The short answer
Offer live video help at the point where a buyer holds an answer she found elsewhere and needs a second opinion before she orders. That is after the research and before the cart closes.
Two 2026 studies explain why that moment matters. Neither is about live video, so what follows is our reading of them, not a measured result.
Thirteen colleagues and nine outsiders
Forrester's The State of Business Buying, 2026 says a typical B2B buying decision now involves 13 internal stakeholders and nine external influencers, and more for complex purchases. It also says generative AI searches are where buyers start. Because those answers are fast but can be incomplete, buyers look to trusted sources to confirm them.
These are B2B buyers in general, and many of the purchases are far larger than a shop's reorder. A boutique owner may check with one partner, not thirteen people. The pattern still holds. The person on your product page is rarely the only person who has to be convinced.
An AI answer is only half checked
Gartner surveyed 645 B2B buyers in August and September 2025 and published the results in May 2026. Fifty-one percent said they were more likely to meet misleading information from GenAI. Forty-nine percent said the same of a sales rep. Buyers trust neither source blindly.
Gartner also found that reps remain the most important information source when buyers finalize a purchase. Our post on why buyers still check AI with a rep covers the other half of that survey.
A buyer who asks a person is not rejecting the AI answer. She wants it checked against facts only you hold: her account, her last order, your stock and your terms.
What a live call leaves behind
On a live call from the product page, the buyer asks her question while the cart is open. A person with her account in view answers in a minute: yes, it fits what she bought in March, and yes, the minimum applies to the whole order.
The call has a second job. The buyer still has to carry that answer back to the colleague who signs off. If she leaves with only a memory of what was said, she has to rebuild the answer from scratch. A short written recap sent after the call does the rebuilding for her. It should state the price, the terms, the delivery date and a link to the cart.
Try it for two weeks
Pick the two product pages that draw the most wholesale visits and offer live help on them for two weeks. After each call, write down three things: the question she asked, whether you sent a recap, and whether an order followed within seven days.
A call that ends with "I need to check with my partner" has not failed. Judge it by whether the recap gave her something to forward. If the recaps keep getting answers and the orders keep following, the call is doing its job.
Source
Forrester, "Forrester's 2026 Buyer Insights: GenAI Is Upending B2B Buying", press release of 21 January 2026 on The State of Business Buying, 2026 (13 internal stakeholders and nine external influencers in a typical decision; genAI as the starting point; buyers validating with trusted sources); and Gartner, "Survey Finds 69% of B2B Buyers Turn to Sales Reps to Validate AI-Generated Insights", 20 May 2026 (645 B2B buyers, fielded August and September 2025). Both pages blocked automated reading, so the figures were confirmed from search summaries of the releases and not from the full text. Both studies cover B2B buying in general, mostly larger purchases, and neither measures live video. The link between the findings and live help is an editorial reading.
