Rethinking the Customer Experience in the Video Age: 6 Tips for Small Businesses

From financial planning to fitness classes to food festivals, many of the in-person activities and meetings companies once relied on to generate revenue have all gone virtual. A new era of social distancing has entrepreneurs and small-business owners rethinking how they do business, and video opens up a wide world of opportunities to communicate and engage.

With Zoom, you can create a virtual experience that enables greater accessibility, improves customer service, and helps you build trust and credibility with existing and potential customers.

Virtual consultations create an ultra-low barrier to entry that makes it easy for potential customers to engage with you without investing much time, money, or effort. A free virtual consultation can help you reach new audiences and gain customers you may never have had a chance to capture before.

Some tips for optimizing your virtual consultation:

Prospective customers in the consideration phase don’t want to be burdened by long initial meetings before they’ve had a chance to decide if they want to do business with you. Advertise your virtual consultations as taking no more than 15-20 minutes. Let them know what they can expect upfront — a short walkthrough of their home, a quick discussion of their financial goals, a demo of your product — so they know how the time will be spent.

Zoom integrates with tools like Google Calendar and Microsoft Office 365 so you can schedule Zoom meetings and send an email invite with the click of a button. To join a meeting, all your prospect has to do is click the meeting link in their email. There’s nothing to download, log in to, or sign up for.

Use features to engage prospects and help start a dialogue. For example, if you’re in the home renovation business, ask your prospective customer to share a photo of their home and use the annotation feature to circle, highlight, and take notes on screen as you talk through design ideas. Have photos of past projects at the ready so you can share your screen and showcase your customer success stories.

Virtual events may not offer the same type of interaction as in-person activities, but you can still create a rich and immersive experience over video. Here are a few ways to design a virtual event with maximum impact:

Help your customers bring the excitement and convenience of your in-person experience home. This artist sells paint kits as an add-on to her virtual paint parties that are filled with all the supplies her customers need, and this restaurant in Melbourne delivers a box of ingredients to those participating in its Zoom cooking classes. Develop kits for upselling, or send a free gift as part of an all-inclusive event package.

Create an environment that allows you to present a polished virtual experience from home. If you’re a yoga instructor, play soft background music by lowering your noise suppression level. Personal stylists or decorators will want to have a well-lit space that shows off your design aesthetic, and if you offer financial services or consulting, create a branded virtual background that’s professional and distraction-free.

Keep creating touchpoints to engage with your customers via video, whether it’s a weekly virtual coffee talk where they can drop in to chat about the latest products, an interactive class, or a webinar that you record and upload to your website as educational content.

Want to learn more about using Zoom for your small business? Attend our live training webinars, or check out our resources on hosting virtual events.