How to use Video to Improve Customer Experience
I often get hired by clients to do marketing work. That could mean branding and identity, strategy, or producing content. All of these things are part of the broader marketing practice, and they’re all important. But what gets overlooked by some brands is how critical the customer experience is to the success of a product. Is a brand helping its customers solve problems? With an amazing experience, customers will tell their friends and make expensive ads almost unnecessary. As an example, think about Tesla: they have a unique and differentiated product, you can buy them in shopping malls, and recharge them on the road all over North America. As a result of these and many other things, Tesla does zero traditional advertising; they focus on the product and the user experience.
One client that I work with often is Canyon Bicycles, a wildly successful German direct-to-consumer brand. They make premium bikes across many categories: mtb, road, gravel, triathlon, and commuter. Their design is beautiful, and, due to their DTC business model, their prices are often 30–40% less than comparable bikes from Specialized, Trek, Giant or Cannondale. You’re not paying the markup that a retail bike shop would charge.
Having spoken to hundreds of cyclists, I understand that buying a bike is not only about the bike. The whole process matters, from research to purchase to delivery to who builds it to service and maintenance. How a bike brand (and retail shop, if they’re involved) handles all of that can significantly impact a brand’s reputation.
Canyon ships bikes directly to customers; there is no bicycle shop involved. Once your new bike is delivered, there’s 30–40 minutes of assembly required to finish putting it together. It’s not at all complicated, but there is a sequence and some simple tools (torque wrench) that must be used.
We decided to make a simple video that owners can follow when building their new bike. The problem we’re solving is to make onboarding that much easier for customers. The video is under four minutes long, with some simple “Step 1:…” kind of graphics. We had Canyon’s Felipe Acevedo, who runs sales and support in the US, as our on-camera host. He has a likeable demeanor and has described the assembly process to customers for a couple years on the phone. I got together with my old friends and collaborators Pat Solomon (camera), John Nelson (producer), and Tony Vamvakitis (editor) to produce the piece. To give the video a “we made this here” feel, we decided to shoot in Canyon’s Carlsbad HQ . Pat had the good idea to use a handheld look to convey friendliness and approachability. Then we came back and recorded the voiceover again during the edit process so as to precisely match up the description with the picture.
The video lives on YouTube as well as on the Canyon Endurace product page. I’m looking forward to learning about how customers are using the video and if it solves the problem that we identified.
