modify messaging in real-time.
Take for example, a leading retail brand that chose to de-prioritize promoting specific products and categories as a result of Covid-19. The retailer swiftly modified video content and narration by swapping the product scene for a value proposition message that spoke directly to its shoppers’ current needs during this time: working from home. This enabled retailer-to-consumer communication that is more relevant and empathetic to today’s customer needs.
SundaySky is also seeing how Covid-19 is creating urgency for cable-service providers to update their content to new customers, particularly around service installation. Cable providers are quickly modifying their messages to inform customers of actions installation technicians are taking to prevent the spread of illness while they are in customers’ homes. In some cities where technicians are unable to enter homes due to government mandates in effect, cable providers are modifying their messages to educate customers on how to self-install their new cable services.
The ability to swiftly create and update messages as business goals evolve over time—let alone throughout ongoing global health developments—is like magic, but at SundaySky, we call it modular video.
With the rapid developments stemming from COVID-19, the need to quickly and efficiently modify marketing communications with empathy is critical. Due to its dynamic nature and scalability, each video-powered experience generated by SundaySky’s platform is dependent on context, customer needs, and available resources at any given time, allowing brands to keep customers engaged and up-to-date with relevant information.
