Making The Workplace Modern: A Business Case for Async Video

Video creation and consumption have exploded, thanks to the rise of video-first social networks and the adoption of remote communication. With more and more people using video in their daily lives, the format ise invaluable in workplaces, too, with the ability to strengthen customer relationships, improve team building, boost employee engagement and efficiency. Research by visual…

Zight | February 28, 2022 | 7 min read time

Article Last Updated: September 19, 2023

Making The Workplace Modern: A Business Case for Async Video

Video creation and consumption have exploded, thanks to the rise of video-first social networks and the adoption of remote communication. With more and more people using video in their daily lives, the format ise invaluable in workplaces, too, with the ability to strengthen customer relationships, improve team building, boost employee engagement and efficiency.

Research by visual communications platform Canva shows that nearly 68% of United States knowledge workers feel that video is increasingly critical for workplace communications. However, workplace uptake has primarily focused on live video calls. While this has been pretty helpful during the pandemic, evidence shows that meetings are causing employees fatigue. For example, 39% of workers say that the amount of video calls they have every week is taking a toll on them, and 48% say that they feel pressured to do video calls, even if they feel that the information and updates are relevant.

This is where async video comes in handy. Recorded videos allow people to communicate asynchronously. These videos offer massive potential in product demos, team updates, and training sessions while optimizing and improving company-wide interactions. However, how does async video work, and how can asynchronous videos benefit your business?

 

Asynchronous vs. Synchronous Video

Synchronous videos happen in real-time, and they require an immediate response. These videos foster natural dialogue and enable coworkers to bounce ideas off each other. Unfortunately, this type of communication may not be ideal for some workers, especially those working remotely.

Further, employees with different work hours or family responsibilities may view synchronous video as an added stress. That’s because sync videos require planning and preparation ahead of time to ensure every team member can attend virtual meetings so they don’t miss out on important information. Unfortunately, this isn’t always possible when working remotely.

Async videos, on the flip side, provide choices for employees. That’s because async video doesn’t happen in real-time, and it gives workers the freedom to digest information at their own time and offer valuable feedback. Async video is also perfect for the modern workplace that comprises remote workers based in different time zones. 

 

What Works with Async Video?

Ed Powers recounts an important experience trying to implement new workflows: “I once argued that investing in new technology would increase productivity. The CFO scoffed, saying that the only way to realize the gain was if employees left. He then asked how many people we could lay off after buying the product.”

Leaders who lack a productivity mindset will keep thinking employees are the problem. Sometimes, it only takes a few adaptations to invest in productivity.

Among all the viable options for communicating effectively with remote teams, async video is an excellent tool for communication—it’s fascinating. Moreover, it allows you to communicate clearly, which means it eliminates the awkwardness and confusion of misinterpreted emails and text messages. Here’s how your company can effectively implement async videos into your remote work strategy.

Weekly Goal Setting

With async video, you can start your week on the right note. Instead of sending your team emails with long lists of to-dos or goals for the week, you can make an entertaining async video to clearly communicate your message. This doesn’t have to be a fancy video. A simple smartphone or webcam video will be enough.

You can use humor, positive body language, and visuals to motivate your team members, employees, and customers to make them feel like you’re there. For example, some team members might lack time to sit down and read lengthy emails or text messages as they would do in the office. So, recording async videos enables you to engage with your team effectively, boosting efficiency. 

Question-and-Answer Sessions

Working from home means that many office discussions are no longer possible, and general questions are left unanswered. Fortunately, by leveraging async video, you can fill this gap by carrying out regular question-and-answer sessions with one of your managerial staff in your organization.

All you have to do is ask your staff to submit questions before your scheduled filming, and then you can answer their questions in pre-recorded videos. You take advantage of features, such as captions and motion titles, to display the questions and answers on screen if some employees want to watch the videos on silent. 

Recorded Meetings

Working remotely may result in some workers not joining conference calls at the scheduled times. However, you need not worry because there’s a simple solution: record your meetings and share the videos in group chats. This allows employees on different schedule times or time zones to listen to the meeting with the option to pause and watch at their convenience. 

Company Updates

When working remotely, your employees will appreciate any form of transparency. So, regular business updates will reassure your staff and make them feel involved in your business, despite working from home. This type of video is best coming from the managers or the CEO, who can offer information and a broad view of the company’s performance. 

 

How Async Helps Zoom Fatigue

 Zoom fatigue, also known as screen fatigue or video call fatigue, refers to the intense exhaustion or fatigue that results from virtual meetings. However, Zoom fatigue isn’t exclusive to the Zoom platform but to any other video conferencing platform.

We’re exhausted because virtual meetings make us concentrate more on the screen and the conversations to digest information. Rather than looking around a conference room at individual people, sometimes virtual meetings feel like starting at a screen for hours on end.

One effective strategy to combat Zoom fatigue is through asynchronous videos. Async videos can help you organize remote work schedules effectively. For example, with async video, you can eliminate pointless virtual meetings that overlap the working hours of your staff. 

Conducting less important meetings using async video will reduce Zoom fatigue and save you and your team’s time, improving productivity.

 

Async and Customer Support

Some customer support issues need a lot of time to resolve. Yet customer support calls can get interrupted for hours or days because of various demands on your customers’ lives. Async communication enables you to offer a continuous customer experience every time a customer engages with your brand. By carrying over the history and context from one related customer interaction to the next, you can eliminate negative customer experiences where customers have to repeat themselves every time concerning the same issue, query, or topic. Async communication also offers customer support agents the flexibility to respond via the customer’s preferred messaging platform, no matter how complicated or long-running the customer support issue is.

Some benefits of using async communication in customer support include:

  • Allow customers to receive support at their convenience. Your customers lead busy lives, and often they may have the time only to send a quick message to your customer support team before they move on to another appointment, meeting, or issue. The ability to go at the customer’s pace instead of waiting for a large enough window of time in their schedules is convenient—especially for less urgent customer requests.
  • Keep conversations open-minded. Many customer support departments have a process, especially with synchronous communication, that if a customer doesn’t respond in five minutes, they respond with something like, “It seems you’ve stepped away. I’ll disconnect this chat. Feel free to reach out again once you’re back.” Customers often feel abandoned by customer support agents and hate starting another chat to get the ball rolling again. Async chat keeps track of the interaction and doesn’t require them to start over the conversation because it never ends.
  • A more mobile-friendly alternative. Because of the ever-increasing dependence on mobile devices in recent years, there has been an increase in the popularity of new messaging platforms. Messaging channels, such as social media and SMS, thrive on mobile devices because of the ability to send short and quick messages. One con of synchronous chat is that you’re tethered to your computer once you get a customer support rep on the line until the interaction is complete. Asynchronous interactions move at the customers’ pace, going with them on their preferred messaging channels.

 

Leverage Zight (formerly CloudApp) to Boost Productivity

Zight (formerly CloudApp) is a revolutionary customer support software that can help your customer support team respond to customer queries and concerns more promptly than ever with high-quality content that offers detailed responses, providing better customer experiences. With this software, your customer support team can get their point across quickly by directing your customers to what they need to show them while keeping sensitive information private. Your team can eliminate back-and-forth conversations. Discover Zight (formerly CloudApp) and reply to customer service questions faster than ever. 

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