Transforming the lives of the hearing impaired through video assistance in customer service

In the UK, the Royal National Institute for Deaf People estimates there are almost nine million hearing-impaired people. That’s one in six people. Or potentially one in six of your customers. While many of the hard of hearing communities are equipped to use online communication methods, telecommunications are a different matter. Particularly when the telephone is still a fundamental aspect of many corporate customer service offerings, but can prove ineffective for those with hearing loss.

People living with hearing impairments face many challenges in day to day life, made worse most recently with the introduction of facemasks, making much-needed lip reading even more impossible. While many businesses are not intending to create a bias to those with good hearing, they are inadvertently doing so by not providing a solution that accommodates hearing impairment.

Imagine if you could make your customer services system inclusive for everyone by allowing customers to head to your website, enter their details, click a button and talk to someone right in front of them? Via video call or instant messenger, RichCall - Live Video Expert Software can offer just that, providing every customer a real-time solution.

Ultimately, customers with hearing impairment are simply that – customers. While they may need different ways of communicating, or accommodations to help them do things with greater ease, the heart of the interaction remains the same – customers come to you for a service, and your job is to help them.

Inclusive customer communications

The good news is that if your business is committed to understanding the needs and preferences of customers with accessibility requirements, you are already one step ahead to finding a solution. And, as we all know, driving excellent experiences can make the difference between a potential customer and a loyal one. Particularly via innovative technologies that include your entire customer base, ensuring your business is accessible and usable by everyone.

With Richcall, you can help to change the way those with a hearing impairment communicate with your business. Providing customers with a one-touch live support option – via zero downloads – an online customer can get in touch with your services team and experience web-collaboration features that eliminate any frustrations caused by a phone call.

Offering much more than a simple browser to browser video chat, Richcall provides:

• Co-browsing, allowing your agent and customer to surf your website together
• Online chat, where customers can exchange text messages, documents and images
• App sharing, providing customers the tools to show the context of the issue
• Video, potentially supporting customers who can lip read

Customer services: revolutionary technology

Simple to install, Richcall leverages you existing operations, workflows and apps, routing and queuing video chat requests and handling video chat interactions, all while measuring customer satisfaction and agent performance.

It’s easily integrated into your website and mobile app, allowing all your customers to establish a fully interactive and accessible session with your team via two options:

1. As a widget, which is useful when a customer needs to work with your website while communicating with an agent

2. In a new browser window, which provides a customer with more space for collaboration

Using WebRTC technologies to provide high-quality communications without the need for plugins, Richcall really is simple.

Providing open and accessible customer service support is an opportunity for you to differentiate your services from competitors. So, the question is: can you really afford not to make your business more inclusive?

To see what RichCall can bring to your customer services, contact UCtel at sales@uctel.co.uk.