A Hangout On Air for Customer Questions

The same questions every spring

Every May the staff at a garden centre answer the same questions at the till: when to plant tomatoes, why the hydrangea will not flower, what to do about slugs.

A renovation contractor hears the equivalent about timelines, materials and deck stains. Answering them live, once, for everyone, is an appealing idea.

Google+ offers a free way to do it: a Hangout On Air, a video chat broadcast publicly and saved to YouTube when it ends. It works, within some honest limits that are worth planning for.

What a Hangout On Air does

A Hangout On Air is a video call started from a Google+ page or profile, with up to ten people on camera. Anyone can watch it live on Google+ or on the connected YouTube channel.

The player can also be embedded on a website, so customers can watch from the business's own page.

When the broadcast ends, the recording is saved to the YouTube channel automatically, ready to be trimmed, titled and shared. The page must be connected to a YouTube channel first, which takes a few steps.

What live means

• Mistakes stay, because the recording is the broadcast, stumbles and all.
• Sound depends on the room, and a shop floor or a job site is rarely quiet.
• The audience may be tiny, especially the first few times.
• Questions may not arrive, so the host needs a list of their own.
• Connections falter, and a frozen picture cannot be fixed afterwards.

None of these is a reason not to try. Each is a reason to plan for the recording rather than the live audience.

Planning for the recording

The live audience for a small business is often a handful of people. The recording is what customers will find later, so plan the session as a video that happens to be made live.

Choose one subject per session, such as spring planting or deck repairs, and keep it to twenty or thirty minutes. Collect questions in advance from customers, by email and at the counter.

Decide who speaks: one host who reads the questions aloud and one expert who answers. Two voices are easier to follow than one person reading and answering alone.

Testing the camera and the sound

Sound matters more than picture. A headset or a desk microphone close to the speaker works far better than a laptop's built-in microphone across the room, and a quiet back office beats the shop floor.

Light the speakers from the front, with a window or lamp facing them rather than behind them. Raise the camera to eye level; a laptop on a desk films the ceiling and the speaker's chin.

Run a private hangout with a colleague a day or two before, using the same room, computer and connection. A wired connection is steadier than Wi-Fi for anything live.

Telling customers it is on

An empty audience is usually an unannounced one. Post the date and time a week ahead on the website, in the newsletter and on the business's social pages, with a line on how to send a question.

A Google+ event can hold the broadcast's date and time, giving people a page to visit and a reminder. Say plainly that the session will be recorded, so those who cannot watch live still send questions.

For a business with a counter, a notice by the till reaches the customers whose questions started the idea.

A worked example

A blueberry farm in the Comox Valley sells bushes in spring and runs a u-pick and farm stand in summer, and each spring its staff field the same questions about planting, soil and pruning.

The farm planned a thirty-minute Hangout On Air on planting blueberries, announced a week ahead on its website, its Facebook page and in its newsletter. The farm manager answered; a colleague read out the questions.

Questions came from customers in advance, so the session had a full list even though few people watched live. A rehearsal had revealed the barn's echo, so they broadcast from the office with headsets.

Afterwards the recording was trimmed at the start, given a plain title, and embedded on a new planting page, with the questions listed as headings and a short written answer under each.

That page now answers the spring questions at any hour, and staff at the till can point customers to it.

During the broadcast

Start on time with a short introduction: who is speaking and what the session covers. Late arrivals, and everyone watching the recording later, need the same orientation.

Read each question aloud before answering, and name the asker only if they agreed. The recording may not show the comments, so an unread question leaves the answer hanging.

If nobody asks anything, work through the prepared list without apology. Good answers to real customer questions are useful whether or not anyone watched live.

Using the recording on the website

A video left on YouTube alone is easy to lose among everything else there. Embed it on a page of your own site about the same subject, where customers looking for that answer will land.

Add a written summary, with the questions as headings and a short answer to each. Many visitors read faster than they watch, search engines read text rather than video, and the summary serves anyone who cannot play sound.

Give the video a plain title that says what it answers, such as Planting blueberries in spring, rather than a date and the words Hangout On Air.

The counter-case

Some businesses are better served by a short video recorded without an audience: retakes are possible, the sound can be fixed, and nobody waits for questions that do not come.

And staff who dislike being on camera should not be pushed into it; a well-written page of answers serves customers just as well.

But where someone knowledgeable enjoys explaining, a live session gathers real questions in customers' own words, and the recording keeps answering them long afterwards.

From rehearsal to recording

1. Connect the Google+ page to a YouTube channel.
2. Choose one subject and a length.
3. Collect questions from customers in advance.
4. Rehearse in a private hangout with the same equipment.
5. Announce the time on the site and social pages.
6. Read questions aloud during the broadcast.
7. Embed the recording on a page with a written summary.

Step four catches most problems while they can still be fixed: the echo, the window behind the speaker, the microphone that was never selected.

A pinned tweet can keep the next session's date in view, and what that space at the top of a profile is for is covered in Twitter's new profile layout.

Frequently asked questions

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