What is the purpose of meetings? Is it just to communicate or do you also want to get a certain feeling during a meeting? When you use the phone to meet, you can misunderstand different voices. Let alone someone’s body language. This is completely impossible to read.
Below are 5 reasons why you should use video meetings instead of telephone meetings.
- Video meetings mean much more involvement than telephone meetings
Sometimes you have no alternatives and you are forced to use telephone meetings. To achieve more with your meeting, especially in collaboration, video meetings are a real improvement. That is why this should be standard.
When you use video meetings, the total experience of meetings is different. Participants can see you and they can be seen. The distance and body language are close, so your attention is on the meeting. People who multitask are not involved in a telephone meeting. With video meetings, they have more focus on the meeting.
This ensures that colleagues and customers interact better with each other in the business relationship. When you have seen someone on a video conference and you meet the person for the first time. Then the actual meeting or gathering is much more friendly.
- Video conferencing is almost as good as being there live and also more efficient
Video conferencing can ensure that key participants actively participate in meetings that they previously did not participate in. Due to distance or a different location.
A frequently heard problem at large companies is organizing a meeting with multiple people. For example, from other cities or countries. Or that they have to get into traffic jams to attend a meeting. But also meetings that only last 5 minutes. Where someone might have to drive an hour there and back. These are real time savers that you can easily perform. And for most participants it feels like they are in the same room.
- Video conferencing enables superior communication and learning
If you know a lot about brains and the areas, it has been proven that people process visual information much faster than text or audio, see also this infographic.
Researchers Cohen, Horowitz, and Wolf, writing for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, conducted experiments on the ability to recall objects, numbers, and other bits of information based on sound versus vision. In their conclusion, they write, “It is clear from these results that auditory recognition memory performance is significantly worse than visual recognition memory.”
Research from the University of Iowa makes things even simpler and more concise. In this article she writes “Achilles’ Ear? Inferior human short-term and recognition memory in the auditory modality.”
A study by Forbes Insights conducted a global survey of over 300 executives in July 2017 (sponsored by Zoom). The study found that 62% of executives agree that video conferencing significantly improves the quality of communication compared to telephone conferencing, a figure that rises to 73% in fast-growing companies. In addition, 50% of respondents believe that video conferencing also improves the level of understanding.
- Video conferencing keeps distributed teams connected and aligned
Face-to-face interaction is generally the most effective. With video conferencing coming closest to this form of meeting. In hospitals or other companies, it can sometimes be impossible to see each other in the same location. With video conferencing, it seems as if there is no distance. And communication is quick and easy.
- Video conferencing gets things done
Meetings are usually not just internal members, but often partners and/or customers as well.
In sales, face-to-face is important in the beginning of a relationship. And once a customer is on board, the goal of “getting to know someone” becomes less about getting things done and more about getting things done. This is where video conferencing becomes a powerful and efficient tool.
With video conferencing, it’s easy to just have a phone call and get in touch face-to-face so customers can address their questions and concerns. They get to know me; I get to know them. All in all, this creates better communication, builds trust, and builds stronger relationships.”