As automation and AI are becoming increasingly prevalent in customer service, one question keeps rising to the surface: what do customers really want? For many organizations, striking the right balance between efficiency and empathy is becoming more complex — especially when customers face emotionally charged or urgent situations.
That's where video chat is stepping into the spotlight.
In this interview of Call Center Helper, Xander Freeman, Digital Content Director, sits down with Charles Kergaravat, CMO at Apizee, to dive deep into the growing impact of visual engagement tools — particularly video chat — in customer service.
Key Takeaways You’ll Learn
While phone support remains king in terms of usage, video chat is leading the pack in satisfaction. A recent Genesys report ranked it as the #1 channel for customer satisfaction, with 41% of consumers reporting extreme satisfaction post-interaction.
And yet, many contact centers still haven’t fully embraced it. That’s why this conversation with Charles Kergaravat of Apizee is so timely.
What you’ll learn:
Why visual engagement matters most during complex or emotional interactions
How companies are seeing real gains in first-call resolution and customer effort scores
Why agent empowerment and video tools go hand-in-hand
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Video Chats in Customer Service 03:09 The Impact of Video Chat on Customer Satisfaction 05:58 Empowering Agents with Video Chat Solutions 09:00 The Future of Customer Service and Video Chat
Interview : The Rise of Video Chat?
Revolutionizing Customer Service with Video Chat
Xander Freeman (00:03)
Hello and welcome back to Call Center Helper. My name is Xander Freeman, Digital Content Director, and today we are talking all about video chat. I'm delighted to be joined by Charles Kergaravat, CMO at Apizee. Hello, Charles.
Charles Kergaravat (00:16)
Hey, how's it going?
Xander Freeman (00:17)
It's going good. It's good to see you again.
Charles Kergaravat (00:19)
Yeah, thank you so much for having me.
Xander Freeman (00:20)
No, no, it's great to finally get you on one of these interviews. You and I have spoken so much in the past and with us talking about video chat, I thought why not speak of Apizee directly? Give our audience a little flavor as to what you guys are doing and why I'm interviewing you on this topic.
Charles Kergaravat (00:36)
Yeah, I'm super happy to talk about this subject. I mean, customer service teams, customer experience teams, a lot of challenges lately, a lot of questions asked, a lot of testing out new solutions, AI everywhere. And the big question is, what do customers really want? So I'm excited to talk to you about this because we've got all the things behind this. You know, we work with many companies. So Apizee, what is it? It's a visual engagement solution for every complex moment, a customer service when there's urgency and when you need a human touch.
We're a European leader because we've been around for over 11 years. So that's everything from solutions for video chat, screen sharing, co-browsing, even visual AI. So we touch a lot of bases, and we work with enterprise level companies across Europe, but also with smaller companies that just want improve their customer service on a daily basis and have better customer interactions.
Xander Freeman (01:30)
Perfect, well I'll tell you what, let's dive right into the question of the day. Our audience, we survey them constantly. One of the things we found recently is video chat is still being a little bit underutilized. However, in some of the research that we've seen, including yours, video chat is one of those things where phone support remains the most frequently used service channel. That's not changing, despite what other people may say. Statistically, across the board, no matter how many different servers you look at, voice remains king there.
But video chat has emerged as a very high impact alternative. I think your own research stated it was 41% of consumers reporting extreme satisfaction post interaction there. Can you share a little bit about why you think that is?
Charles Kergaravat (02:13)
Yeah, so I think for starters, what we have to think about is, and I go back to this all the time, like there's a lot of smart people, right? And every single day, we're thinking about how do we improve these customer workflows? But within that is what does the customer want to do? What is their expectation? What do they want to get out of this? And when we talk about complex customer issues, right? Because that's what we're talking about when we're talking about these high touchpoints where video chat is so useful. AI is doing a pretty good job most of the time at simple stuff, right? Like stuff that doesn't require a human to answer. Like what time does the store close tonight? I think I'm totally confident letting AI respond to that one. But, you know, we work with industries like insurance, retail, utilities, home associations. There are a lot of moments in that customer experience and that customer journey where your customer is panicked, right? They might've had an accident. There might be a hole in the wall. There might be a leak. They might've bought a super present and it's not working. My wifi might be out, right? All of those scenarios, you're a little bit panicked, and the phone isn't going to do, right? And the chatbot isn't going to do, and AI can't solve the problem because they can't see it. So what we're seeing in those stressful moments, human touch is super valuable. And that's where solutions like video chat or screen sharing is the go-to solution.
What I love about it is, what did the study show? So Genesys actually put out a study on their annual customer experience report, and they looked at every single channel that is possible. And video chat was number one in terms of customer satisfaction. And that is quite impressive. So that begs to ask the question all this time and all this investment maybe we're putting to AI, which is good for the easy stuff. All of a sudden your agents are left with the tough questions.
Are we giving them the tools they need to solve those problems? Because the other option is quite simple. Just hang up the phone, say, sorry, I can't solve this problem, or maybe send a technician to their house. And that includes a lot of, from an operational point of view, a lot of more challenging things. So if you can solve the problem right away with video chat or screen sharing, you are crushing it from a customer satisfaction point of view, and you're crushing it from a customer experience point of view.
Xander Freeman (04:34)
I also think it humanises the agents a little bit more, right? It's not just a voice on the end of the line. They are trying to help, then there is an additional degree of emotional connection there.
Charles Kergaravat (04:44)
I love your saying this because when we talk about customer experience, I think we can't disassociate employee experience and being, you know, this is a big issue. Customer service teams, not an easy job always, right? There's a lot of turnover, a lot of things to learn. And if you're saying all the easy questions, like maybe 80% of your easy stuff is gone. Now you're stuck with someone who's stress and, is not happy and you have to solve this, but you don't see what the problem is. And I don't have the same jargon that that person does. And that's tough. So if you can have eyes on the ground with a solution like Apizee, massive. But what we're seeing is your NPS score is being more determined by these high touch, complex, urgent moments you have with your customer. So the video part, you don't have to show your face. You can if you want to. And that does create a human connection. And studies show if you compare the telephone over the video, you have a reduced stress moment because you are like, gosh, I do see this agent. I feel they're almost in the house with me. I'm going to be a little bit nicer to them. And that's really important. So we're having more human moments, but more civil moments as well, by using solutions like Apizee in those times.
Xander Freeman (06:01)
I'll tell you what, you bought up NPS course, I think that's a really, really interesting thing to talk about when we're talking about video chat here, because in my experience, NPS, as it's currently measured, can often be an indicator of either side of the extreme. A lot of the feedback you get when you want to actually put yourself in the seat of a consumer, when you're giving this feedback, and you're actually deciding, yes, I am gonna respond to this survey, it's either a really good experience or an awful one. And again, video chat.
I like to think, like I say, when you're talking about extreme satisfaction, it's not just that metric, it bleeds into a load of other metrics which contact-centered decision-makers do pay attention to.
Charles Kergaravat (06:41)
Outside of NPS, I feel that when we talk about customer effort score, when we talk about first call resolution, when we talk about just avoiding repeat calls, hey man, I might have spent two extra minutes on this because I did a video chat, but it's done. One and done, next, and you're having a better experience. To give you a couple examples, we work with one of the biggest retailers in Europe, they're in France, they're called Fnac Darty. They've been using us for like seven years, and they use us thousands of times a day. And it goes from avoiding product returns to hey I just bought this coffee machine, this dishwasher I've had for three months and it for some reason is not working right. And the way they've looked at this, they said, outside of operational efficiency, outside of customer satisfaction, we realized that by using Apizee, we're kind of improving our carbon footprint. And we're making the world a little bit of a better place by using Apizee. So they've told their agents, think about this as stay as long as you need to solve this problem. And what is that? How does that make the customer feel? That makes them feel like they're a priority. Like I have someone here who will spend the time maybe you know, I'm not the most tech-savvy. I don't know why the washing machine is doing this, and they're solving that problem. What they also realize is the fact that they have eyes there. Apizee is the eyes of the agent. Sometimes it's really silly stuff. The machines not plugged in. Hey, do you can you just show me the batteries of this? Oh, they have their upside down. That stuff is just you know humans being human but on the other end, there's a lot of empathy from the team, the customer service team, to solve that problem.
Xander Freeman (08:40)
Well, I think let's drill down a bit more into that exact use case. I think you've also mentioned something that is so important it's not just the video chat here, it's about having the culture in your contact center that allows that to thrive, right? A little bit of leeway on AHT there gets you so much more because the culture and the decision makers in that contact center have set up their agents to succeed. They've been empowered, and in this case it's viewing it through the lens of video chat.
Charles Kergaravat (09:04)
Yeah, so empowering agents is also giving them the tools to succeed. So I think that we have this great opportunity with AI to have an augmented agent experience. But the video, what happens, which is really cool, is that maybe AI agents will admit that they're not smart enough to solve this problem and a human might be better off. And you know what? A video chat might be the best thing, or a screen share might be the best thing. So that customer workflow from maybe it started out trying to do a self-service kind of interaction to, hey, we've escalated this because ma'am, I get from your tone of voice and I understand what you're saying to me is there's a hole in your ceiling. It seems like the neighbors water, and it's leaking, and I'm an insurance company. You've empowered the agent to have a tool to have the information from the prior maybe interaction that was the only digital to have that information to see the problem to take a picture and great news Apizee connects to your favorite CCAS or CRM tool. Take a picture, save that, put it in a dossier, make a decision and understand what you need to do next. And that, I think, that's the future of customer service. And unfortunately, sometimes for the agents, it's going to be a lot of the easy things are already answered, and you get the tough stuff. But if you have the right tools, it might be a breeze to answer them.
Xander Freeman (10:23)
Well I think that's a lovely point to end on here as well, It's just considering video chat as part of a unified CX strategy, I think is the key takeaway there, right? It's an important piece of the puzzle if you use it right. And here are some examples of how your customers are using it to great success.
Charles Kergaravat (10:39)
I'm 100% behind that. I hope more people in the future also realize that this is a game changer for them and that tools like this are must haves, especially in the AI age. You have to keep a human element to your customer service. And that human element is personalization, and simple things like Apizee are game changers in those moments.
Xander Freeman (11:03)
Perfect. Well, Charles, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. I'm sure we'll see plenty more from Apizee in future with video chat and in the wider contact center space.
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