Eleven years ago, I spoke to the folks at SundaySky about the innovative ways they were using video to improve customer experience.

Specifically, they were pioneering the development of SmartVideo technology, which allows brands to send their customers personalized videos that are compiled in real time using their own data.

At the time, they were having particular success in the delivery of proactive customer service messaging. One case study that stood out in my discussion with Jim Dicso, the President and Chief Revenue Officer at the time, was how they were helping AT&T reduce the number of calls to their contact center due to ‘bill shock’.

Now, I am sure everyone can empathise with the idea of ‘bill shock’ as it often occurs when you receive your first bill after you have signed up for a new cellphone contract, say. However, when that bill arrives, it can often bear no resemblance to the amount or plan that you thought you had signed up for.

More often than not, this is because it includes things like other fees, services and taxes that may not have been adequately explained during the sign-up process.

However, upon receiving the bill and in a fit of confusion or frustration, many customers call the brand’s customer service department to seek an explanation or clarification.

Now, for a company the size of AT&T, this can represent a significant number of avoidable calls. So SundaySky worked with AT&T to ensure that when each customer received their new bill, they also received a link to a personalized video that utilized their data to explain all of the different elements of their bill.

That initiative allowed AT&T to realise a material reduction in the number of inbound bill shock-related calls, a significant increase in the uptake of value-added services, like paperless statements, and an increase in their NPS scores.

That was eleven years ago, and back then, it was an innovative initiative and a great application of leading-edge video technology to a problem that upset customers and burdened brands with unnecessary costs.

As such, it’s always surprised that this sort of approach was not more widely adopted.

Eleven years ago, video technology was still emerging as a powerful tool in the marketer’s toolbox. However, since then, the popularity of video as a customer engagement and marketing tool has exploded. In fact, research suggests that video is the fastest-growing type of marketing in digital advertising, over 90% of marketers report that they are using video as a marketing tool, and customers report that they retain 95% of the information provided in the form of videos. Additional research from LinkedIn also uncovers where marketers are having the most success with their use of video. The report finds that 55% of marketers found that short-form social videos delivered the highest return on investment (ROI), followed by testimonials and case studies (44%), product demos (40%), and thought leader interviews (39%).

However, despite these compelling figures and marketers’ stated desire to expand the use of video in their marketing, many struggle. Research from wyzowl found that the two biggest barriers to marketers doing more with video were they didn’t know where to start and not having enough time.

I recently caught up with Marc Zionts, CEO of SundaySky, to get his take on some of these findings and to find out how they were responding to these market changes and challenges.

One additional data point that Zionts shared with me that further complicates the picture and adds another barrier into the mix is that, according to their data, two-thirds of marketers “use three or more video tools as part of their workflow.”

In terms of how they are responding to these challenges, it wasn’t a surprise to learn that, given their innovative approach to video-related technology, they have evolved their proposition from a managed service to an all-in-one, AI-powered, do-it-yourself SaaS video platform, with their latest platform update featuring avatars, in-app screen recording, video and voice generation, editing tools, and language translation capabilities, all of which are powered by artificial intelligence (AI).

What’s particularly interesting is that they are targeting smaller and mid-market companies as well as customer experience and success teams.

This feels like a smart play, especially considering the budgetary, time, and resource challenges faced by many of the organizations in their target markets and the fact that tools like these have often only been available to the biggest brands with the biggest budgets.

So, now that many of the barriers to expanding the use of video in their marketing and communications have been removed, it’s going to be interesting to see how smaller and mid-sized brands, alongside customer experience and success teams, harness tools like these and what impact it will have on their ability to attract, engage, help, inform and educate their customers.

This post was originally published on Forbes.com.

Credit: Image by Terrence Phiri from Pixabay