Workfront is a cloud-based Enterprise Work & Project Management software that helps marketing, IT, and other enterprise teams conquer the chaos of excessive email, redundant status meetings, and disconnected tools. Workfront is trusted by thousands of global enterprises, like Cisco Systems, National Geographic, and Trek. To learn more, visit www.Workfront.com
Situation
Like many SaaS companies, Workfront noticed that its support team could diagnose and solve customer issues faster when they had a clear understanding of the exact issue users were encountering, as well as the steps to reproduce them. However, getting the exact information needed from the customer in text format on a live call wasn’t just time consuming, it often didn’t capture all the necessary information developers needed to reproduce the issue.
Although the company had recognized recording customer support calls in video format could be a great solution to this problem, as it captured the exact issue customers were encountering, finding a video solution that actually made this process efficient had been more difficult than they anticipated.
“The big problem we had with video recording solutions in the past was losing valuable video content. Employees would often leave video files on their computer hard drive or post them as links that would end up expiring later on because of storage limitations.”
Jon Ketcher, Customer Support Manager, Workfront
The Problem
Although the company had recognized video as an effective medium for communicating this information, finding a video solution that actually made this process efficient had been more difficult than they anticipated.
Criteria for Evaluation
- Centralized Video Library – Workfront wanted a solution that made it easier for team members to leverage each other content, and prevented video files from being scattered across multiple computers.
- Reliable screen recording – the team needed a screen recorder that worked reliably across operating systems and different hardware. For instance, it needed to be able to record on Windows and Mac and support recording on mobile monitors.
- Instant Sharing – sharing a video needed to be fast. A support rep needed to be able record and share a video as a link in only a few steps, without delays for video uploading and processing etc (the longer this process took, the less likely employees were to actually use it).
- Unlimited Storage – ideally, Workfront wanted a solution that provided unlimited video storage and hosting.
Why VidGrid?
- Automated Video Backup – with VidGrid, every video that a support rep records is automatically backed up in a centralized location on the cloud. For Workfront, this meant they’d no longer need to worry about losing valuable video content.
- Reliable screen recording – the VidGrid recorder works on all versions of Windows and Mac OS across every browser. It also supported recording on multiple monitors so reps could leverage the full potential of their desktop workstations.
- Instant sharing – After recording a video, support reps can instantly copy the link and share the link to the video without needing to upload the video to a third party hosting platform like Youtube etc.
- Unlimited Storage – VidGrid provides unlimited video recording, hosting, and storage, so the team would never needs to worry about unexpected fees, running out of space, or losing video content.
The Solution
After recording a call, support reps now simply forward on the link to the video recording to the development team of the exact steps users took to reproduce the issue in their live software environment, all with VidGrid. Recording customer calls with VidGrid has allowed the company to build a wealth of documentation around user behavior in their application. Every video recorded by a support rep using VidGrid is automatically backed up and made searchable in a centralized video library so it’s never lost.
Results
Over just 9 months of using VidGrid, the Workfront support team has already created over 5,000 videos to document customer issues, reproduce bugs, and bring clarity to communication between their QA and Dev team.
VidGrid has also opened new use cases to video which hadn’t initially been expected. For instance, they’ve found that exposing new recruits to their archive of thousands of customer issues is a great way to get new reps up to speed on issues encountered by customers.
With the success Workfront has seen with VidGrid, Jon Ketcher says he would eventually like to see VidGrid as Workfront’s sole video solution across the entire company. With hundreds of videos already recorded by reps on the VidGrid platform, it’s easy to see why.