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  Comfortable on camera anywhere, Jesse started recording a quick video reply thanking the person for her interest and promising a phone call when he got inside. No matter that he was wearing a ballcap. No matter that the breeze cut wind noise across his phone's mic. And no matter that he was interrupted while recording. During his first and only take, his darling daughter toddled over to the camera, waved, and said, “Hi” before walking back out of the shot to blow more bubbles. Rather than stop and re-record the video because of this interruption, Jesse just sent it as-is, which he does for every one of his personal videos.

  Not only did Jesse land the appointment, the couple brought a bubble bottle and wand for his daughter. He's enjoyed many other beautifully human experiences as a consequence of videos sent before and after every appointment. He wins against competitors because of it, too. You don't need a “perfect” video to build relationships and win opportunities.

  LEADERSHIP, VIDEO, AND THE HANDWRITTEN NOTE

  Based in Louisville, Kentucky and serving as regional President and CEO of four different companies, Brad DeVries leads more than 1,300 people spread across multiple offices in multiple cities. If you lead remote workers or large teams and find it important to lead with a personal touch, adopt his practice. Just four years into his use of personal videos, Brad's recorded and sent more than 5,000. Most are one-to-one, but he also uses video for all-company messages.

  For happy birthdays, holiday greetings, thank-yous, milestone celebrations, company-wide announcements, and even more significant moments, such as deaths in the family, Brad looks people in the eye through video. Writing slows him down and limits his ability to express gratitude, excitement, or sympathy. Using video to build relationships is a “no brainer,” in his words. He adds that “If I could only keep one personal tool to be able to reach out to everybody,” it would be video messages.

  Similar to Brad, Todd Bland serves more people in more stakeholder groups than he can regularly see in person. As Head of School at the Milton Academy, a K–12 college preparatory school just south of Boston, Todd takes a personal, authentic approach to leadership. Parents and students, faculty and staff, alumni and donors—they all deserve a high level of attention and care. Congratulations. Happy birthday. Thank you for your generous gift. These messages are better delivered in video than in typed or handwritten words. “Having to write a lot of thank-you notes and expressing appreciation for good work—I love doing that, but being able to do that in my own voice” allows Todd to add humor, personality, and authenticity.

  Like email, the handwritten note can't be replaced. Given the huge swing toward digital and automated messages, its stock is up these days. We'll bypass the robotic, automated handwriting services designed to make people think you actually took the time to write it yourself (don't get me started) and observe two specific benefits of a truly handwritten note:

  I made this just for you. I cared enough to spend the time.

  My personality is on the page. Through my handwriting, I'm expressing thoughts and feelings in a way that's completely unique to me.

  A one-to-one video message does both of these things—and arguably does them better. When you greet someone by name and speak specifically about her or his birthday, milestone, or hardship, it's obvious you did so just for that person. A reply like “thank you so much for taking the time to make that video for me” comes often, even though clicking “Record” and talking is almost always faster than typing or writing the same message. And when you send a video message, you're sending yourself. You're not one in a million—you're one of a kind. Whether it's big, bold, and boisterous or mellow, subdued, and measured, your unique personality makes your video one that only you can send.

  Don't let the simplicity of this activity fool you into thinking it's not effective. You don't have to complicate your use of video for it to pay off significantly. Don't have fancy video equipment? Neither do Brad or Todd. Don't know when to use video? Send on the occasions they do. Afraid of being on camera? These are people who already know and like you. Maya Angelou famously observed that “people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” It feels great to be noticed. Showing that you notice shows that you care. Caring connects us.

  APPRECIATION YOU CAN FEEL

  The people at Care and Share Food Bank for Southern Colorado believe no one should go hungry, so they distribute more than 20 million pounds of food every year through nearly 300 partner agencies to feed people in more than 30 counties. To serve the mission, they rely on employees, volunteers, corporate financial and food donors, individual donors, partner agencies, governments and government agencies, foundations and grants, the Feeding America organization and network, and people in other stakeholder groups.

  As part of their strategic planning, leadership hosts “listening sessions” with these stakeholder groups to learn how to serve each of them more effectively and create more win-win situations. I attended one for corporate donors who give time or money to support the food bank's mission. “You all are so good with those videos,” said one of the attendees. “We love them and forward them around the company every time.” This is something Project Manager and long-time Chief Operating Officer Stacy Poore noticed in their video email analytics. “You can see that more than just the recipient is opening and viewing, and sometimes the recipient is viewing multiple times.”

  So, what are they sending? Something you can send every day: sincere gratitude. Simple thank-you videos like the one in Figure 5.2. Together, Stacy, CEO Lynne Telford, Chief Alliance Officer Shannon Brice, Individual Giving Director Becky Treece, Community Engagement Director Eric Pizana, and other team members have sent nearly 2,000 personal videos in just a couple of years. “We use them in many ways—to connect with volunteers, thank donors, make fun announcements, and more. I'm really glad we have the tool and I think it differentiates us from other nonprofits, which is very important!” says Stacy, adding, “One of the things I've realized more with this tool than ever before, and I knew this already, is that people are not thanked nearly often enough.”

  FIGURE 5.2 A “Thank-You” Video Delivers Appreciation You Can Feel

  Whether in direct sales or in nonprofit work, “thank you” goes a long way. Expressing gratitude is like smiling, which provides physical and psychological benefits for both its wearer and its viewer. A deep body of research supports the idea that saying thank you alerts the recipient of potential for a high-quality social bond. In a study titled, “Warm Thanks: Gratitude Expression Facilitates Social Affiliation in New Relationships via Perceived Warm,” researchers found that expressions of appreciation increased the likelihood that a “novel peer” (someone you've never met) provides contact information for follow up and “prompted investment in the burgeoning social bond.”3 It doesn't just maintain and advance relationships, appreciation helps establish them.

  Seeing “Thanks” or “Thank you” in typed-out text is like seeing your name. It's so ubiquitous it's nearly meaningless. Just as marketing automation inserts our names and other details into subject lines and email bodies, we drop in these words and phrases without much thought or effort. What's personalized with automation is not necessarily personal. And we can feel the difference.

  When you look people in the eye, greet them by name, and use the full range of human expression to let him or her know how appreciative you are, it comes to life. That's why an organization like Care and Share, with an annual budget of nearly $50 million, reaches out in one-to-one messages to people engaged in their fight against hunger.

  MORE SALES REPLIES AND FEWER SUPPORT REPLIES

  A technology service company with more than 7,000 global employees recognized the power of personal video and engaged us to implement it. Mapping video opportunities to their desired outcomes, our Enterprise Solutions Director James Stites put together pilot studies with their inside sales and client success teams. The former sought an increase in r
eplies from customers who were using their service at no cost to talk about paid upgrades. The latter sought a decrease in replies and an increase in customer satisfaction as they resolved inquiries and issues related to their services.

  Both teams were equipped with our tool set to record and send personal videos and screen recordings from directly inside their Gmail inboxes. Neither team had video assigned as a required performance metric; it was a secondary system to their primary platform. Our team dashboard shows open and reply rates on every Gmail send, plus play rates when those sends included videos. Managers could see this by individual and across the team.

  The 40 salespeople in the pilot sent more than 800 videos in a 55-day period, an average of 21 videos per person. Most included a whiteboard with the recipient's name written on it, a smile, a personal greeting, a message about how they can improve their recruiting and hiring with paid services, and a request to respond to learn more. The reply rate for first-touch sends to relatively cold opportunities was 55.6% higher with video than without (9.8% versus 6.3%). Among those who played the video, the reply rate jumped to 21.9%. And on follow-up sends, video emails generated a 12.8% higher reply rate than traditional emails. Open rates on video sends were higher in both cases, too.

  We were also able to give them specific insights to continue improving those results. For example, sends on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays produced 80% of the replies and had the highest likelihood of receiving a reply within 24 hours. Sends before 8 a.m. and after 5 p.m. had the highest open rates at 89.3% and 84.5%, respectively. In contrast, sends between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. were opened at a rate 10 percentage points lower (ranging from 69.5% to 73.1%). These findings are consistent with the always-on nature of email we explained in Chapter 2.

  For better prospecting, send personal videos to introduce yourself and the opportunity. Send some mid-week outside normal office hours.

  The customer success team engaged 30 members for their pilot. To resolve issues, answer questions, and improve customer experience, they sent 688 total videos during the study—an average of 22.9 videos per person. Video and non-video sends had open rates greater than 70% but replies to the video sends were 33% lower (6.0% versus 8.9%). While your sales team seeks engagement and response, your customer success team seeks resolution and satisfaction as quickly as possible. A decrease in customer replies is an increase in efficiency.

  So, responding to customers by talking rather than typing improves efficiency. But what about satisfaction? Of the customers, 85.37% rated the video sends as “very helpful” or “extremely helpful.” And the verbatim feedback explains why. People who filled out the post-service survey commented on the quality of communication, the personal nature of video, and even a love of the practice. Among their responses about the simple webcam videos sent from Gmail:

  “At a time of automated attendants or robots, or even chats, it's good to see a real person even if it's just a recording. This is a great customer service idea!”

  “The video made the service feel more personal, and I thought it was nice that I could see who I was talking to on the phone-thank you (employee name)! It feels like the customer service really cared and looked into our situation.”

  “More personal than a voicemail or email.”

  “(Employee name) rocks! I love the video and was shocked that it was personalized!”

  “I LOVED this format of reply—so personalized! Thank you!”

  “Polite voicemail was left, but the emailed video was novel, engaging, and impressive! Well done, thanks!”

  Better than a bot. Seeing and feeling. Connecting with and naming a specific person. Moving people from confused or frustrated to satisfied and pleased. All this is as simple as clicking “Record” and talking to a customer conversationally, as if you're sitting across the table from her or him. The common denominator in increasing replies to prospecting emails and increasing efficiency in service, support, and success is the same: rehumanizing the process with simple videos.

  EVEN MORE SUCCESS IN CUSTOMER SUCCESS

  An 81.9% decrease in time-to-resolution, 55.2% and 13.8% increases in one-touch resolution with evergreen videos and personal videos, respectively, and a 40.9% increase in satisfaction survey response rate (31% versus 22%) with nearly equal satisfaction rates (98% versus 97%). These are the early results of our own Customer Success team using BombBomb videos inside Zendesk, the leading cloud-based customer service software (see Figure 5.3). Just over 15,000 tickets into organizing the data more clearly through this integration, the benefits of video are clearer than ever.

  FIGURE 5.3 Improvements for Customer Success

  Just as we have for sales, marketing, and other functions, our team's been using video for customer success for years. But now, with the Zendesk integration, it's more directly aligned with our care associates' day-to-day workflow and provides better insights into video's efficacy. As any support professional will tell you, you're often interacting with people when they're confused or frustrated at best and upset or angry at worst. As a result, “we spend a lot of time in support trying to get the right tone,” says Donovan Steinberg, Director of Customer Success. People often make up their minds in advance about what their experience is going to be, so a helpful and specific video message can make a huge impact by exceeding those expectations. It's easy to feel like you're just another number, another ticket, or another phone call, so a personal video breaks that pattern.

  Which videos do they record once and use over and over? They've produced a couple dozen “evergreen” videos with product or feature walkthroughs and known-issue workarounds to address the most common questions. “These are vital for scaling,” says Paul Case, Customer Care Manager. Beyond direct service, they use evergreen videos to improve the service experience. “Thank you for your feature request” and “Thank you for your time on the phone today” are examples of videos ideal for prerecording and adding to a workflow automation. Any interaction that happens often and with little variation is a prime candidate.

  Which videos do they make truly personal? For any problem or question with multiple potential fixes, a video recorded inside the customer's account with the screen recorder is far superior to a long, drawn-out email with links to multiple support articles. The former shows you're listening, that you care, and that you're available to diagnose further. The latter feels like work for a frustrated or confused customer. And they have that video to play over and over as needed. The video serves as documentation.

  That video replay ability isn't just a win for customers, though. When a ticket gets reopened by another team member, watching the video is a great time-saver compared to reading a long back-and-forth email exchange. Remember the 81.9% decrease in resolution time? It's 11 minutes for video and 61 minutes for typed-out text. Getting the tone right on the first send takes time. And because it's typed-out text, it's not as rich and helpful a piece of communication, so you wind up in an email exchange that takes even more time. One of the reasons video's so quick is due to its ability to produce one touch resolution.

  Another great use of a truly personal video is follow-up after a phone call to thank a customer, reiterate the key points, and provide encouragement going forward. Especially because we're helping people build and establish the new habit of getting face to face in simple videos, that follow-up can make a big difference for someone who's short on the clarity or confidence needed to go forward. That type of attention and care doesn't just boost experience and build success, it also breeds loyalty.

  Do customers like video? Though their overall satisfaction is only one percentage point higher, people who receive support videos give feedback far more often. Based on what we just shared about evergreen videos and personal videos, can you tell which customers received which style of video from their comments? Also watch for the enthusiastic use of exclamation points, all caps, and first names.

  “Thank you so much! Best part was you just sent me the video! That's exactly what I ne
eded! Thanks again!”

  “Zach is awesome! He walked me through how to correct the issue I was having via video, which was so helpful. He is VERY knowledgeable!”

  “Excellent. Answered all my questions and immediately prepared and sent me a how-to video.”

  “Excellent—especially when he sent a video to remind me how to use the video to reach customers better.”

  “Above and beyond. Hands down, THE BEST customer service of any company. Never a long hold, the Customer Service rep is thorough, and I LOVE that you use your own product and put a face with the name by emailing a video after the call. Rea was super encouraging and took it a step further by challenging me to reply to her email with a video and not to watch it after and re-record! And I did it! Lol! Thank you again for your GREAT support!”

  Video's benefits are conferred to your team members and to your customers. When you serve customers with empathy and respect instead of treating them like numbers, tickets, and problems, it's rehumanizing for everyone. And video does this better than text. “That's made the difference,” observes Paul. “That's why the responses are higher.”

  THE FIRST SALESPERSON TO SEND 10,000 VIDEOS

  “Video helps you establish a relationship in a way you just can't reach with a phone call or text-based email,” according to Danny Doerksen, who is likely the first person to record and send 10,000 videos for the purpose of building relationships and increasing revenue. He hit that number in January 2018, about three and a half years into his video journey. As this chapter's being written, Danny's well over 13,000 videos and counting, making him a not-so-average software salesperson. He started as an inside sales representative following up with, nurturing, and converting marketing-generated opportunities. Today, Danny's an enterprise account executive reaching out to C-level and VP-level executives representing large sales teams and entire companies.