Offering a Compelling Video Streaming Experience in Experience Cloud
Did you know that users spend 88% more time on websites with video content and videos generate 1200% more shares than images and text combined? That viewers retain 95% of information they see in a video vs. only 10% they read in text?
Video is an absolutely essential piece of effective constituent engagement with both internal (employees) and external (partners, customers) audiences.
Utilizing Salesforce video streaming features, particularly in the Salesforce Experience Cloud, (formerly known as Salesforce Communities) creates a more engaging experience for all user groups you interact with on the Salesforce platform.
Video content increases the value of your Salesforce community for your customers and partners by enabling them to leverage it as a single-source platform for learning, support, and engagement with your organization.
Picture this: you’re looking through online text instructions for installing a part in your dishwasher. You’re looking back and forth between the dishwasher and the instructions on the manufacturer wondering if you’re assembling the part correctly.
Now instead, picture finding a how-to video featuring a product expert who takes you through the assembly process step-by-step. You can see exactly what the expert is doing and follow along. You can pause the video when you need some extra time. You can chat with a customer service representative using the pop-up link that appears in the corner of the video every now and then in case you have questions.
Which experience would you prefer?
Utilizing video and audio content creates a more compelling and interactive experience for your audience that drives their desire to login more often and interact with your organization on a regular basis.
The Challenge
Even with all of the capabilities and support Salesforce provides, there are limitations that make Salesforce-native video content an ineffective strategy.
File size restrictions and storage limits make it difficult to house content directly on the platform. The requirement that users download content in order to access it creates a huge potential barrier to views and adoption.
One of the primary benefits of video content is a more seamless, interactive user experience, and failing to solve accessibility issues defeats the purpose of having it available in the first place.
The Opportunity
Video content can be utilized in ways that are unique to your company, strategy, and use of the Experience Cloud. Thanks to Salesforce’s flexible integration options, companies have the opportunity to think creatively when considering ways to implement a video content strategy.
How are companies already doing it?
- Onboarding and training new team members and partners
- Creating how-to and FAQ videos for customers
- Building community with video content on the Chatter feed
- Implementing user-generated video workflows
- Enhancing text-based knowledge articles with accompanying videos
- Streaming webinars and featured speaker events
- Keeping internal content secure (vs. using a public platform like YouTube)
- Conferences and company town halls
This video discusses some effective ways companies are implementing video content strategies in Salesforce (and for you techies, you’ll like the detail around backend processes powering the solutions, too).
The Solution
Implementing a streaming service allows you to offer content in accessible, engaging ways that give users a better opportunity to truly interact with your company.
It aligns with user preferences, too. 68% of users say they prefer to watch a video to learn more about a product or service.
Salesforce offers numerous options for integrating third-party streaming services that best work for a particular company’s purposes. Streaming services like Vimeo and Brightcove are two good options that have pre-built components that work for a seamless integration process.
If your use case requires a more tailor-made solution, video can be integrated through an iframe or other means to embed streaming video directly into your community pages, taking advantage of pre-built and custom Lightning Web Components to offer unique experiences like Tiles and Carousel.
When you leverage a streaming provider, you can also enhance your company’s ability to measure KPIs and analyze other Salesforce data attached to your video streams.
Video content also gives you the opportunity to gain deeper insight into the specifics of how your user is interacting with your content. For example, a list of users who clicked into your content might be available for a text article, but the information stops there.
With video content, you can see things like how long users are watching and which parts of the video they’re watching, giving you a better idea of what is most resonant and relevant to your audience.
Identifying your company’s video content opportunities and goals will help you identify and implement the solution best fit to accomplish them, and Salesforce offers the flexibility to do it.
Enhance Your Customer Experience
Rainmaker partners with clients to develop solutions that power them forward — this includes integrating video streaming into the platforms and other means of communication vehicles for reaching customers and partners.
Recently, Rainmaker worked with FedEx to provide custom video solutions to stream keynotes for virtual conferences. This kind of virtual event enhancement will be essential as the accelerated digital migration of the past year translates into new long-term hybrid event formats and more exclusively-digital internal and external communication challenges.