The Role of Video in Enterprise 2.0 and Social CRM

At the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Santa Clara, CA, Frank Eliason, SVP of Social Media at Citibank (formerly of Comcast), discusses the role of video in enterprise 2.0 and social CRM. Most recently Frank was Sr. Director for Social Media at Comcast. Frank and his team at Comcast built significant goodwill with Comcast customers by bringing meaningful customer service success to Comcast's operations via the use of social networks such as Twitter.

Interviewer: Frank Eliason from Citibank at the E2.0 Conference and Frank, I was wondering what your thoughts are about how video is going to play in the adoption and what role it will play in Enterprise 2.0 and Social CRM?

Frank Eliason: I think it's huge when it comes to social CRM and CRM in general. If you really look at the social components that are out there right now people talk about the next big thing as geolocation, and to me, geolocation is great for those that love it but there are huge masses that might not necessarily buy into that because of the fact of privacy concerns that they have of people knowing where they're at. But video, for me, the first time I really thought about it was with Steve Garfield's book (Get Seen: Online Video Secrets to Building Your Business) that recently came out. But Steve Garfield, we helped him a long time ago and he was having a unique problem and so he contacted me when I was at Comcast and we engaged with him. We did a video call and he shared it with not only myself, but also people at Comcast and people at Tivo because the problem was with his Tivo device. And video was so powerful in enabling us to actually have all the same people in the room diagnosing an issue.

Now think about that from a service perspective. How many times do you call a service provider up and they are asking all kinds of questions and you're like, "this is the problem-I need it fixed." Video is not now about those questions, it becomes, "here is what I see, let me show you what I see." So the answer becomes much different. So instead of all these questions that annoy all of us, it becomes, "oh, okay that's the problem-to fix it, here's what you do."

Video is extraordinarily powerful from a technical support perspective. I also see it as if you really start paying attention to what's happening, not just with service but with brands in general, the big theme of the day is humanizing the brand. Over the past 20 years we have been dehumanizing the brand in many ways-making things much more anonymous. But video becomes very personal. It becomes connected. It becomes one-to-one. So today, where we talk about chat online and talk about it because, "hey, it has great cost benefits for the company; I can have four chat sessions at the same time." Think about when it becomes video chat and now it's this human person that you're speaking to at the company one-on-one, that you have their undivided attention, and it's a place that you need it. Facetime. I carry my iPhone. Facetime is the beginnings of that. I now communicate with people using Facetime-imagine this as we scale it and we start to have it available for all kinds of means.

Interviewer: So is what I hear you saying something like video creates more of an intimate connection between the brand and whatever the stakeholder might be, whether it be the consumer, business customer, the vendor?

Frank Eliason: Exactly. I think it's so easy today yet companies have been a little slow to adopt it because let's face it, it has been on our computers for years and yet most of the time we go to video conference rooms to have our video conferences. The fact is it is going to start to be coming up across the organization. It's also going to make organizations, as we break down these siloes, become smaller because as now I might be video conferencing with someone in a far off location overseas. And it's going to feel like we are there next to each other talking as two friends.