Whether your website is primarily used for B2B lead generation or you’re overseeing an ever-expanding ecommerce store, your FAQ page plays a critical role in how you communicate with your customers. This includes both prospects who are interested in learning more about you, and existing customers seeking solutions to challenges they’re coming up against in using your products and services. For some businesses, the FAQ page can be an afterthought, but this is a mistake – and it can actually cause problems rather than solve them.
On the other hand, a thoughtful FAQ page that integrates video solutions can have both short-term and long-term benefits. Let’s take a look at those benefits before explaining exactly how you can create effective video FAQs for your business, with a few examples thrown in for good measure (full disclosure: these examples were not produced by Storyboard Media).
The Benefits of Creating Video FAQs
Customers are reading less and watching more. I could cite a dozen stats backing this up, but I probably don’t have to. Video gives you the ability to quickly and easily communicate solutions in your customers’ preferred medium. By creating video FAQs, you’re simply giving the people what they want.
Video reduces support tickets. According to Hubspot, 47% of businesses report relying on video content to reduce support queries. When you have a clear, concise video that answers a customer’s question as opposed to a wall of text, customers no longer need to flood your inbox with their (often, very similar) queries. This reduction in the volume of emails that your team members need to respond to improves your deflection rate and helps keep your team efficient.
Ride the ‘How To’ wave. A recent study by Search Engine Island showed that “how-to” searches on YouTube are growing 70% year over year. Not only does that suggest adding “how-to” to your title and description may boost the SEO value of the content, but it indicates that users are increasingly relying on this search method – entering “how-to” into YouTube to find answers – to get answers. Plus, FAQ videos provide one more way for you to add fresh multimedia content to your site – which is always a benefit for your SEO, regardless of whether it starts with ‘How to’.
Walking Through an Installation Process — Wistia Customer Showcase
Video captures valuable data. One of the most exciting aspects of integrating video into your content strategy, whether you’re using it for marketing, sales, or customer success, is its ability to capture viewer data – assuming you’re using the proper hosting platform. For example, you can not only see which FAQ videos are being viewed the most, but you can see which parts of those videos your customers are viewing more than once. This may reveal areas of your business where processes can be improved or better communicated during onboarding.
Customer support video builds brand loyalty. With video FAQs, you can build a stronger relationship with your customers and increase customer loyalty over time. That’s great news, because a customer loyalty increase of just 7% can boost lifetime profits per customer by as much as 85%, according to Brand Keys. An effective FAQ video is more engaging and feels more personal, helping establish a positive connection between your company and your customer.
So, how exactly do you make effective FAQ videos? Below, I’ll outline the process of creating video FAQs that can have a powerful impact on your business.
How to Effective Create Video FAQs
1. Prioritize your FAQs.
First, prioritize your FAQs by understanding which questions are truly asked most frequently. This means analyzing available data, but also surveying your sales team and customer success team members. They’ll have keen insight into the questions they’re spending the most time addressing, and which of those questions could easily be answered using video.
You may discover that, in addition to an FAQ video, you would benefit from an “80%” video – which is a video that answers roughly 80% of your customer’s most frequently asked questions before they even have a chance to ask them. It’s a powerful weapon that can dramatically shorten your sales cycle.
Answering a Common Technical Question — Wistia Customer Showcase
2. Determine your resources.
Next, determine your available resources (time, budget, equipment, personnel, etc.). How many FAQ videos can you reasonably create? What equipment do you have available? Do you need to source a camera, a microphone, or an actor? How much time can you, or a trusted employee, devote to writing scripts? This is essentially your pre-production phase of the FAQ video strategy – and a little bit of planning here can save you a lot of time in the long run.
3. Write, then rewrite, your scripts.
The script for a video FAQ is of paramount importance. As with flagship videos or product videos, the words you use in your FAQ videos must be carefully chosen. This will keep your answers short, concise, accurate, and accessible. The last thing you want to do is generate more confusion or consternation for your customers. In fact, there’s a perfect example; if this were an FAQ video script, I would get rid of the word ‘consternation’ in the previous sentence. It’s redundant and a segment of your customers may not be familiar with it.
The goal of an FAQ video is not to wax poetic about how your company is going to change the world; the goal is to quickly and clearly solve a problem. And while it doesn’t hurt to make these videos engaging and entertaining, consider the fact that some customers will watch your videos with Closed Captioning; humor isn’t out of bounds by any means, but sarcasm or clever wordplay may not track very well.
4. Produce with as much quality as possible.
The production values need to fall somewhere between Spielberg and that Instagram story your aunt posted of her Maltese getting into the kitchen trash. An external microphone to pick up sound and a bit of thought about the light and shadow on your presenter’s face can make a world of difference. Create a makeshift teleprompter using a spare laptop or second monitor to keep your presenter on-script.
5. Use a professional actor.
…or find an employee with some previous acting experience. An improv class or two will do in a pinch. Video FAQs often live or die by the ability of the actor answering the question to speak clearly, with energy and authority. So, if you’re using an employee over a professional actor, make sure that employee is comfortable on camera and able to deliver lines with confidence.
On the flip side, if you use a professional actor, make sure the actor has reviewed the subject matter and can convincingly relay information about your product or service. If your industry travels in complex technological language, make sure your actor understands how to pronounce the terminology correctly.
Explaining Online Payments — Wistia Customer Showcase
6. Incorporate additional visuals.
Take advantage of the fact that video is a visual medium. Incorporate screenshots, tutorials, and audio cues to give your customer as much information as possible in the shortest amount of time. If applicable, have an experienced employee record a screenshare in which they “walk-through” your most common customer issues.
Insert screenshots and other images during the “talking head” to add emphasis where necessary and make the video more engaging. Sure, this is an FAQ video, but a little bit of editing can go a long way in terms of keeping your audience engaged – and away from that customer support contact form.
7. Upload to both your website and YouTube.
As mentioned previously, consumers are increasingly turning to YouTube and searching for “how to” videos, often with the service, product, and/or company tacked on to the query (e.g., ‘how to install amazon alexa’). So, while you should create an FAQ or customer support hub for these videos on your website, you should also upload them to YouTube – the second largest search engine – to help your customers find them more easily.
When posting your FAQ videos to YouTube, be sure to include an optimized title, description, and link to the customer support landing page on your website. Be sure to generate captions and review them for accuracy.
8. Deploy via social media.
If your customer support team or social media marketing team has noticed an influx of inquiries via your social media channels, consider publishing your FAQ videos to these channels. This lets your customers know that you’re aware of their issues and you’re making an effort to address those issues.
Whenever possible, respond directly to customers on social media with a friendly, sympathetic message and a link to the FAQ video. Platforms like Zendesk, Drift, and Gainsight have free video plugins that allow you to record personalized videos or share from your library right in that platform. This is the sort of personal engagement that can secure customer loyalty for years to come.
Expand Your Customer Success Video Efforts
There’s no limit to the long-term value that implementing a robust customer success video strategy can deliver. Other opportunities to integrate video into your customer success strategy include:
• Onboarding videos that welcome your customers to your organization and guide them through the setup process
• Customer support team introduction videos that put faces to chatbots
• Personalized support videos that directly respond to more complex questions
• Video responses that integrate survey buttons to calculate your customer health score
But a great place to start is by converting your top FAQs into videos. And “The Smokey Bear” is our video FAQ package that helps you do just that. If you need a hand getting started with video for customer success, shoot us a message today and let’s have a chat.