Video-based customer service is a key growth area. Think about the new Google+ platform – how it is designed to allow us to use easy, Google+ spontaneous video chat to strike up conversations with others, says Peter Flanagan, Genesys regional director: Southern & Eastern Africa, explains.
As consumers use video more and more in their personal interactions, the natural progression is for its take-up when interacting with brands.
Indeed, research from Sitel, the customer service outsourcing group, and TNS, the insights provider, about how consumers interact with companies reveals that 25% of shoppers have accessed video tutorials or demonstrations on YouTube.
But “video-based customer service” is so much more than the social media site YouTube used by some companies for product demonstrations, advertisements and how-to instruction. A contact centre can now be equipped to handle real-time video communication with customers, improving interaction and service quality, as well as enriching the entire customer experience.
And this is happening – now.
The Ping An Insurance Group (Ping An of China) has become China’s first financial services business to offer video-based interaction with its clients. The financial services institution provides banking, securities, funds, trusts and other services, and has the largest contact centre of its kind across China seating nearly 9 000 people, with staff located in Shanghai, Suzhou and Shenzhen.
With the new video contact centre, “virtual shop” service agents and customers leverage video communication to make the business more direct and efficient. Connecting via video, insurance customers can gain timely understanding of their situation or claim status, and it helps agents accelerate business management.
For bank credit card business, customer service agents use video and fingerprint viewing for complete and instant verification of applicants’ identities.
The platform for this is provided by Genesys technology which includes SIP-based architecture to enable video applications – as well as providing great flexibility for future expansion.
“Providing high-quality customer experience is the key to winning customers. We are building a business-critical contact centre solution that gives Ping An of China a strong competitive differentiation to provide superb customer care for its market-leading financial and insurance services,” says Romano Valussi, head of Alcatel-Lucent Shanghai Bell.
“Genesys is helping financial companies to drive business growth through a new services model.”
Genesys offers leading solutions in the contact centre industry and are widely used in finance, insurance, enterprises and government agencies to provide voice, video and multimedia network interactive contact centre applications.