5 Ways to Boost Your Customer Onboarding Experience Using Personalized Videos

Amir Shahzeidi

Customer onboarding is an essential component of business growth and brands are taking notice. They have woken up to the importance of creating the perfect environment for customers to learn about and adapt to their solutions as quickly as possible to avoid churn.

In many cases, companies have turned to easy-to-use knowledge bases, filled with tutorials, in-depth articles, and basically anything and everything new customers need to quickly become familiar with the brand's solution.

And the results are worth it. A 1% improvement in retention can lead to a 12% impact in a company’s valuation in five short years.

While how-to and tutorial content is great, the smartest and most effective onboarding campaigns involve a personal touch. 

For example, email marketing works well. You’re able to engage customers quickly and effectively with automated messaging. But at Uscreen, we've seen that welcome emails with personalized videos generate 80% more opens than text-only welcome emails.

If you have been looking for ways to boost your customer onboarding experience, here are five tips to do so using personalized and effective onboarding videos.

1. Reach out Immediately

Reaching out and showing you’ve taken the time and care to get to know them as a human being goes a long way. Immediate action also shows the client that support is readily available and there is someone to rely on on the other end.

A quick video also triggers a sense of reciprocity (the personal obligation to return a favor), in this case, a reply to your video.

In this screenshot, Bonjoro's Head of Marketing, Oli, reaches out to a new affiliate using Bonjoro's iOS app within 4 minutes of joining the program.

Result! Reaching out to the new affiliate quickly fires up a great conversation, and a long term partnership.

But there's a little more to early customer interactions than triggering a sense of reciprocity. 

Customers who have signed up for a trial or just purchased a product have clearly shown intent to solve a specific problem. As all marketers know, intent and urgency go hand-in-hand, and there's no better indicator of high intent to use your product then signing up for a trial or purchasing it.

Engaging the customer immediately helps them address their immediate need to solve the problem, and helps your buyer quickly develop a greater affinity for your brand.

2. Embody Your Brand’s Culture 

When you reach out, embody your brand’s values. If your brand is fun, exciting and energetic, share a bit of that.

For example, anyone who's come into contact with Design Pickle has experienced their unmistakable enthusiasm for all things design. It translates through their blog posts, social content and YouTube videos. 

And you can tell that it's more than just a phase. Take this personalised onboarding video below. There’s nothing overwhelming or pretentious about Alex's delivery. And as you start digging into their product, you can’t help but develop an affinity for the Design Pickle's team.

By creating an informative but engaging onboarding video, they’ve made a unique impression in their customer’s mind so that the customer feels more connected and engaged with the brand than the rest of the marketplace.

Click the image to watch Alex's onboarding video 👇

But be mindful that your message must be stronger than your energy. An overzealous customer success account manager may appear overbearing, just as a quiet and unenthusiastic agent may seem uninspiring to the customer.

3. Set the Tone of the Relationship (“We’re here to help”) 

Video invites customers to get to know you on a personal level. They get a glimpse of the people behind the curtain, making it easier to engage a brand.

When you reach out, introduce yourself, your role and explain why that matters to the client. Underscore that you’re there to help them get ahead, and indicate ways in which you can help.

Look at Alex's video above again, he not only embodies his brand's culture and values, but really nails that "here to help" message.

Our customer success team here at Uscreen takes the same approach, and our onboarding not only helps video content creators who are new to our platform quickly become familiar with features and functionality but also focuses on understanding what a creator’s goals are to guide them to success as fast as possible. 

Success could be an insightful conversation about promoting videos or how to create their very own website using our platform.

The key to great onboarding, and opening up those conversations, is that your customer knows you are genuinely there to help - this will translate into a great relationship and a better experience across the board.

4. Script Your Personalized Message

People love to hear their names. And while anyone can auto-populate a name in an email, you can’t fake a name in a video. 

But be sure to use your customer's name sparingly to make your video more conversational and natural. One of the smartest ways to create natural videos is with the use of a script. 

Creating a script may sound counter-intuitive, but when practiced enough, your message roles off your tongue, making it easy to understand and respond to. 

If you’re creating onboarding scripts for a team of success managers, here are four ideas you can use to produce effective, yet creative messaging:

Structure Your Message to be Both Valid and Important

Signing up for a new product or service can trigger tons of automated emails and interactions which customers find annoying. Creating a valid and important video can change that. Valid and important information is anything that helps your customer grow or benefit considerably. Clearly state the valid and important elements of your message to ensure you capture your customer’s attention.

Ask a Question

Questions beg answers, and when you pose one that’s directly related to what the client will need to do next to move forward, you’re reaffirming your role as a trusted advisor and helping hand. You also show that you are invested in aiding your customer’s success (and not wasting their time).

Keep it Short

While important, your onboarding videos needn't be long. 30 seconds to one minute is enough to introduce yourself and share a strong and engaging message. And with a script, you’ll forego the possibility of lengthy monologues or sharing non-essential information this early in the relationship.

End With a Call to Action 

Customer onboarding is all about driving engagement. You want your customers to start the journey of a long and successful relationship with your brand. To do that, you have to guide them along the way. Ending your video with a call to action is the perfect way to invite your customers to the table.

Here at Uscreen, early on we broke this script into quick bullet points to work from (see screenshot below) when recording our videos. After 5-10 videos you'll find that your "script" is locked in and easily adapted to that specific customer on the fly.

5. Set an Expectation

Whether you’re running a SaaS business or selling fitness programs online, clients that develop an affinity or products often provide valuable feedback to help improve solutions. And with a strong relationship, it’s easier to stick with a brand that pays attention to you than one who ignores your requests for help.

The key to setting an expectation is by leaving an open door in a friendly fashion. You’ve already made the first move with a personalized video, mentioning that you’re ready to help shows the client that you’re reachable.

You can set an expectation of urgency by sharing that you’ll reply will make yourself available to connect with the customer. Being available makes your customers feel valued, and, once again, triggers a sense of reciprocity, making them want to engage.

Personalized Video in Action

Recording your first video may be slightly daunting, but don't let it prevent you from getting started. Contrary to popular belief, you don't need expensive video production equipment to record your customer onboarding videos or sophisticated software to edit them. 

In fact, you can create personalized and effective videos with your webcam or laptop camera and Bonjoro like Sarah, one of our customer success managers. 

Click the image to watch her video 👇

In this video example, you quickly get a feel for our brand through Sarah’s demeanor and energy. She embodies Uscreen’s culture and you can feel that she really wants to help Joe.

Note how Sarah uses gesticulation (waving at the beginning and end of the video, as well as placing her hand on her chest when explaining her role) to show genuine interest in engaging with Joe. 

Sarah is also quick to get her message across to Joe. She welcomes and thanks him for signing up for a trial and establishes herself as his link to our brand and success on our platform. 

Lastly, she draws Joe’s attention to what he should be thinking about next, after signing up for a trial. She mentions a link to schedule an onboarding call to discuss his goals (a call to action in the form of an invitation to engage) and how she can help him realize his goals on Uscreen’s platform.

Conclusion

Personalized customer onboarding videos help brands quickly and effectively start strong relationships. With a personal touch and engagement, customers quickly experience a genuine interaction with another human being, elevating the customer experience beyond the all-too-common auto-responses people are used to. 

But before you hit record, take the time to consider the strategic importance of your customer onboarding videos. Plan and create them with specific goals in mind. After all, relationships are based on value. If you show your customers that you truly care, you increase the probability of establishing long and mutually beneficial relationships.

About the Author

Amir is the digital marketing manager at Uscreen, an all-in-one video monetization and live streaming PPV platform that empowers video entrepreneurs and creators to monetize their content and build thriving businesses around their videos.

Category
Video tips
About the author
Amir Shahzeidi
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