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Video as a way to humanize the customer experience
We all know video is necessary to market your company to prospective clients, but how do you use it to
keep the customers you already have?
Way back in 2008 Paula Berg of Southwest Airlines did something a little unorthodox when her company
received negative press. After an incident involving two unruly but media-savvy customers, every news
station from coast to coast was touting Southwest Airlines as discriminatory against attractive people.
Berg wanted to communicate directly with Southwest customers; she posted a video on YouTube of
spokesperson Brandy King responding, in a very un-rehearsed way, to the accusations. With a simple,
message “We would be out of business if we banned pretty people from flying Southwest Airlines” the
spokesperson comes across as reasonable and fair; customers were able to put themselves in her shoes
and responded well to this video.
This video was the 8th most visited YouTube video that day behind only Barack Obama and Hillary
Clinton videos, during a busy presidential primary season. Internally not everyone agreed it was the right
approach initially, but in hindsight the entire PR team agreed it was the most appropriate response to
the situation – it showed a human face behind “Big Business”.
With a simple video, Southwest was able to dramatically increase its likeability with both current and
potential customers. What is important to note too, is that Berg saw this opportunity as not an
extraneous addition to their PR campaign – but as a necessary element to what was essentially a “visual
story”. Using video along with their more traditional PR Southwest was able to both reach customers
and humanize their response in as one blogger stated a very “un-lawyerly” way.
Video has grown up since then…
That was four years ago, and now that Southwest response video is still on YouTube with only about
40,000 more views. Not very exciting, however it was a great first step in marketing evolution. What is
the next step in that evolution? Interactivity. Recently social media evangelist Gary Vaynerchuck
complained about companies that use video for viral marketing, but then drop the ball when it comes to
customer interaction. He describes last year’s Old Spice YouTube campaign as the social media
campaign that “doesn’t exist” and explains that Old Spice did everything right except leaving their
community of tens of thousands of social media followers hanging. Describing the campaign as a “one
night stand”, he emphasizes that companies need to instead “marry” their customers by “giving a crap
and being human”.
Most likely if you’re reading this you have a YouTube page and a couple well-produced videos. But are
you using video to marry your customers, or simply creating one night stands? At Chadwick we partner
with some of the leading technology providers in their field to make sure you are taking every
opportunity to build and enrich your customer relationships. Our partner Terradin for example will allow
your customers the ability to upload their own videos, react to videos and connect with each other
around the content that inspires them - essentially becoming your customer evangelists.
There are so many more benefits to video besides “free advertising”. One of our clients Mibitech has
actually helped the company Haver-Moore limit up to 50% of costly customer returns and reduce the
load on their technical support team.
We are just beginning to realize the enormous benefits of video on customer retention; so far the
numbers are pretty striking. Want to know more? Watch this video now to see how Chadwick continues
to create innovative, cost-reducing means of customer interaction for their clients.