Video conferencing has fairly recently made a gigantic leap that has turned it into one of the hottest and best innovations for businesses to utilize and implement across all levels, sizes and industries – it has gone from an industry focused on advancing hardware, to an industry focused on software development.
The hardware exists already. The cheapest most rudimentary smartphones come with a high resolution front-facing and back camera, a crisp display and an Internet connection. And the smartphone has experienced an amazing year of growth and development recently, as per Forbes, with an official slowdown and greater diversification – and continuously growing availability.
Companies like Cisco and Polycom no longer need to focus on producing video conferencing switchboards and tools in a world where laptop users, desktop users and tablet users can communicate across continents with little drop in call quality, whilst being entirely visible to each other.
Software solutions, on the other hand, have made the video conferencing tools many know to be overpriced competitors to free VOIP services into multimedia communication tools that far outweigh the usefulness and efficacy of simple VOIP services, while offering more versatility.
Below are five extremely cool ways in which a good, premium web conferencing tool can change the way you do business, and allow you to utilize your premium purchase for more than just a few calls between you and the client, but a myriad of specific and special uses that makes video conferencing an application function any business should seriously consider. Some, if not all of them apply to industries across the board, from marketing to medicine and a lot of things in between.
As a Recruitment Tool
Yes, your human resources manager will have a field day with a good video calling technology, and that is because it allows them to stage very quick and logistically-simplified interviews, regardless of distance, time zone or any other factors.
After the initial sifting and filtering process with the usual software and tools (surveys, aptitude tests, etc.) the shortlist can be shortened even further by staging consecutive quick interviews through a high-quality video calling tool with file sharing capabilities and crisp image quality and efficient bandwidth use.
As a Training Tool
Most advanced and specific video conferencing software and apps come with added functionality that makes them great training and live streaming tools, such as the ability to have dozens of people enter a call to observe and make remarks/ask questions.
Through video calling, both consultants and businesses can offer free or paid training sessions, as an additional service or simply in order to teach people how best to utilize your product, or make use of little-known tips and tricks.
To Stage Simple Meetings
While not a primarily utilization, web conferencing technology allows businesses to effectively skip calling everyone together into a single conference room for a call, instead allowing everyone to remain at their desks while “attending” a 15-20 minute long video call about an emergency change, latest client update or just a general update from everyone in the team.
For Troubleshooting Purposes
Better video calling technologies come with the ability to screen share, making it easy for businesses to offer expanded customer service and troubleshooting services by more accurately showing off how to fix how a service functions on the computer.
As a Scheduled Business Webcast
Webcasts are a cross between weblogs and podcasts, and equate to video-based live streams done by groups and businesses as a way to provide an interactive experience between a company or person and their audience. In the case of a business, it can be done as an informal press event to speak directly to the people, as part of a new product unveiling or promotional activity, or as a regular webcast series to promote a business’ various goods or services and how to best make use of them.
A large scale webcasting solution like BlueJeans will guarantee that webcasts remain high quality and highly appreciated, creating a ton of buzz for a company, and propelling it through the ranks of online searches, bringing it well ahead of the local competition and becoming a huge boon when executed properly.
And there you have it – video calling allows a company, almost any company, to utilize a single simple mass communication application as a training tool, announcement tool, communicative and organization tool, and even a tool for the human resources department to use to enrich the company with fresh new talent at a faster pace than ever before.
There’s really no reason not to utilize video conferencing nowadays – unless you fail to utilize it effectively. There are certain tips and tricks to making the best of video calling – technical tips such as mic usage and lighting – but so long as you do your homework, your company will see the great benefits in investing in a little conferencing technology, especially as way to save time in meetings and make them much, much more effective and involved as per TechTarget, or as a way to keep clients up to date outside of the big face-to-face meetings, keeping rapport up through the use of simple yet effective and personable online communication.
Kidal Delonix is a contributor to Mr. Hoffman's blog. The views and opinions are entirely his/her own and may not reflect Mr Hoffman's views.
