Twilio Video EOL

[JDHigginbotham]

About 12% choose to contact at the prompt in sales. Well worth the effort.

Solid!

CTA... no we don't. But does make you think maybe we should. With service, the option to confirm work is always there. There is a follow up for declines that happen within the store. When a 'no' to upsell occurs from the video, we push notifications into the DMS to related advisor, service manager and videographer as well as fixed op if there is one for that store. They then have their own in-store process to try and steer that to a 'yes'.

Do the stores like it that way or would they want the centralized flow go further before passing it off?

Example..."No" from customer, leverage AI in that thread to dictate a concrete next step...would categorize responses and give the dealer context to how they should pick up the conversation.

Appt setting was largely being 'mishandled' from the sales app. There are a couple situations it works well. I'm actually in NFLD at the moment doing some training with stores to get them on it more effectively... good times

Another AI play

 

[Alban5342]

Circling back to this, some of the key points of failure I found among various offerings was:
1) Phone tech at the time (ie: iPhone didnt support any codec outside of its own h.264. Later I believe they finally supported VP8 in webRTC)
2) no one avail to take the video call (sales or service)
3) appt setting for a video call wasnt well supported by customers or sales team
4) Seemed to a customer a lot more 'intrusive' (even if you can keep your camera off)

Ourselves as a group have embraced video extremely well on a 1:1, record and send to customer (said before we do roughly 700,000 or so videos this year for sure)

I think there is a spot for 1:many (set demo/walkaround times possibly, kind of like "DealerTV")

But the biggest use I see for us ties into the fact we are sending so much video already.

When the customer first goes to view the video, we trigger a message to our sales/finance rep "Customer XYZ is now viewing your video, do you have time to chat if they like?"

If rep replies back to system 'Yes', then we know our rep is avail/ready to take the call.

At the end of the video we show a prompt to the customer (since the rep replied 'Yes', if 'No' or simply no response from the rep we just don't show the prompt): "Would you like to chat with your sales rep?". We give them a couple choices "Text Chat", "Video Chat" or "Phone".
They make their choice and off they go.

I see the update of videos'.

 

[AlonzoL]

Last week, Twilio wrote a letter to their company. (from SEC filing)

One way or another, trends among the underlying tech suppliers for SaaS come into play for this community.

Live Video

With a small footnote in this letter, Twilio confirmed End of Life (EOL) of their Programmable Video offering. For some, this wont be missed. For others, this a seismic shift for core products built around 1:1, group, or large broadcast video.

If you use live video chat through a software platform at your dealership, that platform may now have some decisions to make.

If you have any sort of live video use case you plan to embed in your app in the future, it will not happen on Twilio.

No, Vonage did not get the nod for Twilio's migration guide on video. It shouldn't. Vonage Video API (formerly Tokbox Opentok) is one the of most mature and innovative WebRTC offerings on the market. Strategically, it likely wouldn't be smart for Twilio to send customers to a leading competitor that can also go head-to-head on their focus in SMS/Voice.

Call to Action

What is the sentiment here related using live video in Automotive? (example 1:1 video chat)

Does a 33% workforce reduction in a "year of many changes" raise another conversation about business continuity?

The Twilio Video shutdown is definitely something companies relying on embedded video should pay attention to. A lot of businesses probably assumed the service was a long-term foundation, so having to migrate can be a painful surprise.

For automotive, I think 1:1 video still has a lot of value, especially for remote sales consultations, showing vehicles, service walk-throughs, and connecting customers with specialists. The bigger question is whether dealerships are actually using it enough to justify the complexity and cost.

The workforce reduction adds another layer of concern, not necessarily because layoffs automatically mean a product will disappear, but because it reminds companies that depending on a single SaaS provider always carries some risk. Having a backup plan, knowing migration options, and avoiding deep vendor lock-in are probably more important than ever.