Do you ever feel that your customer service team is a little too scripted—that they could stand a refresher course in listening to your customers?
Hey, I know—just send them a link to a 1,000-word entry in your employee onboarding instruction manual. Or shoot a video of one of your talking-head bigwigs mumbling for 12 minutes about your passion for customer care.
Then again, you might try what Home Instead Senior Care does: Make an entertaining internal video that your employees can watch in a minute before returning to work more mindful of the customer’s needs.
Home Instead’s communications videos have drawn raves from communicators. In a podcast last year, communicator Ron Shewchuk called Home Instead’s videos “the most creative and engaging internal video programing I’ve ever seen.”
Home Instead strives to make its videos fun while promoting its message, says Andrew Nelson, video creative manager at the company, a multinational network of franchises providing in-home care for the elderly.
“Our biggest challenge was to make corporate video that was interesting, was quick, was funny, was entertaining, but was able to get the point across,” Nelson says, “because so often corporate video—especially internal communications videos-can be kind of dull and not interesting and kind of long. Usually they’re just talking heads the whole time.”
[FREE DOWNLOAD: A communicator’s guide to crafting videos that captivate and engage employees]
Remodeling your approach.
Consider “The Remodel,” in which the company emphasizes the need for careful listening by staging a scene of a woman calling a contractor in the hope of getting her kitchen remodeled.
“You’ve come to the best place in town, lady,” the businessman tells her. “We do wonderful decks.”
“That’s nice, but I need a new kitchen,” she says, offering details on what she’s looking for.
“We can definitely remodel your basement,” the man says.
Eventually she hangs up on him. The video ends with the statement, “Remodel your approach to phone inquiries. Listen.”
The Home Instead team and its employee actors clearly are having fun, says Brian Malone, director of the Ragan Training video library for communicators.
“They are delivering the messages to their internal audience in a creative way instead of just a boring email, memo or some other correspondence,” Malone says. “They are doing what everyone should do when making these videos: Incorporate your own employees, not actors.
"This gets much more to the point of employees’ communicating to employees, and not top-down antiquated communication methods that either fall flat or disappear into the ether.”
An homage to Hitchcock
Last year Home Instead made a five-part movie for its annual convention, when awards are given out, and it chose a James Bond spy-thriller theme. A Russian-born employee gamely agreed to play the villain.
“It was a huge hit,” Nelson says.
This time around, director Alfred Hitchcock provided the inspiration. The video even included a crop-duster scene reminiscent of “North by Northwest.” A Hitchcock-like figure touts awards for franchise milestones.
Nelson started out with the communications department but now works under the marketing aegis. He is half of a full-time video team, working with video production specialist Kyle Benecke. They get support from communications, marketing and other departments’ employees, who participate as actors and in other capacities.
Video is growing rapidly in internal comms; it’s ideal if you’re not trying to get across too much information, Nelson says. You can always build a story or context around a specific message.
Consider a video called “Message in a Bottle,” which highlighted the cry for help that many feel when trying to care for an elderly parent. It ends with the words, “Don’t leave the message in the bottle. Every inquiry needs our help. … Web leads, too.”
Most productions are done with no additional budget, but the company has put resources into major videos. Home Instead sent Nelson to Germany, Switzerland and Finland to record a project on people involved to its global operations. The video was shown not only in Europe, but also to the company’s North American franchise owners and the home office.
Similar trials and triumphs
“What struck people was getting to actually see and hear that these folks in the international markets in these different countries were having the exact same challenges and victories that they were,” Nelson says. “Language and culture aside, they were in the same boat. It was really kind of a unifying thing for everybody to experience.”
One short video, a scenario at the garage of a less-than-helpful mechanic, urges people to be bold enough to seek out customers. “Ask for the business. (It’s OK),” the video concludes.
The company also produces a monthly show called “Huddle Highlights"—much like a variety show, but with sketches that imitate commercials. Though Nelson and Home Instead generously shared several videos with Ragan Communications, the suits wouldn’t let them show us everything. Here, though, is a highlight reel that gives you a glimpse of their range:
Home Instead Video Creative Showreel from Andrew Nelson on Vimeo.
‘The Talk’
It’s not all fun and games in the videos. One hit was a segment called "The Talk.” Filmed for the year-end meeting, the bosses ended up sharing it with caregivers at their convention. The video portrays a senior struggling to stay at home and shows how that can stress out the rest of the family.
“I don’t know what to do,” Nelson recalls a woman saying. “I don’t have the answers. I just want to be a daughter again.”
When Nelson first started out, some leaders were dubious about the need for creative videos.
One person asked him, “Can’t I just step in front of the camera with a TelePrompTer and talk about this stuff? Why do we need the bells and whistles on it?”
All that has changed as he has built trust over the years. Nowadays the bigwigs say to the video team, “OK, guys, what you want to do with this?”
@ByWorkingfrom Ragan.com http://ift.tt/1Z3I18U via web video marketing
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