Webinars are considered a marketing move. So, how are they connected to customer experience?
Webinars and customer experience
Many people get bored and leave such events, while others get annoyed when the speaker constantly tries to sell a product.
Yet, many specialists use webinar customer experience as a trampoline for sales, and they do it successfully, with satisfied clients coming back many times.
What’s the secret? Is using webinars for marketing the only goal? How to use this tool wisely to build trust and improve CX? I’ll answer all these questions below.
What makes a great customer experience?
Image source: totaralearning.com
Firstly, what is customer experience?
CX is your customers’ overall experience interacting with your brand. Every interaction counts when someone builds their first impression of the company, from the first visit to your website, how long it takes to load, etc., to conversations with the support team and how fast you manage to deliver the product.
Whether the buyer had a good experience determines whether they will come back or not.
Why is it important to retain customers by providing a great experience? Because people who already bought from you are the best source of potential income in the future. A tiny 5% increase in retention may provide 25% to 95% more profit, which is the figure Harvard Business Review puts on Reichheld’s work at Bain.
Besides, 50% of buyers say that CX is more important for them now.
Source: zendesk.com
Every year, people look forward to better shopping conditions. Nowadays, a good CX includes:
- Honest marketing helps to build realistic expectations
- Self-service opportunities that are easy to access
- A live support team, preferably 24/7, that helps solve brand-related issues
- Accessible information regarding the most common concerns
- The intuitive website and product design, etc.
A single bad experience is often all it takes for a customer to leave for a competitor. Moreover, 92% of the people sticking with a company after a poor CX will leave if the tendency continues. It takes 2-3 negative interactions to ruin someone’s experience with your brand.
A perfect customer experience makes it very easy for the buyer to achieve their goal of using your product or receiving your service.
And interestingly enough, webinars can become a helpful part of CX.
Why use webinars to improve customer experience?
Using webinars for customer experience follows naturally. Online video watching jumped during the pandemic and never went back down, and the overwhelming majority of people say they want more video from a brand they already like.
Zenith put daily online video viewing at 100 minutes a person back in 2021, and the habit has not shrunk since. The same positive video stats apply to B2B marketing.
A webinar is more than just one step in a sales funnel where you share some useful information and then use the rest of the video to promote your products and services. Online workshops, live classes, and virtual training sessions can also count as webinars, which means web-based seminars.
The usefulness of webinars for business is clearer now, right?
So, why use them?
Easy. Educate your customers on wise and productive ways of using your products and services. Such an approach will:
- Improve customer satisfaction
- Increase retention
- Build trust
- Increase customer loyalty.
Educational materials and practical advice can become a part of your branding and increase brand awareness and trust in the company in the long run.
Using webinars for business customer experience wisely
Simply using the customer experience webinar technique isn’t enough. You have to do it wisely to get the results you want. That’s why I’ve compiled a list of handy recommendations for you:
Answer questions
Many people attend a webinar to learn something useful about a product and to get their questions answered, which is why so many events set aside a Q&A. Anything you cannot cover live can be answered afterwards in writing.
Answering several queries will help you build trust and show people that you care. Who doesn’t love a business that cares?
You can also ask customers to leave some questions in advance and adjust the flow of the webinar and topics covered accordingly.
Consult with your teams
Source: getfeedback.com
Regularly engage with your social, support, and sales teams to find out what topics they often discuss with customers. What do people ask about your company and your products? What worries them? Where are the gaps in what you have published?
Maybe they’re interested in a new line and want to know if there will be one. Perhaps they want more customer cases to find out whether the product or service is good enough. But, on the other hand, they may not know how to get the most use out of your product.
Most of the time, potential and existing customers clearly tell your representatives about the knowledge they lack. Have a Q&A webinar or one connected to the topics in question, and you’ll see customer satisfaction rise due to a better CX.
Invite experts
It can be an internal or external expert or both. Letting an internal speaker provide helpful information, answer questions and tell people about your products will build trust and let people know how the company works from the inside.
Getting an external specialist on board will give a fresh view on the products or the topic of interest and build trust between you and the customers since the customers will see that someone outside the business is talking about you (the talk should be for the good of the company, of course).
PLUS! People following the expert will also come to your webinar, which means a new audience and, potentially, new customers that will enjoy their stay and return.
A kind tip: invite senior specialists that your customers can’t usually access.
Hold webinars for each stage of the customer journey
There are so many types you can do:
- Thought leadership webinar helps you prove that you are the true expert in your niche, and as a result, you will notice a clear increase in both sales and customer trust.
- For leads, you should motivate them to make a purchase by explaining the product or service features in a clear and engaging way. This approach is an essential part of creating a good customer experience. You can use workshops and case studies to do this effectively.
- Product demo webinar, because about 67% of the buyer’s journey now happens digitally before anyone talks to sales. You can make that process easier for them by hosting an engaging product demo webinar that guides their research. After all, good education is an essential part of a great customer experience.
- Customer onboarding webinar is the most important type of webinar for new customers because it sets the tone for their future experience. During this webinar, you have the opportunity to make their experience better or, if handled poorly, to disappoint them.
- A new product webinar makes sure everybody hears about your latest release or feature. Hosting an engaging and informative webinar is a smart way to do this, and it also helps you keep your customers interested and loyal.
- An on-demand webinar makes webinars easy to access because the recording is always available to watch at any time. This approach helps ensure that most leads and customers actually view them.
These improve CX in one way or another and promote customer retention.
Promote your webinars and make them accessible
Accessibility came up above, but there is more to say about promotion. Alongside recording the sessions and making them downloadable, write transcripts, publish blog posts built around quotes from them, and offer the slides and materials as downloads.
Making the webinars accessible is not enough on its own. Write about them in newsletters, mention them on social media, and use whatever other channels you have, so the knowledge you produced actually reaches somebody.
To conclude on webinars for customer experience
Webinars should be a regular part of how you connect with people. With so many topics and formats to choose from, clear and engaging educational videos can easily become an important part of your marketing strategy and overall customer experience.
FAQ
What exactly is customer experience and why does it matter in webinars?
Customer experience is how customers feel about every interaction with your brand, from visiting your site to using support. It matters in webinars because poor experience (boring or too salesy webinars) can push people away, while good webinars build trust and encourage return engagement.
How can webinars help improve customer satisfaction and retention?
Webinars allow you to educate users on how best to use your products and services, answer their questions live, and show that you care. This approach builds trust, increases loyalty, and makes customers more likely to stick around.
Which types of webinars should I run for customers at different stages?
You can organize webinars such as thought-leadership sessions to establish authority, demos to help with decision making, onboarding webinars for new customers, and on-demand recordings so people can access them anytime.
Should I invite external experts for webinars or only internal speakers?
You should consider both. Internal speakers provide insider knowledge and authenticity, while external experts offer a fresh perspective, increase credibility, and may bring a new audience to your webinar.
How do I make my webinars more discoverable and useful after the live event?
You should record webinars and make them available on demand, transcribe them, turn key parts into blog posts or downloadable materials, promote them via newsletters and social media, and ensure they are accessible to people who cannot attend live.
