The Comms Guru for Customer Spotlights

Speaker: Paul Heaton, Founder & MD, The Comms Guru

Paul Heaton: What Vocal Video does really well is make it incredibly easy to capture genuine customer or employee voices when you don't need to organize a full video shoot around it.

Paul Heaton: Hi, I'm Paul, founder and MD at The Comms Guru. We're using Vocal Video in a few different ways. One is for gathering our customer testimonials because hearing directly from a client in their own words is so much more powerful than simply a written quote somewhere on a website. But I also see a really strong use case within internal comms teams as it gives organizations a much easier way of capturing employee generated content and hearing from people across the business. Professional filming absolutely still has its place, particularly for bigger campaigns, leadership comms, and those moments where you want something really, really polished. For me, Vocal Video sits alongside that. It gives you a way of capturing more authentic voices from more people much more easily.

Paul Heaton: The challenge with video for me has traditionally been that you've had two extremes. At one end, you've got professional production where you're organizing filming, producing, even directing and editing. And at the other end, you're asking people to record something themselves, which can result in really inconsistent quality. And quite often people simply not doing it because they don't know what to say or how to record it. Vocal Video gives you that really useful middle ground. There's enough structure and guidance to make it easy for somebody to contribute, but you still retain that natural genuine feeling of somebody speaking in their own words.

Paul Heaton: For us, the biggest thing is being able to capture genuine voices in a way that we can actually use across lots of different channels. Ultimately, people connect with people. With customer testimonials that helps us build trust. We can use those stories on our website, in case studies, proposals and social content rather than just relying on us telling people how great we are and what it's like to work with us. And from an internal comms perspective, I think the same principle applies. You can balance those professionally-produced campaigns with real employee voices and participation.

Paul Heaton: I would absolutely recommend Vocal Video. It isn't about replacing professional video production because there are plenty of scenarios where you absolutely want that level of production. What Vocal Video does really well is make it incredibly easy to capture genuine customer or employee voices when you don't need to organize a full video shoot around it. It removes a lot of the barriers that normally stop people contributing.

Paul Heaton: I'd describe Vocal Video as a really simple way of capturing authentic video stories from the people you want to hear from. It sits really nicely alongside professionally produced video and gives you an opportunity to capture those stories that are absolutely worth telling, but perhaps don't justify a full production. Most importantly, it helps you hear from more people more often without losing the human side of the story.