Some professionals provide vital services and receive little but distrust and mean-spirited jokes in return. Lawyers come to mind. Used car salesmen have it tough. And mechanics. (If you’ve ever heard National Public Radio’s popular “Car Talk” program, you’ve had plenty of exposure to jokes about mechanics cheating customers to fund their yacht purchases.)

This leaves mechanics – and those in similarly suspect fields – in the position of having to defend their advice, even to those who seek it out. Every day, car owners drop their vehicles off at repair shops and wait for a call from the mechanic. And every day, many of those customers grill the mechanic on his advice or put off until tomorrow what the professionals say should be done today.

You might be the expert, but if you work in a business in which your word is often not enough, multimedia, real-time communication can help you do your job better and keep your customers happier – and safer.

Let’s say you’re a mechanic, and you notice the tread on a customer’s tires is dangerously low. You could call him and tell him, giving him the chance to take your advice or resist it. Or, you could initiate a Web session with the customer, sharing a live image of his tire and annotating the picture to show him just how deteriorated the tread is and what it should look like to ensure safe driving.

Maybe that customer likes you and your shop just fine, but doesn’t trust mechanics in general. Maybe that customer is in the habit of avoiding every expense possible. Maybe that customer is a visually oriented person. For any number of reasons, that customer is far more likely to purchase new tires when he sees the problem with his own eyes. A phone call can’t accomplish that. VeriShow can.

This is just one of many business challenges solved by enhanced chat. Want to see it in action? Check out the video.