It’s Complicated: Consumers Go To Video When Content Gets Tough

As profound as the digital shift has been, there are still places where the physical experience remains a holdout. Going to the branch still outscores using a bank website, according to PYMNTS’ recent Paradigm Shift report, and consumers would still rather get their messages from their financial institution via an email than via a mobile app.

Those outcomes may look surprising at first glance, given the rapid digitization of the world. But as SundaySky Vice President of Customer Success Caitlin Fox told PYMNTS in a recent conversation, they actually shouldn’t be. Fox believes, digital shift aside, that the more important an experience is to the customers, the more likely they will want a personal touch.

“Financial needs are so deeply personal that it’s not really shocking that consumers feel most comfortable speaking one-on-one in person when possible about them,” said Fox. “The problem is that those experiences are not really scalable from a financial institution’s perspective, nor is it really all that realistic from a consumer’s perspective to schedule and then conduct a one-on-one interaction every time you might possibly want it.”

What the paradigm shift data also reveals, she said, is that more often than not, consumers prefer one-on-one interaction. When they can’t find it, they default to a much more self-directed journey and education process. That often results in a negative experience.

Video, she said, is increasingly revealing itself to be a channel that, while not a replacement for the physical experience, is proactive, personal and transparent enough to meet customers where they are — and help them get to where they’re going next.

What Consumers Need

A good example of this phenomenon in action is loyalty rewards. Using video correctly in that context means pushing messages to consumers that illustrate and explain their rewards benefits — and give consumers the information they need to use them. The same logic, she said, applies when using video across various products and services and as a whole makes the consumers’ relationship with the financial institution more transparent, thereby making them more trustworthy and comfortable to do additional business with overall.

Moreover, she said, video content itself — and how consumers engage with it, can become a place to gain insight into consumers, discern what they need and determine how to serve them better in the future.

“We routinely see that viewers are consuming 80-plus percent of the content that’s in front of them,” Fox said. “And that 20-plus percent of viewers are clicking on those call to action buttons at the end of the video experience. These are really positive and clear indications of engagement and interaction. And we actually want to take that a step further. We see how that engagement actually translates into consumers taking action after their video experiences are viewed.”

The Right Experience At The Right Time

Consumers like video experiences done right, Fox said, because they tend to deliver a more personal feeling. The message feels more tailored directly to them. But done right, she said, isn’t as easy as throwing any video up to any customer who happens to trip it on a website. The experience has to actually feel like it is speaking to the consumer seeing it.

“This comes back to needing to deliver the right message at the right time, which is what our platform allows for,” Fox said. “To reach consumers means using data to know what to include in the video content, something absolutely necessary to ensure that we’re getting the right message to the consumer.”

She said that some of that is simply about personalization — details like greeting customers by name or being able to instantly list things like their most recent transaction data. However, most of it is using data to understand that customer in context and then making sure the video information they see is appropriate to what they need. Because showing the customer the right video, she said, and building the right personalized virtual experience pays, quite literally.

“That engagement is actually also translating into greater card spend and higher digital adoption behaviors after the video, which is absolutely the ideal outcome,” Fox said.

Nothing substitutes for being there, or so the old aphorism goes. But video curated and customized to the consumers’ needs? It can get the consumer pretty close to feeling like they are there already.