Hold your meetings Live!
At C/D/H, we often challenge each other to use the best communication methods with clients. E-mail has become the de facto method for most businesses, but has its limitations.
Like many people, I'll often pick up the phone after an e-mail chain has gone two or three rounds, just to save time and eliminate confusion. That form of "live" communication also allows you to pick up on emotions, hesitations, disinterest and other important forms of communication that get lost in an e-mail.
Instant messaging does have its place in business communications, but only for quick question-and-answer exchanges, or to check someone's availability to talk or meet.
The best conversations still happen face-to-face, between a limited number of people. Face-to-face conversations allow a wealth of non-verbal communication, but can eat up a lot of work hours when you include travel time.
But at C/D/H, we want to be certain we understand our clients and we are understood so, whenever possible, we use Microsoft Live Meeting for important communications.
Why YOU should go Live
- Video adds richness to communications.
- Share Office and other documents or share applications.
- Recording feature allows later playback.
- RoundTable brings groups together.
- Instant sharing of written notes on the call can be helpful.
- Distribute handouts before or during your meeting.
- Meet-me-now feature for ad-hoc discussions.
- Verify audience comprehension with polls and surveys.
Every C/D/H employee uses a camera with Live Meeting in our conference rooms. Both of our offices are outfitted with Microsoft RoundTable devices, which allow 360-degree, panoramic video.
A number of our clients also have cameras for conference calls, which significantly improves communications when they connect to our hosted meetings. Our 25 employees will typically host a dozen Live Meeting or video-enabled Office Communications Server calls daily.
Our clients react very positively to our video capabilities, and get more out of the conversation than they would in a traditional conference call. This is especially true when our sales team uses Live Meeting to bring a technical expert into a conversation, for instance.
We also use document and application sharing extensively, to review and finalize documents with clients, take meeting notes and display them instantly to all participants, and to provide desktop support and to collaborate in a shared-notepad session. We've even discovered that displaying the agenda and meeting notes helps keep a meeting on track.
Live Meeting has also allowed us to host many kinds of presentations for clients, everything from relatively informal lunch-and-learns to seminars with dozens of remote attendees. For presentation-style meetings, the record-and-playback feature is often used for people who cannot make the live presentation.
C/D/H is dedicated to excellent communications, and we are excited about Live Meeting and Microsoft's other current and planned unified communications products. Contact us to discuss business adoption strategies, unified communications architecture, hosting options, or with questions about using technology to enhance your communications.
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