Live Video commerce provides a unique differentiator to brands – allowing a cost effective basis by which the customer experience can be tailored to customer needs. You could argue that live video commerce is actually a bit of a game changer for listening to customer needs and responding to those needs.
Lets examine how live video commerce can change the game for a brand. Lets start with some key concepts to guide us.
What is Brand differentiation?
Brand differentiation has become a companies’ competitive advantage. It is literally what makes your business different and gives a customer a reason to buy from you (and not the competitor!). Unfortunately, its competitive out there, so it is very much a moving beast. What made you different yesterday might not set you apart tomorrow.
Differentiation is therefore a continuous process – a matter of evaluating the competitive set and evaluating your brand to ensure that you’re positioned for success.
Breaking it down, there are a number of factors that can help differentiation.
- Validity – are your differentiators have to be grounded in reality. Is the differentiator real?
- Relevance – does the brand differentiator matter to your customers?
- Provability – Anyone can claim a differentiator. You have to be able to prove it.
There are a number of ways a brand can differentiate:
- Offer a unique product, process or service
- Have a unique look and feel
- Focus on a specific customer base (that have certain demographics)
- Be able to prove a clear set of outcomes from using the product
If those differentiators are valid, relevant to your customer base and can be proven, then differentiation is very much possible. This requires heavy investment to achieve the differentiation, and you have to keep looking over your shoulder to ensure your competitors don’t catch up by proving that their differentiator is more relevant, or even worse – proving that your differentiator is no longer valid (because they have outflanked you!).
Customer experience is a battleground for differentiation.
What has been gaining pace over the last decade is the notion that the customer experience can become a key differentiator. Today, 89% of companies compete primarily on the basis of customer experience.
Customer experience, also known by its acronym CX, is your customers’ overall perception of their experience with your business or brand. Customer experience is made up of every interaction a customer has with your business, from start to finish, experiencing the website to interacting with customer service teams, all the way to unboxing the product they bought from you.
This is not an easy thing. Its rooted in business process engineering – mapping out every step in a customers’ journey and establishing a context for validity, relevance and proof that interacting with your brand is a better experience than your competitor.
The other hard part is that it needs to change constantly. Great customer experience comes from brands listening to their customers and responding their wants or needs, not only through customer service, but at every point of interaction the customer has with the company.
Live Video commerce improves customer experience
Live Video Commerce uses video content to promote and sell products and services on the Internet live, directly with customers. Because the interaction is live between a customer service agent/product expert and the customer, it allows:
- A human interaction to take place at the critical point in brand choice
- A brand to understand the needs of a customer when they are in the consideration stage of a purchase
- Through the expert – Respond directly to those needs. If a customer gets exactly what they want, it is going to increase satisfaction
Because of the way video commerce works , experts can have access to all the tools needed to inform and assist customers online when they are in a video interaction.
Such rich customer experience has generally been the mainstay of a retail experience. It is an environment where customer needs can be sampled and met. The online experience in contrast assumes customer needs, and works to maximise an already low conversion rate – desperately attempting to funnel the poor customer down to a purchase when perhaps, their needs have not been met.
The customer experience in a call centre is equally jarring – its audio only, and customers are funnelled into different call centres based on what number they punch into their phone. The customer is already stressed by the time they get someone on the phone – and hopefully they have the right person. Call centres are expensive and its seen as more cost effective to put someone on the website where they can find what they want.
Video commerce recreates the human interaction that is normally experienced inside a store – needs can be understood right away, but also experts have at their disposal content from the website to inform and delight customers.
Importantly, video commerce brings a sophistication to the experience:
- Customers can purchase inside the experience
- If they do not purchase, they can be directed to the information needed to make an informed decision
- Experts can be coached on new ways to meet customer needs
- Customer preferences can be logged for further interactions
- Further consultations can be planned, follow ups can be set up
Learn more about how video commerce works and how it can improve your brand outcomes…… and of course – subscribe to hear more from Confer With!
