The modern workplace involves communicating with employees, team members, clients and other colleagues remotely. Since the pandemic, the use of online meeting tools has grown exponentially and enterprises of all sizes have rushed to utilize these tools. Although online meeting tools provide extensive benefits for teams, selecting the wrong one can cause more harm than good. This can lead to delayed meetings, technical difficulties and several other issues. Some of the most common mistakes when selecting an online meeting tool include:
Complicated onboarding
Choosing an online meeting tool with long or complicated onboarding can be a nightmare, especially for large organizations. Before purchasing a plan or integrating an online tool with your systems, thoroughly vet how difficult it is to start using the online meeting tool. The last thing you want is to have several team members having technical difficulties minutes before an important meeting.
Some factors to consider when evaluating the onboarding process for a tool include:
- How easy is it to sign up: The tool you select should have an easy sign up process. If it takes more than a few minutes to sign up, it’s likely to cause more onboarding issues
- Web or download options: Does the online meeting tool require a download or can it be launched directly from a web browser.
- Customer support: How easy is it to access customer support? Is there real time live help from the tool you are using?
Lack of integration
Another key mistake made when selecting online meeting tools is not accounting for integration. The online meeting tool that you choose should integrate well with your systems and applications. This can include CRMs, booking tools, collaboration tools and more. The online meeting tool that you select should have the integration capabilities and you should ensure any specific integrations your business needs are compatible with your meeting tool.
As your team grows, you’ll need your meeting tool to accommodate different integrations to maximize the productivity of your meetings. Some advanced online meeting tools have a list of different integrations they enable. For example, MeetFox allows you to integrate with all of your favorite tools like Slack, HubSpot, Gmail, Stripe and more. This allows you to do basically any task with MeetFox.
Lack of screen sharing
Screen sharing is a crucial part of any online meeting tool. Many online meetings that involve presentations require you to have screen sharing capabilities. It’s important to make sure that your online meeting tool either has screen sharing built in or it can support screen sharing integrations. This will allow anyone in your online meeting to share their screen and start presenting within seconds.
Although screen sharing is great to have, some providers have much better capabilities than others. Some other features you should consider when evaluating screen sharing include controlling what the audience can see, live feedback capabilities and the quality of the screen sharing. Ensuring the tool you select has the screen sharing capabilities you desire will make your meetings much more enjoyable and productive.
Technical reliability
An overlooked aspect of selecting online meeting tools is evaluating technical reliability. Many online businesses assume that all online meeting tools have great reliability but this is not true. Reliability involves aspects of using the tool like audio quality, visual quality, similar presentation quality for all attendees, uptime and more. Without technical reliability, you’ll run into many issues like glitches, freezing and the tool not starting at all. This can be detrimental, especially if you have client meetings online.
You can get a good idea of how reliable a tool is by reading online reviews and trying to tool yourself. By trying a demo of the product, you can get a solid understanding of how reliable it is. If you work with international colleagues and customers, ask them to try the tool to see how reliable it is on their end. This will give you a good indication of the global reliability of the online meeting tool.
Lack of involvement from other teams
A crucial mistake decision makers make when choosing an online meeting tool is not consulting with other teams within the company. Depending on the size of your business, the online meeting tool you select will impact the workflow of dozens if not hundreds of people. The needs for your department are not the same as the needs for other departments within the company. Without involvement from your team, you will likely choose the tool that’s best for your team and this can cause a variety of other issues across the company.
It’s vital to consult with and get feedback from other departments and leaders within your company prior to making a decision on which tool to use. In larger organizations, there are typically legal and compliance requirements for tools they use. Without approval from the stakeholders in your business, you can make an ill-informed decision on the meeting tool you select.
Lack of productivity features
You should not settle for just any online meeting tool. The tool you select should empower your business to make the most of online meetings and collaborations. Before purchasing a plan, explore all of the productivity features available to you and compare with other competitors. Ensure that the features listed are actually helpful and improve the productivity of your online meetings. It’s better to select the tool that suits your business the best instead of a tool that has a list of cool features. Some features you can look for in online meeting tools include:
- Automatic time zones: This feature will indicate to you exactly what time it is for all the meeting participants regardless of where they are located in the world
- Custom booking page: This feature allows you to create one link for all of your attendees to click without coding or additional design required
- Calendar synchronization: The meeting tool you select should allow you to synchronize the calendars of the participants in your meeting. This is important because it can give quick reminders on attending meetings.
- Recordings: Your meeting tool should have recording capabilities. Oftentimes, important meetings can go on for a long time. Recording features allow you to playback parts of the meeting and improve productivity
- Note-taking: Some online meeting tools allow you to take notes directly in the presentation. This can be a great feature to utilize if you enjoy taking notes during meetings.
Lack of security
During the pandemic, there were many security concerns regarding many online meeting tools. Random hackers and trespassers were gaining access to business meetings and causing havoc. This was a major security concern in addition to being a gross invasion of privacy. The last thing you want is for a hacker or competitor to gain access to your sensitive meetings and get trade secrets. This is why it’s vital to ensure your online meeting tool has advanced security and encryption.
When selecting an online meeting tool, you have to make sure it is secure and has end-to-end encryption. Your meetings should take place over an encrypted connection using HTTPS. This ensures that your meeting is secured and no malicious third parties can gain access to your conversations. Make sure your online meeting tool has data security and a GDPR compliance program prior to using it.
Make sure to take your time when choosing your online meeting tool. Once you’ve familiarized yourself with the various tools and avoided these common pitfalls, you can choose the best meeting tool that will add productivity to your team’s meetings. To learn more about how you can maximize your productivity with online meeting tools, check out our blog here.
About The Author
Ali Ali is a content marketer and blogger at alisquared.co. When he’s not guest posting, you can find him link building and learning about technical aspects of SEO. He can be reached at ali@alisquared.co.
