How to Use YouTube as a B2B Customer Service Tool

If you’re savvy to online B2B marketing tactics you probably already know about the wonders of YouTube. It helps you market your business, support your SEO initiatives, engage socially with viewers and share meaningful content with your target market. But did you know that it can also be a powerful client service and retention tool? And at the end of the day, if you don’t have excellent customer services, all the marketing in the world isn’t going to make your business successful.

I recently helped one of our business to business marketing clients with a media event. In the days following the event I spent a lot of time searching our keywords online to see what coverage we picked up. One of my searches returned a result of a YouTube clip that someone had posted about one of the company’s products – totally unrelated to the part of the business I work on, but connected to the company nonetheless. It did not position my client in a positive light, worsened by the fact that the video clip was tagged with the company’s name which means any time the branded keyword is searched this negative clip could come up in the results.

The first learning here is that even if you as a business are not ready for online or social marketing, it doesn’t mean your market isn’t.

I immediately forwarded the video clip to the service director at the company and they resolved the issues for the client quickly. Now they have two options. Do they leave the video up and add comments indicating the problem was quickly and effectively addressed hoping to demonstrate their responsiveness, or do they try to take it down all together?

Depending on how damaging the video could be, I would recommend requesting the post be taken down, but showing you have identified and addressed the problem may have a positive effect as well.

The second learning here is that if someone complains, don’t treat it as a problem; fix the problem and treat this as an opportunity to show how responsive and in tune with your clients you are.

The third learning is that YouTube may be a way to keep up to date on how the market perceives your business and that of your competitors.