Can you imagine video chatting with customer service?
Video chat is one of the fastest growing channel of communication. The number of calls made is expected to reach 30 billion by 2015 and the number of video chat users is expected to grow from 63 Million active users in 2010 to 380 in 2015.
What started as a personal communication channel is now used for more and more professional purposes. Skype’s main purpose was to help people keep in touch with family and friends when they are away from them. This completely changed the way people interact and even build new relationships. Video chat made it possible to create a quality relationship with someone leaving thousands of miles away from us. Imagine the potential of such a channel in the business world!
People are getting used to the technology and are not only using it with family and friends anymore:
– 60% of hiring managers have conducted a job interview through video chat(Entrepreneur)
More than 80% of them find video both time and cost saving. Job applicants also share that vision saying that it saves them the cost of transportation and allows them to schedule more interviews in one day. A good way for them to find a job way faster than with regular in-person interviews.
– 37% of Skype users reported using the software for business purposes (Wharton-UPen)
– 7% of US doctors video chat with their patients on a regular basis (Healthcare IT News)
And did you know that 36% of customers would like to use video chat with customer support?(Talkdesk)
Some of the most customer centric companies already adopted video chat to take customer service even further. You might have heard about Amazon and its MayDay feature. The ecommerce giant decided to add a video chat help button on its Kindle to help new users getting started. They launched the feature this Christmas as they expected a lot of people to receive a Kindle as a present from their family. MayDay was build to help less tech-savvy people make the most out of their new Kindle. Amazon didn’t release much more information on the subject. They however did announce a team of thousands consultants dedicated to video chat letting us to believe that the channel might be use for other purposes.
