• Online ice breakers range from simple introductions to creative challenges or trivia games. They’re designed for large and small groups as well as remote and hybrid teams.

• You can enhance your remote ice breakers by using an AI-enabled meeting assistant. It’ll minimize distractions and automate note-taking, keeping participants engaged and productive.

Well-planned virtual ice breakers are enjoyable and beneficial for team building. Did you know that engaging and enjoyable work is the #1 factor for almost 50% of knowledge workers to achieve their best work, according to Asana?

I know many hate online ice breakers, especially when these activities are accompanied by background noise. So, imagine being able to select the perfect virtual ice-breaker activities while ensuring a noise-free environment to encourage interaction and strengthen team bonds.

Let’s explore 12 engaging ice breakers designed to enhance team closeness. We’ll also discover how to eliminate background noise to facilitate seamless online interactions. Lastly, we’ll uncover how you can transcribe, record, and summarize your virtual meetings to preserve valuable memories and insights.

What Is a Virtual Ice Breaker?

communicating virtually discussing via computer

An ice breaker is a game, activity, or question that prompts discussion. It has two main goals:

• Make participants feel comfortable talking to each other and avoid miscommunication.
• Help participants get to know each other.

But they remind many of childhood when the teacher made them stand up and state their names and one “fun fact” about themselves. Then, they realized they weren’t that fun and didn’t remember their names when under pressure.

While the word’s origin is disputed, I like to think of its physical equivalent. An icebreaker is a type of boat that breaks the ice to allow it to keep cruising along smoothly, so it doesn’t get stuck in one place.

Virtual meeting ice breakers can be a powerful tool if organized well. Specifically, they keep the conversation flowing and prevent awkward silence. Most importantly, as many of us study or work from home, virtual ice breakers create a conducive environment for collaboration and help us feel connected.

Here are some ground rules for doing ice breakers right.

5 Tips on Doing Virtual Ice Breakers Right

virtual communication via computer

1. Exercise Sensitivity and Emotional Intelligence

Are you trying to find the best answer to “How do you break the ice with friends online?” First, know the difference between a fun virtual ice breaker and a cringe-worthy one. Because the best answer depends on the level of closeness between those interacting online.

Specifically, personal-question-based ice breakers are the best fit for team members who have worked together. What about new team members? As a rule, personal questions posed to meeting attendees who have never met can create awkwardness and embarrassment.

2. Have a Backup Plan for Virtual Ice Breakers

Some ice breaker questions won’t go over well with some people, and that’s okay. So, try giving them something easier to answer. For instance, if they can’t tell something good that happened to them last week, ask, “What’s one goal you have for the upcoming week?”

Pay attention to their tone of voice and facial expressions. If that person is uncomfortable, thank them for trying and move on to the next.

3. Don’t Do Virtual Ice Breakers for Every Meeting

Remember an important point when looking for the best answer to “How do you break the ice in virtual meetings?” Some ice breaker activities, such as “Item on Your Desk” and “Two-Word Check-In,” are suitable for weekly team meetings.

Other options should be used sparingly. Because they become cumbersome and dreaded if you do it every time you have a virtual meeting.

4. Consider “Breakout Rooms” for Virtual Ice Breakers with More Than 10 Attendees

Some video conferencing tools, such as Zoom and Google Meet, include breakout rooms for multiple attendees. Specifically, this feature lets you organize groups of three to six attendees to complete the meeting activities separately.

Why? Virtual ice breakers with more than 10 participants can become unwieldy and time-consuming.

5. Know When to Move On

One of the biggest complaints about virtual icebreakers is that they waste valuable time. So, don’t let them drag on.

Set a timer for your meeting and start the official part once it goes off. Additionally, you can give people a set time limit to answer a question, such as 30 seconds.

Bonus Tip: Use Krisp to Enjoy Noise-Free Virtual Ice Breakers

Krisp AI meeting assistant for calls virtual ice breakers

Virtual meetings are essential to our daily lives in our increasingly digital world. So, it’s no surprise that the global market share of videoconferencing software witnessed nearly 68% growth in 2023.

But that’s only part of the story: not all online meetings succeed. That’s where AI meeting assistant Krisp steps in to cancel the background noise during your virtual ice breakers to make them successful and productive.

Krisp, a must-have noise cancellation and note-taking app, eliminates background voices and echoes during ice breakers for meetings to make them more productive. Moreover, Krisp automatically records, transcribes, and summarizes virtual meetings to simplify collaboration.

Now that you’re set up for success, let’s go through great virtual ice breaker ideas.

12 Unique Virtual Ice Breakers That Won’t Traumatize Your Team

people communicating online via computer

1. This or That

Level of effort required: Low

Level of team closeness required: Low

Best for: Larger meetings with people who don’t know each other well.

Are you googling “What is a fun, quick ice breaker?” Here is a lighthearted and quick idea: you throw out two options. Then, the participant chooses one and tells you why they chose it.

Consider these options:

• Dog or cat
• Hot or cold weather
• French fries or a side salad
• Beer or wine
• Los Angeles or New York City
• Travel by train or travel by plane

Use The Game Gal “This or That” to generate ideas for quick ice breakers for virtual meetings.

2. Song on Repeat

Level of effort required: Low

Level of team closeness required: Low

Best for: Informal, less corporate virtual ice breakers for team meetings.

For such virtual icebreakers, people can share which song they’re listening to or repeating these days. “Song on Repeat” also allows people to get new music recommendations. Why not? Almost everyone loves music.

“Song on Repeat” helps reveal personality types. How? Our preferred music style is tied to our personality type. Specifically, our musical tastes reflect our personalities, emotions, and social identities. Did you know people with higher openness enjoy sophisticated music genres like classical, opera, and jazz?

3. Tell Us Which City You’re in Without Telling Us Which City You’re in

Level of effort required: Low

Level of team closeness required: Low

Best for: Remote or distributed teams.

Here is another type of virtual ice breakers for work. Each attendee states a unique fact or description of their city, state, or country. Importantly, they mustn’t use the actual name of the city, state, or country. Others try to guess.

For example, someone working from Austin, Texas, might say, “This capital city used to be called Waterloo.” Someone working from Los Angeles might say, “This city is known for famous people and terrible traffic.” The same goes for cities and states.

4. Zoom Background Charades

Level of effort required: Medium

Level of team closeness required: Low

Best for: Informal environments and large groups.

Such virtual ice breakers for Zoom or Google Meet work if your web conferencing tool allows you to upload images for backgrounds. Specifically, have your team upload a background based on a theme before the meeting. Then, have everyone guess where they took the photo or what it depicts.

Given the global video conferencing market is projected to almost double, reaching 19.1 billion U.S. dollars, this online ice breaker is a go-for option.

Ideas to consider:

• A photo from a scene in their favorite movie
• A photo from a favorite vacation
• A place they’d like to visit
• The best meal they’ve ever had: have people guess the name of the dish and where it’s from

5. Item on Your Desk

Level of effort required: Low

Level of team closeness required: Low

Best for: One-time use at a weekly or quarterly meeting.

Are you googling “What are some fun virtual ice breakers”? Virtual ice breakers like “Item on Your Desk” are sentimental and humorous. Have participants choose an item on the desk and hold it to the camera for everyone to see.

Then, have them explain the meaning behind the item or why it’s on their desk. For example, someone might hold up an empty bowl and say, “I haven’t had time to do dishes yet.”

Experiencing fun either in job-related activities or socializing with coworkers boosts job satisfaction and lowers employee burnout.

6. Show and Tell: Pet Edition

Level of effort required: Medium

Level of team closeness required: Low

Best for: Virtual ice breakers for students or any other group.

People are often much more comfortable talking about others than themselves. Have everyone show a photo of their pet and talk about it. If someone doesn’t have a pet, they can show an animal they used to have or wish they could have.

How can participants show the pet during the virtual team meeting ice breakers?

• If the pet lives with them, have the attendee show the pet or point the camera at it.
• Have the photo be pulled up on their phone and face the screen toward their computer camera. However, this doesn’t always work and may lack good quality.
• Share their screen and have their pet photo pulled up.
• Submit the photo file or link to it in the group chat.

What can attendees share about their pets?

• Name
• Breed
• The story behind adopting or buying the pet.
• One quirky thing their pet does.

7. The View from My Office

man looking out of window

Level of effort required: Medium

Level of team closeness required: Low

Best for: Virtual ice breakers for any group, especially for distributed teams.

Such virtual icebreakers help remote coworkers have fun, that is, enjoy the experience of liberating engagement. Have everyone share the view from their window or show their desk setup. You have two options:

• Alert participants beforehand to prepare a photo to share during the call.
• Have attendees pick up their laptops and show you the view in real time during the call. However, the latter option can place more pressure on people, so option A is safer.

8. Two Truths and a Lie

Level of effort required: Medium

Level of team closeness required: Low

Best for: Virtual ice breakers for any group.

What is the most common ice breaker? Have each participant come up with two factual statements and one lie. Then, the other participants will guess which statement is a lie. Why not find out how sneaky some people can be?

For example, an attendee might say, “Hi, I’m Janet. I once met Justin Timberlake. I own a dog. And I can’t whistle.” People might guess that her comment about Justin Timberlake is untrue. What if she used to be a roadie and worked on the setup of one of his concerts? People might assume having a dog is relatively common, so it must be true.

Did you know that, according to a study published in the National Library of Medicine, people tell one to two lies daily?

9. Two-Word Check-In

Level of effort required: Low

Level of team closeness required: Medium to high

Best for: Regular check-ins, such as at weekly team meetings.

Two-Word Check-In involves emotions and moments of vulnerability. So, avoid using it for one-time meetings with people you’ve never met.

Begin the meeting by saying, “Let’s go around and say two words that describe how we’re feeling today. I’ll go first. My two words are tired and hopeful.”

To facilitate discussion, pull up a photo of the emotional wheel, also known as the Plutchik wheel, developed by psychologist Robert Plutchik. According to Plutchik, people experience eight core emotions, including sadness and joy, anger, and fear.

For example, someone who is upset might use the word “angry.” But if they dig deeper, they’ll find the word “frustrated” to describe their feelings.

Such virtual ice breakers build emotional intelligence (EQ), the ability to understand and manage one’s and others’ emotions.

Additionally, “Two-Word Check-In” helps you eliminate the question, “How are you doing?” And that’s why I love it. That question always elicits the same automatic and socially conditioned response of “good” or “fine,” whether true or not.

10. Highs and Lows

Level of effort required: Medium

Level of team closeness required: Medium to high

Best for: Regular check-ins, such as at weekly team meetings.

Such virtual ice breakers involve sharing vulnerable moments, too. And emotional vulnerability can be a path to connection. They’re best for teams already sharing some closeness.

Go around the virtual room and share something good or high and bad or low that happened this week. Often, attendees prefer to flip the order: do lows first and then highs. Why? Because it can be a downer to end on a low. But it’s up to you.

Say something encouraging or meaningful after each person goes. After all, sharing something negative and receiving no reaction can feel disappointing.

11. Common Ground

Level of effort required: High

Level of team closeness required: Low

Best for: Group meetings for the first time, and longer meetings.

Common Ground suggests finding the one thing participants have in common unrelated to work. For example, “Common Ground” is a fun virtual ice breaker that reveals more about each person.

Have participants share random facts, ask questions, and see where they can connect, even if it’s a stretch.

For example, you might say, “I love to cook.” Another coworker might say, “I’m a terrible cook, but I love to eat. My favorite food is Italian.” Someone else might say, “I studied abroad in Rome during my senior year of college.” From there, you might discover you’ve all been to Rome.

As a result, participants can share stories about those trips and find a common hobby, like playing the piano. And storytelling is a vital human tool for building a connection during virtual ice breakers.

12. Play to Your Strengths

Level of effort required: High

Level of team closeness required: Low

Best for: Team meetings about a particular project.

Are you googling “What are the most popular ice breaker questions?” Why not try these question-based virtual ice breakers that help identify which strengths are best for particular projects?

Have everyone take this University of Pennsylvania Brief Strengths Test. It consists of 25 questions measuring people’s strengths, from bravery to humor. Then, have each attendee share their top strengths and brainstorm one way they can apply them to a particular project.

Conclusion 

As you can see, virtual ice breakers don’t have to be awkward. It’s all about assessing the group’s dynamics and picking an activity or question appropriate for your team. Specifically, online ice breaker ideas such as “This or That” and “Play Your Strengths” help teams create stronger bonds and build trust.

AI meeting assistant Krisp can help you filter out noises, take notes, transcribe and record your virtual ice breakers, and localize speakers’ accents for enterprises and call centers. As a result, you can enjoy effective and productive meetings online.

Frequently Asked Questions

The post 12 Actually Not Awkward Virtual Ice Breakers for Remote Meetings appeared first on Krisp.

From investing in noise-cancelling headphones to strategically placing sound-absorbing materials, there are plenty of options to explore for cubicle soundproofing and creating a more tranquil work environment.

1. Install soundproofing partitions

One simple cubicle noise reduction trick is to install soundproof partitions. These can be floor-to-ceiling or shorter and are made of thick, sound-dampening material that blocks some of the noise between cubicle walls. As an added bonus, partitions also improve privacy between cubicles.

2. Hang sound blankets

Typically made of thick cotton and polyester material, sound blankets can be hung on walls or draped over windows and doors to dampen sound. If your cubicle neighbor’s conversations bother you, you can hang a sound blanket over the part of the cubicle that shares a wall with them. It’s an easy way to create an extra buffer between you and the source of noise.

3. Install a noise-cancelling app

When all’s said and done, you can soundproof your cubicle as much as possible, but you’ll never be able to block out all sounds. If background noise is ruining your calls, the best solution is one of the best noise-cancelling apps for windows like Krisp that works from within your microphone to eliminate distracting sounds during your meetings.

[demo-new]

Krisp’s AI technology has been trained by listening to thousands of hours of audio, so it knows which sounds are background noise that should be blocked. What’s more, it works with any headset or software you might currently be using. You might not be able to escape your cubicle’s noisy environment, but at least it won’t ruin your phone and video meetings.

4. Acoustic panels

A space with tall ceilings and little furniture can amplify sound, so one way to cut down on echoes is to install acoustic panels on your office walls. These pieces of foam absorb sound so it doesn’t bounce off the walls and create even more noise in the office.

5. Put up acoustic ceiling tiles

Consider putting up acoustic ceiling tiles made of fiberglass or wool to absorb excess sound in your workspace. You’ll particularly benefit if you’re in an office with tall ceilings, which can really intensify echoes. Be prepared to make the investment, though. According to Fixr, the cost of installing a suspended acoustic ceiling averages $1,494 for 130 square feet. 

6. Fill the space with furniture, rugs, plants, etc.

Another way to cut down on how much sound travels through your office is to fill your space with sound-absorbing items. Think large, soft, and cloth, like sofas, rugs, ottomans. Even big canvas paintings may do the trick in stopping those pesky sound waves from bouncing around your workplace.

7. Change your flooring

If you’ve got hard flooring such as tile or wood, consider switching it out for a softer material. Soft flooring like carpet has sound-dampening effects, especially if foot traffic is causing a lot of noise.

8. Install sound masking systems

More than mere white noise, sound masking consists of playing unobtrusive audio engineered at specific frequencies that will make background speech unintelligible. So while it won’t “block out” all distracting sounds per se, it will prevent your coworkers’ conversations from derailing your train of thought.

Many offices install these sound masking systems for both privacy and productivity, but it’s not cheap. It can cost anywhere from $1 to $2 per square foot, according to Todd Berger of Cambridge Sound Management.

9. Increase the distance between cubicles

This solution works especially well if your office has shifted to a hybrid model, where some coworkers are working from home. With more space, you can spread out cubicles farther and decrease the sound that reaches each coworker.

10. Increase cubicle wall height

If you can’t extend horizontal space, think vertical. Invest in taller partitions between cubicles to block out excess noise and improve privacy (win-win!). Some partitions are thick, insulated glass, while others are made of a fabric, such as polyester fiber.

11. Create a quiet room

Sometimes, you don’t need to do away with cubicles altogether. It’s really just about designing your office space based on sound zones. Consider creating a quiet room where employees can retreat to when they need to focus on some deep work.

12. Create a call room

In contrast to the quiet room, a call room can be a conference room or even a phone-booth-type installation where employees can go to make or take calls without disturbing their coworkers. These call rooms typically are enclosed (four walls and a roof) and outfitted with special soundproofing material.

Image source

13. Draft an office noise policy

Every cubicle noise reduction strategy can be enhanced by an office noise policy. Draft a document that clearly outlines best practices when it comes to hosting meetings, having conversations with coworkers, and the like. For example, you might instruct employees to only hold lengthy conversations in conference rooms or to always keep the break room door shut so as not to disturb those working in their cubicles.

By having your noise policy documented, you’ll not only reduce unnecessary noise in the office, but you’ll also reduce stress because employees will know what’s expected of them.

14. Crack down on keyboards

You can’t help the click-clacking sounds of keyboards, but the worst culprits are mechanical keyboards, which have switches beneath each key that create a more tactile feel but also more sound. You can cut down on distracting noise by investing in quiet keyboards for your office staff.

15. Play white noise

White noise is a quick and simple cubicle noise reduction hack. Just look up “white noise” on YouTube or use an app like SimplyNoise to hear a low-level, static noise that’ll drown out other sounds. I personally love turning on a HEPA air purifier while I’m working because of the white noise it provides. And hey, if it provides me with cleaner air, too, all the better!

16. Use noise-cancelling headphones

Noise-cancelling headphones do best cancelling out low, constant sounds (like the hum of an airplane engine). They’re not really meant for drowning out the shrill sounds of your coworker’s laugh. Even so, based on some rave Amazon reviews of Bose noise-cancelling headphones, they do a good job of drowning out noises of an open-plan office space. So, it’s worth a shot!

17. Put in earplugs

Earplugs are a cheap and sneaky cubicle noise reduction strategy. If you want to be super stealthy and get extra noise protection, slip a pair of noise-cancelling headphones over the earplugs. No one will be the wiser.

18. Put on safety earmuffs

Yes, safety earmuffs, as in the kind you wear to protect your ears from loud noises at a shooting range. It may seem extreme, but plenty of office workers use safety earmuffs to drown out your run-of-the-mill office noise.

In college, I lived in an apartment where I shared a wall with a DJ. His music was so loud I could feel the vibrations. To get any studying done, I used to wear earplugs with safety earmuffs over them and turn on my HEPA filter for white noise.

19. Consider a work-from-home model

If there’s anything that the past 17 months of this pandemic have taught us, it’s that remote work really can work. For some, one of the benefits of working from home has been greater control over the amount of noise present. Without dozens of coworkers around, some remote employees have found it home to be a more peaceful environment. So one cubicle noise reduction strategy might just be to get rid of the cubicle altogether by going remote.

20. Start offering private, enclosed offices (at least for some roles)

If getting people back into the office is important for team collaboration, consider offering enclosed offices, at least for some roles. For example, your sales team likely has to make a lot of calls due to the nature of their job. Perhaps they’re the ones making the most noise in the office. In that case, offer dedicated office spaces for these roles. It’ll make the entire workplace quieter, especially for those who still need to work from cubicles.

Cubicle Noise Reduction: Peace and Quiet Is Within Your Reach

Cubicles are a classic office setup, and they allow for some privacy and sound reduction at a lower cost to organizations compared to private offices. However, they’re still not the best at cutting down on noise. 

Consider incorporating cubicle soundproofing materials or cubicle noise reduction strategies like acoustic panels or noise-canceling devices to create a more conducive work environment for your team.

Additionally, consider utilizing technology to combat cubicle noise and ensure background noise cancellation. Krisp, a noise-cancelling app, works wonders by muting background noises during calls, ensuring crystal-clear communication even in bustling office environments. Integrating Krisp into your daily routine can help minimize distractions and enhance concentration, making it a valuable tool for cubicle dwellers seeking tranquility amidst the noise.

The post 20 Cubicle Noise Reduction Strategies appeared first on Krisp.

Below, we’ll go over the ten best online meeting apps in 2022, including ones that are completely free to use.

What Is the Best Online Meeting App?

The best online meeting app depends on your needs. Based on our research, here are the top ones. For more details on each, continue reading this article.

• Best all-around: Zoom
• Best for personal calls to friends and family: Skype
• Best for online classes and educational institutions: Microsoft Teams
• Best for small teams: Whereby
• Best for large teams: Cisco Webex
• Best for free: Jitsi Meet
• Best for ensuring noiseless calls: Krisp (works with all apps above!)
  

If you’re tired of managing your online meetings manually, consider using Krisp’s AI meeting assistant for a more streamlined experience.

Is Zoom the Best Meeting App?

If you value ubiquitousness and familiarity, then Zoom just might be the best meeting app. It is the most used app, by far, in the web conferencing software market, with Datanyze estimating Zoom takes a whopping 72.56% of the market share as of August 2021.

And with its free plan, it comes at no cost to you. 

What Is the Best Free App for Online Meetings?

The best free app for online meetings is probably one you’ve never heard of before: Jitsi Meet. It is the only conferencing app on this list that is truly 100% free—with no time limits.

If you’re looking for a more popular online meeting app that has a free version, it’s a close call between Zoom and Webex. While Zoom has a bigger market share and would be much easier to use since most of the people you interact with are familiar with it, Webex has more robust features on its free version. For example, Webex allows 50-minute group meetings on its free version, while Zoom only allows 40-minute group meetings. Additionally, Webex’s free version is HIPAA compliant; Zoom’s is not. 

Both Zoom and Webex allow for meeting recording and breakout rooms on their free plans—something the other apps on this list require paid plans for.

But remember, these apps limit your calls to less than one hour. If you want unlimited time to chat, use Jitsi Meet.

Which Online Meeting App Has No Time Limit?

These are the online meeting apps on this list that have no time limit:

• Jitsi Meet—and it’s free to use!
• Whereby
• GoToMeeting
• BlueJeans

10 Best Online Meeting Apps for Every Need (in No Particular Order)

1. Whereby (Formerly Appear.in)

Whereby Price: Free plan available. Paid plans start at $6.99 per license per month.

Maximum Meeting Participants: 200 on the Business plan

Whereby is the only online meeting app on this list that is completely browser-based. That’s right—there is no software or desktop/mobile app to install. As a Whereby user, you create a custom URL that serves as the “key” to your personal “meeting room.” This room can be locked at all times, and for participants to enter, they must “knock” and be admitted into the meeting.

While Whereby doesn’t come with nearly as robust a set of features as the other software on this list, it is a solid contender if you host meetings with fewer than 200 participants and want something that anyone can instantly access regardless of tech savvy. Starting a meeting on Whereby really is as easy as sharing a link, and joining a meeting really is as easy as one click.

What’s Available for Free: 

• Group meetings up to 45 minutes each; one-on-one meetings have no time limit.
• Up to 100 meeting participants
• Screen sharing
• Backgrounds. Note: This is different from virtual backgrounds, like in Zoom, where you can change what participants see behind you on your webcam. Backgrounds in Whereby are essentially wallpaper options for your virtual meeting room.
• Breakout groups
• Chat
• TLS encryption
• Ability to select end-to-end encryption
• The “knock” feature prevents people from entering a locked meeting room.

Upgrade for These Features:

• Unlimited group meeting duration
• 200 meeting participants
• Recording
• Custom branding
• Custom subdomain
• Priority support

2. Google Meet

Google Meet Price: Google Meet is free. Google Workspace has paid plans starting at $9.99/month.

Maximum Meeting Participants: 100

Google Meet is mostly browser-based (no software installation required), but it does have a mobile app for both Android and iOS, so you can host or join meetings from your smartphone. As part of Google’s suite of apps, Meet is a solid option, since many people have Google accounts anyway.

What’s Available for Free: 

• Group meetings up to 1 hour each; 24-hour max duration for one-on-one meetings 
• Up to 100 meeting participants
• Screen sharing
• Virtual backgrounds
• Chat
• Whiteboarding
• Live closed captions
• Encryption in transit and at rest

Upgrade for These Features:

• 24-hour group meeting duration
• 250 meeting participants on the Enterprise plan
• Hand raising
• Breakout rooms
• Polls and Q&A
• Recordings saved to Google Drive
• Intelligent noise cancellation
• 24/7 online support and community forums

3. Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams Price: Free plan available; paid plans start at $4 per user per month billed annually

Maximum Meeting Participants: 300

Had you even heard of Microsoft Teams before the pandemic? Due to the sudden rise in remote work, Teams took off in 2020, reaching 115 million daily active users in October. It’s become a favorite in the education space, thanks to its generous pricing plan and breakout rooms feature. Microsoft Teams is included in Office 365, which is free for educational institutions.

What’s Available for Free: 

• Meetings up to 60 minutes each
• Up to 100 meeting participants
• Screen sharing
• Virtual backgrounds
• Breakout rooms (only available on desktop app)
• Chat
• Whiteboard app add-on is available
• Encryption at rest and in transit
• Virtual lobby

Upgrade for These Features:

• 24-hour group meeting duration
• 300 meeting participants
• Live captions
• Recordings
• Phone and web support

4. Cisco Webex

Webex Price: Basic plan is free; paid plans for its meetings features start at $14.50 per user per month billed monthly.

Maximum Meeting Participants: Up to 200 on its Meet Plan. Up to 1,000 on its Enterprise Plan.

Founded in 1995 and acquired by Cisco in 2007, Webex is an established brand in the web conferencing space. A favorite among large corporate teams, Webex stands out in its meeting capacity: Its website says the Enterprise plan lets you customize the maximum number of attendees, adding, “We’ll work with you to find your ideal Webex solution.” 

In June 2021, Webex showed its ambition by announcing a new set of features. It introduced Webex Suite with hybrid work in mind, combining calling, meeting, polling, Q&A, and messaging into one platform. The company also said that, soon, it will add background voice removal to its meetings. 

What’s Available for Free: 

• Meetings up to 50 minutes each
• Up to 100 meeting participants
• Local recording
• Screen sharing
• Virtual backgrounds
• Breakout rooms
• Chat
• Notes, hand-raising, polling
• Interactive whiteboarding
• Unlimited messaging and file sharing
• TLS 1.2 support
• End-to-end encryption
• HIPAA/BAA compliance
• Lock personal room meetings
• Online support

Upgrade for These Features:

• 24-hour meeting duration
• 200 or more participants
• Recording transcriptions
• Ability to add an alternative host
• Encrypted cloud recordings
• Chat and call-in support

5. Zoom

Zoom Price: Basic plan is free; paid plans start at $14.99 per user per month billed monthly

Maximum Meeting Participants: 1,000 on the Enterprise plan

Let’s face it: If you’re asked to join a video meeting, nine times out of ten, it’ll be on Zoom. While people have had privacy complaints about the popular web conferencing app (which Zoom has since addressed), it’s going to be tough to get around using this online meeting app at some point because it has the largest market share. And there’s a lot to be said for familiarity: If it works and everyone’s using it, why change to anything else?

What’s Available for Free: 

• Update: As of July 2022, all meetings on the free Zoom plan are limited to 40 minutes each. Previously, Zoom allowed one-to-one meetings up to 30 hours each on the free plan, but that has now changed.
• Up to 100 meeting participants
• Local recording
• Screen sharing
• Virtual backgrounds
• Breakout rooms
• Private and group chat
• Whiteboarding
• TLS encryption
• End-to-end encryption
• Waiting room
• Filters 

Upgrade for These Features:

• 30-hour group meeting duration
• 1,000 meeting participants on the Enterprise plan
• Co-host and alternate host
• Recording transcriptions
• Live transcription
• Cloud recordings
• Ticket, live chat, phone support

6. Skype

Skype Price: Free for video conferencing

Maximum Meeting Participants: 100

Once a widely used video conferencing app, Skype’s popularity has been waning, especially since Zoom took off in 2020. In fact, Microsoft did away with Skype for Business in July 2021, encouraging everyone on that platform to switch to Microsoft Teams. 

Even so, it seems Skype for personal use is here to stay. It’s particularly useful for connecting with older generations who already have the app installed and are familiar with it, and for calling international landlines and mobile devices for cheap.

What’s Available for Free: 

• Up to 24 hours of meeting duration on one-on-one and group video meetings
• Up to 100 meeting participants
• Recording
• Screen sharing
• Virtual backgrounds
• Chat
• End-to-end encryption
• Real-time translation

7. GoToMeeting

GoToMeeting Price: Paid plans start at $12 per organizer per month, billed annually. GoToMeeting offers a free 14-day trial of its Business plan without requiring payment information.

Maximum Meeting Participants: 250 on its Enterprise plan

Though not the lowest-priced software on this list, GoToMeeting has standout security capabilities that will make it a popular choice for institutions discussing sensitive information during meetings. The lack of breakout rooms may be a dealbreaker for teaching online classes, however.

Top Features on GoToMeeting:

• No meeting duration limits
• Up to 3,000 meeting participants on the Enterprise plan
• Recording
• Screen sharing
• Co-organizers
• Chat
• Drawing tools
• Meeting lock
• Transcription
• SSL encryption
• ​​AES-256 bit encryption
• Risk-based authentication
• HIPAA compliant
• 24/7 phone and web support

8. Jitsi Meet

Jitsi Meet Price: 100% free

Maximum Meeting Participants: 100

It’s almost too good to be true: Jitsi Meet is an open-source web conferencing app that is completely free to use with unlimited meeting duration. You don’t even need to create an account to use it. You can simply go to the website, create a unique meeting URL, and share it with anyone to host a video meeting right within your browser—no software installation required. If you need it, Jitsi Meet offers end-to-end encryption, which you can turn on inside a meeting (Jitsi does say it’s still “experimental” though). With breakout rooms, screen sharing, HD audio and video, and chat—it’s a wonder we all don’t just use this, since it’s free!

Top Features on Jitsi Meet:

• No meeting duration limits
• Up to 100 meeting participants
• Recording with uploading through Dropbox
• Breakout rooms
• Screen sharing
• Chat
• Raise/lower hand
• Virtual backgrounds
• Ability to turn on end-to-end encryption on supported browsers

9. Dialpad Meetings (formerly known as UberConference)

Dialpad Meetings Price: Dialpad Meetings has a free plan that allows you to host meetings with up to 10 participants for 45 minutes. If you’re interested in trying the full suite of voice, meetings, and messaging, Dialpad offers a free 14-day trial of those paid plans.

Maximum Meeting Participants: Up to 150 participants on the Business plan

As you can probably guess, we’re big fans of AI around here. Dialpad is a web conferencing app that leverages AI to create live transcriptions and coaching during a call. Using Natural Language Processing (NLP), Dialpad Ai actually analyzes conversations during calls, turning them into a transcription. Over time, it gets smarter and is able to better understand the unique vocabulary your business uses. It also does live call sentiment analysis, which means you can tell if a call is going poorly (negative sentiment) and step it up to improve the customer service. Once your online meeting is done, Dialpad Meetings even generates a post-call summary with the transcript, action items, and highlights that you can send to your team or customers. And if you’re sensitive about privacy, you can turn off Dialpad Ai whenever you want. Because Dialpad is a major contact center software, unsurprisingly, its Meetings offering is tailored toward customer service and sales reps. So it’s a particularly helpful online meeting app option if that’s your industry.

One potential drawback is that the maximum length of a Dialpad meeting is 5 hours whereas many other online meeting apps have a max of 24 hours or more.

What’s Available for Free: 

• Up to 10 meeting participants
• 45-minute meeting limit
• Unlimited audio recordings
• Screen sharing
• Virtual backgrounds
• Emoji reactions
• DTLS and SRTP encryption

Upgrade for These Features:

• 150 participants
• 5-hour meeting limit
• Unlimited video recordings
• Live meeting transcriptions
• Automated post-meeting summaries
• Custom hold music

10. BlueJeans

BlueJeans Price: BlueJeans plans start at $12.49/host/month billed monthly. There is no free plan, but there is a free 14-day trial, no credit card required.

Maximum Meeting Participants: Up to 200 participants on the Enterprise plan

BlueJeans is a web conferencing app that was acquired by Verizon in 2020. A huge differentiator is BlueJeans Smart Meetings, which allows attendees to create “highlights” during a meeting, such as an important action item, and tag teammates so they know which tasks they own. After the meeting, BlueJeans will send the meeting summary to relevant teammates.

What’s Available for Free: 

BlueJeans does not have a free plan, but it does offer a free 14-day trial of its Enterprise plan.

Top BlueJeans Enterprise Plan Features:

• Up to 200 meeting participants
• Unlimited meeting duration
• Unlimited meeting recordings
• Meeting highlights
• Action item tagging
• Private and group chat
• Whiteboarding
• Remote desktop control
• Meeting locking
• AES 256-bit encryption

Which Online Meeting App Comes With Noise Cancellation?

On this list, there are three online meeting apps that come with some sort of noise cancellation: Jitsi Meet has noise suppression, Google Meet has intelligent noise cancellation on its paid plan, and Webex now offers background noise removal. 

However, there is a totally free way to add noise cancellation to any online meeting app you choose. Krisp is an app that integrates with conferencing apps to remove unwanted sounds in the background, such as children crying, keyboards clicking, and cars going by. Our free plan comes at no cost to you and provides 60 minutes of daily microphone and speaker noise removal. Just install it on your computer, and it can work with the online meeting apps you use.

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Which Online Meeting App Will You Choose?

Ultimately, the online meeting app you choose for long-term use will heavily depend on your needs. Thankfully, every app on this list has a free plan or a free trial, so you can give each one a try to see which one you like best.

As you explore the diverse range of online meeting apps in this comprehensive guide, make sure to keep the online meeting terms glossary handy for quick reference to any unfamiliar terminology you may encounter.

Whichever app you choose, be sure to enhance your audio quality with noise cancellation from Krisp. The app is compatible with every conferencing app on this list—and free to try!

The post 10 Best Online Meeting Apps to Use in 2022 appeared first on Krisp.

I get it. While hybrid work has a lot of the same needs as remote work, it has an added layer of complexity due to having a workforce that is both remote and on-site.

Below, I’ve rounded up the best tools for hybrid teams to collaborate effectively.

1. Bonusly for building a culture of appreciation

Pricing: Plans start at $3 per user/month (billed monthly). There is a free trial available.

Preserving culture is a prominent concern for leaders as they shift into a hybrid work model. It’s difficult enough to maintain culture when people don’t see each other in person (like with remote work), but it’s an even bigger challenge when a workforce is split into different groups: in-person and remote (like with hybrid work). You want to avoid creating factions and division among your teams. 

One way to build cohesiveness and appreciation, and enrich your company culture, is through employee recognition software. With Bonusly, you get a scalable, measurable way of recognizing and rewarding your employees. Each employee receives an “allowance” of points each month to give out to team members as a thank-you. Every time praise is shared, it can be tied to your company values via hashtags. Employees can then redeem these points for gift cards, charitable donations, and more. You also get a dashboard filled with data to gain insights on recognition given and received and points earned.

2. Envoy for hot desk booking and on-site safety protocols

Pricing: Paid plans for Envoy’s Visitors + Protect option start at $119 per location/month (billed monthly). Their Basic plan is free with limited features.

I’ve written before about how the hybrid work model, though full of benefits, is also a logistical nightmare. For instance, if you have a flex option (where employees can come in whenever they want and grab a desk to work on-site), how will you ensure enough desks to accommodate an unpredictable ebb and flow? And once you invite employees back to the office, how will you ensure Covid precautions are in place?

Envoy aims to solve the logistical intricacies of a hybrid workplace and provide a streamlined way to implement pandemic protocol. With Envoy, employers can create an employee health check with Covid-19 screening questions that must be completed before entry is allowed. If needed, it also allows employers to verify vaccine information and conduct contact tracing. And Envoy provides desk analytics and enables employees to book desks to help your company optimize layouts and ensure sufficient workspace.

3. Krisp for distraction-free meetings

Pricing: Get started with Krisp totally for free on the Personal plan and get a set number of noise cancellation minutes. Upgrade to Pro version for more features and unlimited noise removal. Learn more about the pricing plans.

Whether working from home or from the office, noise constantly interrupts meetings. If it’s not your dog barking at the UPS delivery person, it’s your chatty coworker dishing up the latest gossip to your cubicle mate. 

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Krisp fixes all that. It’s like pressing the “mute” button on your environment so you can focus on deep work. This AI-powered noise-cancellation app is easy to install and works seamlessly in the background. When you open up Zoom, Teams, Meet, or really any communication app, Krisp identifies which sounds are not meant to be there and blocks them out—leaving your voice and your attendees’ voices crisp and clear.

Krisp is a must-have tool for hybrid teams to cut out distractions and dive into deep work.

4. Noisli for customized productivity playlists

Pricing: Noisli’s free plan gives you 1.5 hours a day of streaming. For unlimited streaming and access to more sounds, the Pro plan for individuals is $12 per month (billed monthly).

Speaking of noise, what’s the best way to drown it out when you’re not in a meeting? While there are plenty of noise-generating apps out there to mask sounds, Noisli is my favorite (and I’ve tested a lot). 

Instead of music (which I find more distracting than background noise), Noisli provides a plethora of soothing sounds, from raindrops to railroad tracks to coffee shop chatter. Mix and match them, and even adjust their intensity, to create your own productivity playlist. My personal favorite? Chirping birds, a babbling brook, and rustling leaves (heavy on the chirping and light on the water).

5. Doodle for picking the best meeting time across time zones

Pricing: Doodle is free to use, but to get premium features such as no ads, Zoom integration, and deadlines and reminders, you’ll need a paid plan. Paid plans start at $6.95 per user/month (billed annually).

Having a hybrid team often means you’re working with folks across multiple time zones—making scheduling meetings a challenge. Doodle helps with that by allowing people to vote on a list of available times so you can pick the most fair one.

Launched in Switzerland in 2007, Doodle has come a long way since when I used it in college to schedule potlucks and social events. Now, it has more robust features for the busy professional, such as “if need be” to indicate that it’s not an ideal meeting time. It also has a Premium subscription level that removes ads and sends automatic reminders to nudge invitees to vote.

It’s easy to get started with Doodle; you don’t even need to create an account. Simply create a Doodle and select all the possible times for the meeting. You can then copy the personalized link and share it or send invitations via email. Once all the votes are in, you can choose the time slot that most people can make it to.

6. Calendly for scheduling

Pricing: Calendly’s Basic plan is free for one active event type. For unlimited active event types and more features, you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan. Paid plans start at $10 per seat/month (billed monthly).

For one-on-one meetings, nix the back-and-forth, and send a Calendly link to allow the other person to book an available slot on your calendar. I’ve yet to find a simpler way to have clients book time to meet. Calendly also integrates with Google Calendar, Zoom, Webex, and Slack, just to name a few.

7. Whereby for quick browser-based meetings

Pricing: Whereby’s free plan grants you unlimited one-on-one meetings and group meetings up to 45 minutes each. To get unlimited group meetings and more features, upgrade to a paid plan. Paid plans start at $6.99 per license/month (billed monthly).

And once you’ve settled on the best time to meet, you need a place to host your virtual meetings. Let me suggest Whereby. Unlike better-known players like Zoom and WebEx, Whereby is entirely browser-based. You don’t have to install anything, there’s no desktop or mobile app available, and attendees don’t need to log in.

To start a meeting on Whereby, all you need is your unique meeting room link, which you share with whomever you want to invite—up to 100 participants total. When an attendee clicks your meeting room link, they’ll be asked for their name and access to their camera and microphone before entering the meeting. That’s it.

Whereby also has virtual backgrounds, breakout rooms, and integrations with Miro, Trello, and Google Drive.

And as far as security goes, you can “lock” your room so that anyone trying to enter must “knock” first to gain entry.

I think Whereby is a much lighter, faster way to get video meetings started. But, of course, there’s a lot to be said for having a high rate of adoption. Because Zoom is nearly ubiquitous, I could see why you might resort to using it for meetings, and it works great, too!

8. Miro for virtual whiteboard collaboration

Pricing: Miro has a free plan for unlimited team members and three editable boards. To access unlimited editable boards and more features, upgrade to a paid plan. Paid plans start at $10 per member/month (billed monthly).

Whether you’re a scrum master or middle school teacher, whiteboarding is useful for many roles. That’s why Miro, a virtual whiteboarding app, is one of the most helpful tools for hybrid teams.

For those of us who miss those messy, magical brainstorming sessions with sticky notes galore—Miro does its best to replicate that for you. With templates, integrations (like Jira and Confluence), voting, video chat, and reactions, Miro mirrors what it’s like to be collaborating with your team on a whiteboard.

9. Loom for asynchronous video communication

Pricing: Loom has a free plan that lets you record up to 25 videos per person (five minutes per video). To access unlimited videos and recording length, upgrade to the Business plan, which starts at $8 per creator/month (billed annually).

For when you need to explain something complex and visual but don’t want to schedule a meeting for it, there’s Loom. Loom lets you record your screen and voice so you can explain something on your computer and then send the link to someone. Even better, the person watching it can speed up the recording. So not only did you just avoid having to wrangle people into a meeting, but you’re also saving them time. Win-win.

10. PandaDoc for e-signing and sending documents (for free)

Pricing: PandaDoc’s free plan gives you unlimited e-signatures and document uploads. To get templates, 24/7 support, and more features, upgrade to a paid plan. Paid plans start at $29 per user/month (billed monthly).

From new employee onboarding documents to client contracts, digital signing just got easier with PandaDoc. Simply upload documents and email them to collect signatures. Within the dashboard, you’ll be able to see when the document has been viewed. You’ll also get an email when all parties have signed, along with a link to the completed document.

The best part? PandaDoc is completely free for unlimited document uploads and e-signatures. You’ll be hard-pressed to find another e-sign software that offers that much value.

11. Asana for project management

Pricing: Asana’s Basic plan is free and includes unlimited tasks, projects, and messages. To access Timeline view, unlimited dashboards, and more features, upgrade to a paid plan. Paid plans start at $13.49 per user/month (billed monthly).

Of course, every team needs a project management tool to keep track of tasks and optimize workflows. Asana is a popular choice. It lets you make sense of your work in whatever view makes sense for you: boards, list, timeline, or calendar.

When your team is remote and distributed, you lose the ability to easily assess who is working on what task. Asana provides that necessary transparency. With its Workload feature, for instance, you can see how much work each team member has so you don’t overwhelm them. You can also set up automations to further optimize your business.

Asana boasts more than 200 integrations, including Miro, Toggl, Google Drive, Loom, Twist, and Slack.

12. Google Drive for sharing files and collaborating on documents

Pricing: Google Drive accounts come with 15 GB of storage for free. You can purchase extra storage if needed.

I wouldn’t be able to do my work without Google Drive. With its file sharing and word processing, it’s the go-to place to collaborate on documents. Whether you need to write an article, crunch some numbers in a spreadsheet, or put together a slideshow presentation, Google Drive has you covered.

13. Twist for async communication

Pricing: Twist has a free plan that gives you access to one month of comments/messages and allows up to 500 members. To get full access to your history of comments/messages, unlimited members, and more features, upgrade to Unlimited, which costs $6 per user/month (billed monthly).

Twist dubs itself as an asynchronous messaging app (check out the benefits of async communication), meaning you can send chat messages to your entire team without putting pressure on them to respond immediately. The idea was born out of its parent company Doist’s own frustration with using Slack.

“We felt like we were constantly fighting against the product,” explains Chase Warrington, Doist’s Head of Remote. “Ultimately, we decided we needed our own async-first tool that would help us communicate as a remote team spread across 35 countries and over 10 time zones. We built Twist, quit Slack cold-turkey, and never looked back.”

So while you certainly could use Slack asynchronously, it doesn’t exactly encourage it. With things like typing indicators, statuses, and standalone (unthreaded) messages, Slack adds a sense of urgency—but Twist has none of those features.

The main difference between Slack and Twist is that, with Twist, every message (except for DMs) is part of a thread. With Slack, a message can belong to a thread or be completely standalone. When you give teams the option to send standalone messages, if you’re away from Slack too long, you have to go back through tons of messages and try to understand the context. But with Twist, since every message belongs to a thread, there is always context because it is tied to a topic.

14. Grammarly to optimize written communication

Pricing: Grammarly’s free plan will do a spelling, grammar, and punctuation check. But to get more advanced corrections, you’ll need a paid plan. Paid plans start at $12 per month.

Let’s face it, in a remote or hybrid team, written communication becomes the default. Therefore, being able to communicate effectively through text is crucial. Grammarly is useful not just for its best-known feature (an editor) but for its add-on, which analyzes your word choice and gives you an idea of the tone of voice that comes across. I find this useful in emails, as sometimes when I’m in a hurry, I don’t come across as friendly as I’d like to.

15. Toggl Track for time tracking

Pricing: Toggl Track’s free plan gives you unlimited time tracking, projects, clients, and tags. To access billable rates, time rounding, and more features, you’ll need a paid plan. Paid plans start at $10 per user/month (billed monthly).

Even if your organization doesn’t require timesheets, tracking your time helps you optimize your work. Having an idea of where your time goes and which projects are taking you the longest can help you better manage your time. 

For that, Toggl Track has remained my favorite time tracker for years. It has a desktop, mobile, and browser-based app, as well as a Chrome extension that lets you track time no matter what website you have open. 

You can break time tracking down into teams, clients, and projects. Toggl Track’s “Reports” tab gives you easy-to-read insights into where your time goes each day, week, month, and year.

Which of These Tools for Hybrid Teams Will You Try?

As much of the workforce transitions to a hybrid work model, we will inevitably run into snags. But having the right infrastructure in place and equipping your teams with the right tools will give you the greatest chance for success in a post-pandemic world.

The post 15 Best Tools for Hybrid Teams to Crush It in 2022 appeared first on Krisp.

If that’s the case, I invite you to look at this topic with new eyes: If you spend hours of your week taking calls as you work from home, shouldn’t you be doing it right?

So before you hop on your next call, be sure to read about these game-changing remote meetings tips.

1. Sometimes, an agenda isn’t enough.

Yes, you should always have a meeting agenda. But beyond that, it’s helpful to provide context around who is attending and what their role is in the scope of the meeting and its topic. This is particularly true for cross-functional collaborations, where people from different teams or organizations who have not met before are coming together to solve a problem or work on a project. You can save time on introductions if you do this and ensure everyone is in the loop.

2. There is an ideal meeting attendee number: fewer than 10 people

1. Richard Hackman, who was a professor of organizational psychology at Harvard, spent years studying effective teams and concluded: “My rule of thumb is that no work team should have membership in the double digits (and my preferred size is six), since our research has shown that the number of performance problems a team encounters increases exponentially as team size increases.”

Now, this will depend on the type of meeting. If you’re hosting an all-hands, and your organization has 200 people, you’ll have to break this rule. But it’s just a general guideline: try to keep your meeting attendees to fewer than 10. Any more than that, and it’s diminishing returns.

3. Draft a remote meetings policy for your workplace.

Your remote meeting policy should address questions like:

• When is a remote meeting appropriate?
• Does our office default to video on or off?
• Are virtual backgrounds acceptable?
• Do we use chat during video meetings? If so, in what way?
• Will our video meetings be recorded?

4. New attendees need to know the policy before the call. 

This should be documented in the office meeting policy we talked about earlier, but if the attendees are from outside of your organization, they obviously won’t know about this, so give them a heads up about these four items:

• Who will be leading the meeting?
• Should they arrive at the meeting with their cameras on or off?
• Should they keep their cameras on throughout the meeting?
• Is it okay to use a virtual background?

5. Lighting matters.

Don’t stress out too much about this; just make sure your face is well-lit enough that people can see your face. Meeting virtually already means we lose some key pieces of communication (body language, for example), so make it easier on your teammates by allowing them to read your facial expressions in good lighting. 

Avoid having light directly behind you, such as a sun-filled window, which can create a silhouette effect that obscures your face. Try to place a light source, such as a desk lamp, behind your laptop so the light falls on you.

6. Avoid a busy background. 

Busy backgrounds are visually distracting, and depending on what’s back there, might not be appropriate for a work call. The safest bet is a bare wall behind you or, if in line with your workplace’s culture, a nice virtual background.

7. Your laptop microphone or headset microphone picks up annoying background noise.

To remedy this, you’ll need to manually eliminate as many noise-making items in your vicinity before the call. If you’re calling in from home, prep your workspace beforehand. Turn off any distracting noises, such as fans that blow directly on your microphone or a TV you left on in the living room.

Of course, home life isn’t always so easy to control. If you’ve got roommates, family, kids, or pets, your best bet is to install a noise-cancelling app like Krisp to automatically eliminate any distracting sounds at the click of a button. Krisp works in the background on your calls, and it goes both ways: It ensures your voice is heard and that you can hear your attendees’ voices as well.

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8. If you expect issues or interruptions, say so ahead of time. 

Virtual meetings introduce the potential for all sorts of issues. To prevent confusion and awkwardness, shoot a quick email or Slack to attendees and call it out. Let them know if:

• You’ll be in the middle of your commute on the subway, so your camera will be off.
• You’re dogsitting for a friend today, so there might be barking in the background.
• You’ve been having internet connectivity problems, so your video might freeze up, and in that case, you’ll turn the camera off.

That way, if the issue does come up during the meeting, you don’t waste time explaining what’s happening or come across as rude.

9. Use icebreakers sparingly.

Icebreakers exist on a spectrum, from the downright cringey to the heartwarming. Choose a virtual icebreaker that takes into account how close the team is and how much time you have in the meeting. 

10. Put the popcorn method on the backburner.

“Popcorning,” or waiting for someone to “pop” up and speak during a meeting, is just plain awkward. And you’ll usually get the same people speaking first and speaking most often. You can certainly use this method for some of the questions, but if you find that certain people are dominating the conversation while others are staying silent, it’s time to switch it up.

If you are the meeting host, call on people who haven’t spoken and say, “I’d like to hear from you. Do you have anything to add?” Similarly, you can ask each person that you call on to “pass the mic” to someone else when they’re done speaking. That way, you’re not always the one calling on someone to speak.

If you are not the host but an attendee who tends to be the first to speak, next time, take a step back and say, “I’d be happy to go first on this one, but I wanted to give ____ an opportunity to speak because they’ve been instrumental in this project and have a lot they could share. _____, would you like to add something?”

11. Pretend the meeting starts 5 minutes before it actually does. 

If a meeting starts at 10 a.m., put 9:55 a.m. in your calendar. This will help you mentally prepare to arrive early, and it provides a buffer in case a meeting beforehand runs over.

12. Learn basic troubleshooting

You don’t need to be an IT whiz. Just some basic troubleshooting can go a long way in having effective remote meetings.

• Video freezing and audio skipping? Turn off your camera, switch to a faster internet connection, and make sure someone in your household isn’t streaming videos or doing something else that takes up a lot of bandwidth.
• Running a VPN? Realize it’ll slow down your connection. Consider disconnecting.
• People can’t hear you? If you’ve got headphones in, take them out. Or, check your audio input under settings to ensure the meeting app knows to pull audio from your headset, not your computer’s internal mic.
• Being Zoombombed? Always protect each meeting with a unique password shared only among designated attendees so outsiders can’t join. This is an important part of online meeting security.

13. Don’t be afraid to reschedule when things go wrong

If technical issues persist despite troubleshooting, don’t be shy: Suggest rescheduling the meeting for another time or excuse yourself while the others carry on with the meeting. This shows you respect others’ time and don’t want to keep troubleshooting during valuable meeting time.

14. Give time warnings.

This is really the meeting leader’s responsibility: To make sure you end on time and wrap up smoothly, give a 10- and 5-minute warning.

15. End the meeting on time.

Whatever you do, don’t go over. At the stated meeting’s end time, on the dot, announce that you’ve run out of time and that people are free to leave. If you have more items to discuss, ask anyone who has the time to stay on longer, but don’t hold back those who have other commitments.

If a meeting is going over, and you don’t want to interrupt, feel free to just leave. Ideally, you’ll want to send a text message to the chat. Interrupting to say “I’ve got to go” creates a longer delay for everyone else because now they’ve all got to say bye to you.

16. If you’re the meeting leader, pretend you’re narrating a film. 

When we’re in remote meetings, it’s so easy to forget that other people cannot see what you are doing. So, if you’re the meeting leader, pretend you’re the narrator in the film. Announce everything that you are doing. Overcommunicate. This prevents people from feeling awkward, getting confused, or thinking they’ve lost you.

Here are examples of how this might play out:

• There’s that awkward silence at the start of the meeting while you’re waiting for everyone to join. Say, “So I’m just checking my email here to see who responded yes to this invite. We’ll wait a few more minutes because it looks like Lucy and Joe are supposed to join.” 
• You ask a question soliciting feedback from the group, and you see one person in particular nodding emphatically as though they have something to say. Say, “James, I see you nodding over there. Would you like to say something?”
• There’s the fumbling at the end of the meeting with goodbyes as some people don’t know if they’re allowed to leave or if you want them to stay on. Instead, if you want one person to stay on the call to discuss something, you need to call it out clearly. For example, “Okay, that wraps up this meeting then. I’m going to ask Chase to stay on for five more minutes to talk about the financial report. Everyone else, sign off now, and I’ll send an email followup on everything we discussed. Thanks for joining!”
• Narration works for any awkward silence, in fact! These lapses in conversation often happen after you’ve asked a question and people are thinking about what to say or aren’t sure who’s supposed to speak first. To remedy this, you can say, “I know you’re thinking about how to answer this, so take your time. I’ll wait, and whoever wants to jump in first can do so.” Or you can even say, “Lucy, I’d love to hear from you first,” if ample time has passed, and no one has spoken.
• While you’re waiting for your presentation to load on your computer before sharing your screen, simply say, “I’m just waiting for the presentation to load. Sorry, my internet has been super slow today! I’ll let you know once I’ve gotten it up.”

Yes, narrating can feel weird, and obviously you wouldn’t do it in an in-person meeting. But unlike an in-person meeting, your attendees can’t see what’s going on on your end. Narrating helps them understand the context of the situation.

17. Communicate action steps and takeaways.

Research by meeting management software Fellow found that one of the top five problems with meetings is that there are no clear takeaways, while on the flip side, one of the top five characteristics of a great meeting is having actionable takeaways.

That means many people are leaving meetings going, “Um, why did we even have that meeting?”

Don’t let your attendees think it was a waste of time! When you’re wrapping up, state what you learned and what will happen next. If you run out of time, let the attendees know you’ll email them with next steps. 

18. Take a break from video every once in a while.

Not every remote meeting needs to be a video meeting. In fact, too much can lead to Zoom fatigue, a now well-documented effect caused by way too many video calls over the pandemic.

Stanford University researchers found four reasons for this—and they all have to do with the visual component of these meetings:

• Excessive, close-up eye contact
• Seeing yourself during video chats
• Decreased mobility during video chats
• Higher cognitive load in video chats

So, the easy fix? Occasionally allow meeting attendees to keep their cameras off, or just schedule audio meetings more often.

Which of These Remote Meeting Tips Will You Try Today?

You likely have a video call coming up. It is 2022, after all. Now that you know these remote meetings tips, you’ll have even more reasons to make it your best one yet. 

And if you’re feeling overwhelmed by all the tips, start with this easy one: Try noise-cancelling app Krisp for free today.

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The post 18 Remote Meeting Tips Everyone Should Know (But Doesn’t) appeared first on Krisp.

To reap the benefits of digital transformation, you need to know which technology is worth investing in. Below, we’ll go over the eight types of digital transformation software that can propel your business forward.

Communication

Instant messaging

Digital communication tools have already transformed work in major ways, namely, making remote work possible. Many remote and hybrid teams use Slack or Microsoft Teams to keep in touch with colleagues around the world via instant messaging (voice, video, or text).

Async messaging

Digital transformation tools like Twist take it one step further and help you shift your work model to asynchronous—meaning your team can work at completely different times of the day and still communicate, just on their own time. That’s because Twist removes the sense of urgency to reply immediately to messages. For example, Twist does not have status notifications displaying to teammates that you’re available.

Video calls

As we all saw in 2020, video meetings changed the game. From weekly stand-ups to monthly pub quizzes, conferencing apps like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet saw a huge boost in usage. And because remote and hybrid work are here to stay, choosing the right web conferencing software is crucial for any company’s digital transformation.

Async Video Messaging

Loom makes it easy to connect with people via video even when they’re not available. It lets you record a screen video while you talk over it, making it easy to explain a more complicated or visual subject—without needing to call a meeting.

AI-Powered Noise Cancellation

With the uptick in virtual communication comes the downside of more distracting sounds. More than ever before, employees are working from places where it’s difficult to control the environment—coffee shops, airport lounges, and even someone’s own living room can become a huge source of distractions.

When Zippia asked 2,000 American workers, “What annoys you about meetings?,” more than half chose “people with loud background noises.” That makes background noise the most common meeting nuisance, second only to meetings that could’ve been an email. 

So you can see how AI-driven noise cancellation like Krisp can enhance and transform virtual communication, making meetings more productive and effective. Krisp uses the power of deep neural networks that have been trained to identify and remove unwanted noise in real time. That means every call your team makes can have crystal clear audio. 

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Project Management

Project management software is one of the most beneficial digital transformation tools a company can have. It can improve efficiency and oversight, increase collaboration, ensure prompt completion, and enhance employee productivity and performance. But, one of the biggest mistakes companies make with project management tools is paying for a subscription, setting it up, and then not training everyone on how to use it. What ends up happening is that the project managers create tasks and deadlines in the software, but everyone else is using their own methods to keep track of their own progress. The result? Disjointed communication and missed deadlines.

Instead, ensure widespread company adoption by training everyone on how to use the software and creating a central hub of documentation in case anyone has questions. 

Popular project management tools include ClickUp, Trello, Asana, Airtable, and Monday. Software like these include helpful features such as email notifications to remind task owners when a task is due, various ways to visualize a project (such as Kanban boards, timelines, or Gantt charts), and dependencies (so you know who to contact if a project is being held up).

Customer Experience

One of the latest digital transformation trends is that companies are taking a more customer-centric approach to business. There are plenty of digital tools that can completely transform the way you do customer service and even how you run your business or design your product based on customer feedback. 

Customer experience software can help you do the following:

• Measure and track customer satisfaction metrics. Track metrics such as NPS, CES, CSAT, and more to gauge customer sentiment. Delighted, Hotjar, Nicereply, and AskNicely all have this capability.

• Gather customer feedback. Survey software such as Zonka Feedback, GetFeedback, and Qualtrics can help you gather feedback from customers through chat, email, SMS, and your website.

• Deliver customer support. From building a knowledge base for customers to find the answers themselves to embedding a live chat into your website—the right customer support software can make getting the right answer faster and less frustrating for the customer. Software like Front creates a shared inbox (combining email, SMS, and social media queries) to help your support team better track and manage customer requests. Similarly, Zendesk implements a ticketing system so all customer emails, Tweets, and Facebook posts get converted into tickets, making support easier to manage.

• Monitor social media for sentiment. Social listening software enables you to monitor social media for specific keywords or hashtags about your brand and use that data to take action and make meaningful decisions. You might find out that a particular software product has a bug you didn’t know about, so you alert your engineering team to fix it. Or you might discover that customers really love a particular store location, which might prompt you to emulate the layout for other stores. Social media monitoring software helps you decipher the overall customer sentiment regarding your brand too. Tools like Mention, Hootsuite, and Talkwalker are examples of social listening software.

Employee Engagement

On the flip side of the customer experience is another aspect you cannot ignore: employee experience. With higher-than-usual attrition rates and a job market that favors candidates, businesses that want to thrive are investing in improving their employees’ engagement, satisfaction, and overall experience. This means leveraging software to rethink and reshape how you onboard and retain employees.

Employee engagement software can help you:

• Measure and track employee satisfaction metrics. Culture Amp provides your organization with turnover prediction based on engagement and performance data. Plus, it has science-backed surveys to measure employee engagement, diversity and inclusion, and more. 

• Gather employee feedback. Qualtrics allows you to customize surveys to gather employee feedback that you can act on. These insights can drive changes in your business that affect performance and your organization’s bottom line.

• Recognize and reward employees. Help your workforce feel appreciated by implementing employee recognition software. Tools like Nectar and Bonusly provide online platforms for employees to earn rewards for their hard work and give shoutouts to colleagues.

Knowledge Management

According to IBM, knowledge management is “the process of identifying, organizing, storing and disseminating information within an organization.”

With proper knowledge management, your employees will feel empowered to do their job. They won’t waste time and energy asking for and hunting down essential information to carry out their role. Beyond improving efficiency and saving time, knowledge management empowers your organization to innovate. It helps you take existing knowledge and build upon it, driving action. Without it, great ideas and valuable information fall through the cracks.

And yet, 82% of organizations say they “need to do a better job of tying knowledge to action,” and 79% say they need to “be more effective at creating knowledge to jump-start innovations and launch new products and services.” That’s according to a 2020 Deloitte survey.

If knowledge management is a challenge for your organization, the good news is that technology can help. With software like Guru, you can build an internal wiki to store and maintain information, such as the company handbook. This creates a single source of truth that can easily and quickly be updated by your team. And software like Helpjuice can be used to create a knowledge base (a repository of articles answering common questions) for both customers and employees.

People Analytics and Assessments

People analytics software and neuroscience-based assessments are changing the game when it comes to recruitment and hiring. Instead of relying on humans (who all have unconscious biases), these tools allow organizations to lean on science to find the best fit for the role. 

Pymetrics, for example, developed a series of 12 neuroscience-based online games that assess candidate soft skills. It’s part of Pymetrics’ broader platform that uses behavioral insights and AI to create a more fair hiring process. Rather than leaning on resumes and questionnaires (which are self-reported and can be biased), organizations that use Pymetrics can leverage objective cognitive and behavioral data to help them assess whether someone is a good fit for a specific role.

Zoho Recruit uses data and predictive analysis to help recruiters make faster, more optimized hiring decisions. It can identify the sources where you find your most high-quality candidates, optimize your sourcing process, and create reports to visualize progress.

Collaboration

Pre-pandemic, the companies that held out from allowing remote work often pushed the argument that the best collaboration could happen only in person. The innovative online collaboration tools that have since sprung up have proven those companies wrong.

Cloud collaboration tools like Google Drive, ClickUp, and Microsoft 365 make it possible to coauthor documents and slideshow presentations with teams across the globe asynchronously or in real-time. Whiteboard apps like Miro make it easy to visually present ideas and brainstorm remotely.

And as we’ll see in the next section, even more groundbreaking tools are on the horizon in the metaverse.

Metaverse

Defined by Meta (formerly known as Facebook), the metaverse is “an embodied internet where you’re in the experience, not just looking at it.” In an October 2021 statement, Mark  Zuckerberg wrote, “The defining quality of the metaverse will be a feeling of presence — like you are right there with another person or in another place. … you’ll be able to do almost anything you can imagine — get together with friends and family, work, learn, play, shop, create — as well as completely new experiences that don’t really fit how we think about computers or phones today.”

While the definition (and real-world application) of the metaverse is still blurry, we wanted to include it in this list because of its potential to contribute to digital transformation, enabling us to merge physical and digital in ways we’ve never seen before.

It’s worth noting that Meta is certainly not the only company innovating in the metaverse space. Microsoft, for example, announced Mesh for Microsoft Teams, which allows colleagues to “feel presence” and collaborate “in-person” through holoportation, holographic sharing, spatial rendering, and avatars.

Who knows what the future holds for the metaverse in the workplace?

Which Digital Transformation Software Will You Integrate Into Your Workflows?

Digital transformation isn’t about following the latest trends. Buying software that sits unused is a waste of resources for your organization. Instead, it’s about leveraging the right technology to fundamentally improve your product or processes, making you a more competitive, efficient, and profitable company.

Go back over this list of digital transformation tools and decide which one you want to try first, depending on your organizational goals. If you want to try one that takes less than a minute to set up and has a free version, check out Krisp. It’s an AI-powered noise-cancelling app that identifies and removes unwanted sounds during your online meetings—all at the click of a button.

The post 8 Types of Digital Transformation Tools Your Business Needs Now appeared first on Krisp.

Has your company kept up with the pace of innovation? And what are the costs of failing to do so? Below, we’ll go over how Covid and a hybrid workforce have affected digital transformation around the world and how you can give your organization a competitive edge.

7 Ways the Pandemic Changed Digital Transformation

1. The pandemic proved that remote work was always possible.

Before a virus started its global spread, many employers saw remote work as unnecessary, or even detrimental, to the performance and impact of their employees. Remote work was not the norm pre-pandemic. But now, working remotely at least part of the time is commonplace. A 2022 Pew Research Center study found that 57% of U.S. adults working remotely rarely or never worked from home before Covid.

The pandemic proved that employers’ excuse that remote work was “unproductive” was simply that—an excuse. In many cases, working from home during the pandemic led to an increase in productivity. Great Place to Work conducted a two-year study of more than 800,000 employees.  They then measured employee productivity from March 2020 to August 2020 and compared it to the same period in 2019. They concluded that across those months, productivity either remained the same or increased.

Even jobs previously thought incompatible with remote work found a way. Therapists, nurses, and physicians alike took advantage of telehealth sessions, allowing them to diagnose and even treat without ever stepping foot in the same room as the patient. 

As grueling and unwanted as the pandemic was, it forced a shift to remote-friendly work environments that employees had long pined for.

2. The pandemic expedited much-needed digital transformation across industries.

Organizations across industries and the world were forced to question what they previously thought was possible with technology. And in many cases, these innovations left everyone wondering, “Why didn’t we do this before?”

In health care, for example, it is now common practice to provide an online portal for patients to fill out paperwork before arriving at their appointment, saving time and paper and preventing unnecessary exposure to pathogens.

And at the DMV, car registration renewals—once infamous for long lines and atrocious wait times—are now as simple as entering your license plate number into a self-service kiosk, which then prints your renewal sticker for you.

The added convenience and safety of the tech advancements spurred by the pandemic have revealed that these things were always possible—businesses just needed a catalyst to make them happen.

3. The pandemic necessitated a shift to a workplace culture that’s more conducive to digital transformation.

When governments swiftly implemented lockdowns to slow the spread of Covid, organizations were left scrambling to transition their workforces and technologies to a work-from-home model. Workplaces that had previously been more formal and rigid faced an ultimatum of sorts: Adapt to the “new normal” of employees attending work via Zoom in a crowded house with their kids playing in the background, or stick to their old ways and risk unhappy workers and a business model that would fail in this new world order.

As such, employers were forced to develop a culture that created a psychologically safe place to try something new without fear of failure. Interestingly enough, this is exactly the kind of culture where digital transformation succeeds.

An October 2020 McKinsey report found that organizations that performed well during the pandemic used cutting-edge technologies. Further, “a related imperative for success is having a culture that encourages experimentation and acting early.” 

What’s more, the transition to the hybrid work model, too, is driving culture change that’s conducive to digital transformation. As management consultant Geoffrey Moore tells technology journalist Peter Burrows, “Embracing the hybrid model is forcing companies to adopt a collaboration culture.” When you’ve got employees split between remote and in-person and spread across the world, establishing the digital tools to collaborate effectively becomes crucial.

Where experimentation and collaboration thrive, so too can digital transformation. Why? Because you no longer have a workforce that is largely resistant to the technological changes that will have to happen. They’ll be onboard and will embrace it, making the transformation flow smoothly.

4. Consumers are now more familiar with tech—and expect the best.

We’re now living in a world where much of the population spent most of 2020 and much of 2021 in isolation, doing many things only virtually. That means that people of all ages are more familiar with tech than ever before—from ordering groceries online to attending a doctor’s appointment via video chat. Those new behaviors are likely here to stay.

In fact, according to the EY US Consumer Index 8 report from November 2021, 54% of consumers say “new behaviors adopted during the pandemic feel normal now” and 45% “don’t want to go back to living exactly like before the pandemic.” 

“What this points to is that consumers are more adaptable than we think,” Kathy Gramling writes in the EY report. “They can adjust quickly to short-term impacts, but those impacts can also leave a lasting impression, turning what may not have mattered before into a top priority that companies are required to now address.”

One of the biggest pain points the EY report highlights is supply chain issues: Consumers are sick of not being able to buy things on time because a company doesn’t have them in stock. One of EY’s recommendations is that companies employ digital technology that gives real-time insights into inventory.

With these changing consumer expectations, companies must be quick to adopt technology that can improve the customer experience. In a 2021 research paper entitled “Impact of Digitalization on Customers’ Well-Being in the Pandemic Period,” the authors write, “In the pandemic context, retailers need to respond quickly and innovatively to new customer needs with the help of new technologies, such as artificial intelligence and IoT.”

For customer service call centers, for example, the fix could be something as simple as implementing an AI-powered noise-cancelling app so agents can better hear callers and vice versa. 

5. More than ever before, employees want technology that makes work easier.

The fast rate of new tech adoption means that workers are well-versed in digital tools, but instead of the latest shiny object—they want only the best (the tools that make work easier). A 2022 Microsoft special report found that 46% of frontline workers say that employing technology that makes their job easier would reduce their stress. And 63% feel excited about the job opportunities tech brings.

Further, about half of Gen Z and Millennials say they “envision doing some of their work in the metaverse in the next two years,” according to the Microsoft Work Trend Index 2022.

And employers would do well to heed these new employee expectations. Seventy-one percent of business leaders believe that employees will look for jobs elsewhere if their current employer doesn’t provide them with the technology they need to do their jobs, according to the 2022 Freshworks State of Workplace Technology.

So what new tech tools can make employees’ lives easier? More than ever before, workers are reaping the benefits of artificial intelligence to enhance their jobs, including technology like noise-cancelling apps to improve virtual meeting quality and productivity.

Leading AI researchers developed Krisp, an app that uses the power of deep neural networks to pinpoint and remove distracting background noise on both ends of a call in real-time. Equipping teams with this cutting-edge technology means that whether their work is in a call center, an office, or their living room, they can have more productive and stress-free meetings. 

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6. This faster pace of digital transformation comes at a time when society is at its highest level of tech fatigue and consumer distrust.

Digital innovation during the pandemic presented a double-edged sword: At the time digital transformation is increasing, so too is the level of tech fatigue and consumer distrust.

Deloitte reports that one-third of consumers feel overwhelmed by tech during the pandemic. Microsoft data shows a “252% increase in weekly time spent in meetings for the average Teams user since February 2020″ and a 32% “increase in chats sent per person since March 2020.” And if that weren’t enough, the 2022 Freshworks State of Workplace Technology reports that 91% of employees are frustrated with inadequate workplace tech.

Google’s announcement that it’s doing away with third-party cookies in Chrome follows on the heels of consumers being less willing to share data—presenting a huge challenge to companies that rely on third-party data to target customers. In the 2022 GroupM annual consumer attitudes survey, 77% of participants “strongly or somewhat agree with the statement ‘I worry about how companies use my personal data online.’” That’s up from the previous year’s survey.

7. It also comes at a time when employees are at their highest level of burnout.

To complicate matters further, employees are experiencing burnout at a higher rate than before. The American Psychological Association reports “heightened rates of burnout in 2021.” Its 2021 Work and Well-being Survey found that 79% of employees felt work stress in the month before being surveyed.

A 2022 Deloitte survey of 5,000 women in 10 countries found a burnout epidemic in working women, the same demographic in which, a year earlier, 80% said their workloads had gone up since the start of the pandemic.

Clearly, the workforce is heading down a path of chronic stress, and it’s up to employers to use their digital transformation efforts to ease that stress—not make it worse. This will require listening to employee feedback and acting on it by implementing a real digital strategy that aims to serve employees, not just the company.

Covid Kickstarted a New Era of Digital Transformation: Will Companies Keep Momentum Going?

There’s no doubt about it—Covid necessitated a drastic change in the way employers do business. An overarching theme is that what many believed would be short-term fixes for the pandemic have had long-lasting effects. 

Consumers and workers alike have realized the convenience and improvement technology provides, but they’re also frustrated and fatigued by outdated tech. It’s up to organizations to retain what is good about these changes and continue to drive digital transformation forward.

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Below, we’ll review the top digital transformation trends this year. But first, let’s establish a definition. 

What Is Digital Transformation?

In his book, Why Digital Transformations Fail, Tony Saldanha defines digital transformation as “The migration of enterprises and societies from the Third to the Fourth Industrial Revolution era. For companies, this means having digital technology become the backbone of new products and services, new ways of operation, and new business models.”

Like computers and the internet drastically changed society starting in the 1980s (Third Industrial Revolution), this Fourth Industrial Revolution, Saldanha says, will be “the melding of the physical, digital, and biological worlds today,” such as how brick-and-mortar stores now have online shopping too.

Digital transformation is about leveraging technology to perform better as a business. The main benefits of digital transformation include enhanced efficiency, increased agility, improved customer experiences, and new opportunities for growth and innovation. It’s not about the latest shiny object or doing enough to survive—digital transformation is crucial to helping companies thrive.

So what’s in store for 2022? Let’s dive in.

The 6 Digital Transformation Trends to Watch in 2022

1. Employers will become more intentional about technologies that connect remote and in-person experiences.

From 2020 to 2021, digital transformation efforts focused on the transition to working from home, but in 2022, it’s all about optimizing hybrid work—striking the right balance between working remotely and collaborating in-person.

How can tech help? Take the Meeting Owl, for example. It’s a smart device that sits in an office conference room and projects 360-degree audio and video to remote meeting attendees. In an effort to mimic in-person collaboration, the Meeting Owl creates an immersive experience, zooming in on whomever is speaking at the moment. And its AI-driven Owl Intelligence System ensures the device gets smarter over time.

Digital transformation in 2022 will continue to focus on blending in-person experiences with remote work benefits.

2. The Great Resignation, coupled with customer fatigue and increased expectations, will force a shift to employee- and customer-centric experiences.

After the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, employees started leaving companies in droves, termed The Great Resignation. In this candidate-driven market, employees have more options and are more selective than ever.

On the flip side, customers have higher expectations than ever, too. According to a 2021 Forrester report, 42% of customer service decision-makers think that customers expect faster customer service. 

So how can you keep employees and customers happy? Companies that wish to thrive in this new era will need to leverage technology to deliver a better employee and customer experience—a tall order, admittedly.

But as with most things, the right technology can help. Employee experience software provides the data and resources to track and improve company culture and employee sentiment. And customer experience software can consistently measure and track CSAT and NPS scores, provide AI insights, and conduct surveys to ensure you’re meeting (or exceeding) customer expectations.

In 2022, more than ever before, companies will be forced to think less of their bottom line and more of the people they serve. Interestingly enough, though, by focusing on the latter, the former will improve, too.

3. Becoming more agile and flexible will be top of mind for businesses preparing for the next crisis.

The constant and often abrupt change forced by the pandemic made one thing clear: Companies that want to thrive must be able to adapt quickly. In 2022, after two years of reacting to sudden changes, organizations will finally have the breathing room to step back, evaluate their processes and technology, and find ways to become more agile, so the next crisis doesn’t catch them off guard.

According to Adobe’s 2022 Digital Trends report:

“While 92% of senior executives agree that ‘our ability to be agile will determine our success as a marketing organization,’ only 31% of practitioners rate their organization’s agility in responding to opportunities and disruptions that may arise 8 or higher out of 10.”

The Adobe report recommends focusing on training and development by looking at existing stacks and lessening the burden on employees by using automation capabilities, as well as investing in learning and development programs to improve workers’ digital skills. 

Additionally, the following technology will make agility and flexibility possible:

• Cloud computing: By breaking free from on-premise servers, companies are able to be more flexible and save money. 
• Documentation: Documenting processes makes it possible to adapt quickly and modify processes as situations change. Without documentation, teams are left scrambling to figure things out last-minute. Knowledge management software will be a key focus for many businesses in 2022.
• Workflow management: Software, such as Airtable, Hive, and ClickUp, create an online space where your documentation can live. It also enables your organization to have a centralized repository where any employee anywhere can easily check on projects, helping your team run smoothly.

4. Employees will demand more AI-powered tools.

At this point, AI itself is nothing new in the grand scheme of the relatively fast technological cycle. But new applications of AI are still on the upswing. Gartner predicts that in 2022, AI software revenue will reach $62.5 billion—up 21.3% from 2021. In 2022, Gartner says companies will focus more on AI maturity and invest more in finding ways to use AI for knowledge management and to enhance the new digital workplace. 

On using AI to enhance knowledge management

Knowledge management is one way you can ensure a single source of truth exists in your workplace, streamlining information and ensuring everyone knows where to find documentation. AI-enabled knowledge management software, like Lucy.ai, makes it easier to aggregate information into a single repository–using Natural Language Processing to understand the context of an employee’s search and therefore helping them find the most relevant information fast.

On using AI to enhance the digital workplace

Your team wants more AI. According to February 2021 data from SnapLogic, 81% of employees say AI boosts their work performance, and 68% want their company to implement more AI-based tools.

Krisp uses deep neural networks (a subfield of artificial intelligence) to learn the difference between your voice and unwanted background noise. The result? Every virtual meeting you attend will have crystal clear audio—improving call quality, productivity, and the employee experience. 

5. Marketing organizations will take advantage of this last chance to prepare for a cookieless future.

Google announced that it will begin phasing out third-party cookies—which track online behavior—in Chrome beginning in mid-2023, making 2022 the final year for marketers and advertisers everywhere to figure out how to stay afloat. With third-party cookies, companies are able to serve more relevant ads; it’s why you look at a pair of shoes on one website and then keep seeing ads for those same shoes everywhere else you visit on the web.

But with consumers becoming increasingly concerned about privacy, third-party cookies are getting the boot. So organizations that rely on advertising will need to find new ways to intelligently serve ads, while still protecting user privacy.

HubSpot reported data from GetApp, which found that 41% of marketers think their biggest challenge in a post-cookie world will be “their inability to track the right data.” And 23% intend to shift their budget to email marketing software to get around Google’s changes. Email marketing provides a way for users to opt in to certain interests, allowing marketers to segment based on user-provided (versus third-party) data.

What will replace third-party cookies? One possibility is Google’s Privacy Sandbox, which is still in development. According to Google, “The Privacy Sandbox initiative aims to create technologies that both protect people’s privacy online and give companies and developers tools to build thriving digital businesses.” It remains to be seen how these technologies work and whether they’ll provide advertisers with the same level of revenue.

6. Companies will invest in upskilling their workforce on cloud computing.

As entire workforces went remote, cloud adoption hastened early in the pandemic. McKinsey found that 65% of organizations increased their cloud budgets because of the Covid crisis. But now, companies are investing in helping employees gain new skills and creating expert technologists to fully take advantage of the cloud. 

According to Pluralsight’s 2022 Tech Forecast, cloud maturity (not adoption) will be the focus this year. Pluralsight, which provides expert-led technology courses, reports an increase in viewership on cloud-related courses, indicating that many businesses are upskilling their employees to better understand this complex field. In fact, 2021’s most popular course from A Cloud Guru (a company Pluralsight owns) was Intro to Cloud Computing. 

Cloud maturity will mean investing in skills assessments and courses to help your company’s IT team and technologists optimize your cloud infrastructure.

Where Will Digital Transformation Trends Take You in 2022?

Use these digital transformation trends as a guide–and not a hard-and-fast rule. Remember, trends often come and go, but they speak to the overall needs that businesses are trying to fill as we come out of the pandemic. 

Skim through this list once more and see which tools you can test with a free trial. Many software companies offer free subscriptions or trials, so you can see if it works well for your company before committing. 

An easy place to start? The Krisp noise-cancellation app grants you 60 minutes of noise-free meeting bliss every week—at no cost to you. Try Krisp here.

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Knowing the digital transformation challenges that you may face on your journey can help you prepare for obstacles and create a plan to overcome them. Equipped with this kind of knowledge, you’ll increase the chances of your company’s success. So if you’re curious about why digital transformation fails, read on.

7 Digital Transformation Challenges Every Company Needs to Be Prepared for

Neglecting to reskill or upskill employees

Once an organization has implemented a major technological change, the challenge becomes maintaining and optimizing it. This requires reskilling or upskilling your employees. Take cloud computing, for example. For the 2021 Open Source Jobs Report, cloud and container technologies came out on top as the hottest skillset of the year, with 46% of hiring managers and developers selecting it. It surpassed Linux development and administration for the first time since the Jobs Report began. 

Why the sudden spike in cloud technology skills? Because there’s been a recent surge in cloud adoption, companies now need technologists who can optimize that infrastructure. Cloud Academy surveyed 100 technology leaders between April and May 2021, and 95% said they plan to invest more in the cloud this year compared to the last, and 81% will be investing more in developing tech skills. Upskilling existing employees is the most commonly chosen resource, with 75% of IT leaders saying it will be key to achieving their tech goals this year.

Teaching employees new skills is an investment, but the payoff can be worth it. According to the 2020 Future of Jobs report, 66% of employers expect an ROI on upskilling and reskilling within one year. It’s also worth looking into free online education. Amazon, for example, offers free online courses, pledging to train 29 million people on cloud computing by 2025.

Comparatively, upskilling or reskilling is less expensive than hiring. But that’s not to say that new hires don’t have an important role to play in a company’s digital transformation, as we’ll see in the next section.

Failing to hire top talent

In a McKinsey survey, about 80% of tech leaders reported “finding the right talent is the greatest challenge they face in their transformations.” And 51% of IT leaders from the Cloud Academy survey said they’ll need to hire new talent to achieve their tech goals.

In the age of The Great Resignation, hiring top talent becomes even more of a challenge than before. Candidates now have more options than ever and are in high demand, which means they have the luxury of being selective. Companies would do well to rethink their employer branding and create a strategy for attracting and hiring top technologists that will help lead them to a successful digital transformation.

Data security concerns

With new technology comes new data security concerns, especially when plans are rushed. One mistake some companies make is that they adopt a new tech tool first and then worry about cybersecurity later—often after a breach has happened. 

CyberGRX and Ponemon surveyed 883 IT security professionals and C-suite executives and found that 82% believe their organizations had at least one data breach because of digital transformation.  

What’s driving the vulnerabilities? 

• Haste. The IT professionals surveyed by Ponemon think it’s the rush to produce apps and the increased use of Shadow IT.
• Cloud migration. Meanwhile, the C-Suite executives in the Ponemon survey think it’s the increased cloud migration that’s led to data breaches. It’s no coincidence that as cloud adoption increases, so too do data security concerns. Cloud computing has long been criticized for its higher cybersecurity risks compared to on-premise options.
• Remote work. Working from home (or anywhere except for the office) has many advantages, but it also draws more security risks. For one, company-issued equipment taken off-premises can be more vulnerable. Also, it’s tougher to ensure a secure internet connection at each employee’s home (or coffee shop, coworking space, etc.). There tends to be less oversight overall, lending itself to more potential vulnerabilities. 

Here’s a bonus tip: For employees working remotely, have them install the Krisp noise-cancellation app. With Krisp, they can ensure that all of their online meetings are free of distracting sounds and maintain personal privacy wherever they’re working from. On top of that, all audio is processed and stored on the individual’s device, not in the cloud, so you can ensure privacy.

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Lack of clearly defined goals and a digital strategy

It happens time and again: Your company adopts the latest technology—a new applicant tracking system (ATS) or promising cloud platform—but once the initial excitement wanes, it doesn’t get fully integrated into your workflows, hardly anyone uses it (or knows how to), and ultimately, it fails to transform your business in the way you’d hoped.

One of the main reasons why digital transformation fails is that the organization lacks clearly defined goals (the outcomes the transformation will bring) and a detailed digital strategy (the roadmap to get to those outcomes). Without both of these, no amount of money invested in tech tools can save an organization. At best, there will be only minimal adoption. And at worst, the tools will gather dust, and the money will have been wasted.

Lack of employee buy-in

Along your journey to leveraging technology to improve business processes, you might meet pushback from leadership and employees. Lack of employee buy-in can kill a digital transformation.

What can you do to garner excitement and support for your digital strategy?

• Show how it makes their jobs easier. When a new tool is thrust upon the workforce without much explanation of the value it could add, it ends up feeling like a burden. Instead, spend time preparing your employees by showing them how this new technology will lighten their workload and make processes more efficient.

• Show how it helps the business. Additionally, communicate how the technology ties into your business mission and values.

• Train them on how to use the new tech tools. Most importantly, once you begin integrating the tech tool, be sure to provide sufficient training to your employees to ensure wholehearted adoption.

• Listen to their feedback. And lastly, once you’ve trained your employees on the technology, keep surveying them regularly to get their feedback. Nothing is set in stone. If you find that the tool isn’t serving its purpose, it’s worth listening to your employees on how you can make tweaks so that your digital transformation is a success. This is why an employee feedback tool is necessary.

Misaligned leadership

Related to a lack of employee buy-in is misaligned leadership. When employees see that their leadership is scattered when it comes to the digital transformation efforts, they’ll likely lose faith in the whole idea altogether. Another reason why digital transformations fail is that the leadership team hasn’t gotten on the same page about strategy and goals. 

As Rodney Zemmel, global leader of McKinsey Digital, says on “The McKinsey Podcast”: “A common failure mode … is a chief executive saying, ‘We’re going to go digital,’ and then making public statements about digital strategy. Then every person on their leadership team creates their own digital road map. What you end up with, six months or a year later, are many digital pilot projects across the organization.”

Instead, Zemmel says, the CEO should work on getting the entire leadership team to communicate with each other and ensure they have the same priorities. “And then focus on having a talent and capability road map that is as detailed as their technology road map,” he says. 

Moving too slowly/being too rigid

Agile methodology is highly praised and commonly used in engineering teams worldwide. But the agile mindset is something that every organization undergoing digital transformation would benefit from adopting.Technology changes fast, as does the market. Your organization might have clearly defined goals, a solid digital strategy, and the resources to carry it out—but if you move too slowly and fail to adapt to changes, your digital transformation efforts will wither on the vine.

McKinsey research found that companies that moved the fastest on digital had nearly twice the revenue growth as those that played it safe “with average reactions to digital competition.”

The McKinsey authors give the example of Tesla, stating that in 2014, competitors could have bought the electric vehicle maker for $4 billion. But because they didn’t, by 2018, competing automakers had spent more than $20 billion on sensor technologies and research and development just trying to keep up with Tesla. 

Working on the culture and processes within your organization that can help it become more flexible and nimble will better prepare you for digital transformation success.

Is Your Organization Prepared to Overcome These Common Digital Transformation Challenges?

Now that you know why digital transformation fails for some companies, you’re better prepared to meet with your technologists and leadership team to create a plan for addressing these potential challenges. It is this kind of knowledge and preparation that will hopefully push you into the 30% that succeed at digital transformation.

The post Why Do Digital Transformations Fail? 7 Common Challenges to Tackle appeared first on Krisp.

What are the steps to digital transformation that you just can’t skip over? Let’s find out below.

9 Steps to Digital Transformation Every Business Would Benefit From

1. Understand what digital transformation really means

You don’t want to build a strategy atop a poorly defined or misunderstood idea of digital transformation. It can be a buzzword that loses meaning the more it’s thrown around, so let’s establish a clear definition before we dive into the next steps.

Here’s an excellent definition of digital transformation from Yokogawa: “the novel use of digital technology to accelerate business strategy. It is about the application of digital technologies to empower people, optimize processes, and automate systems in the organization to radically reorient its business performance.”

Do not confuse digital transformation with the act of digitalization. To understand the difference, let’s look at Adobe’s major transformation from selling one-time software licenses to creating the Creative Cloud and selling monthly subscriptions to its software. The digitalization part was its use of cloud technology. The digital transformation occurred when the company leveraged the cloud to completely change its business model and boost its profits.

So as you undertake the steps to digital transformation, keep in mind that it’s so much more than installing new software or automating a single process.

2. Assess

Once you have a firm grasp of what digital transformation is, it’s time to take stock of your current situation. It’s a good idea to reference any business plans you have, as this can be a way to measure whether you’re meeting those goals and whether you’ve outgrown those plans.

This is a fantastic time to begin listening sessions or focus groups with your customers, employees, and leadership team to gain a holistic view of the organization.

Questions to ask:

1. In what situations do we feel under-resourced? 
2. In what situations do we thrive?
3. What achievements are we proud of, and what did we learn from those achievements?
4. When have we failed, and what did we learn from those failures?
5. Do we currently have any digital strategy in place?
6. How can technology improve our processes, productivity, and performance? 
7. What are our current success metrics? Note things like revenue, profit, year-over-year growth, sales, etc.

Be sure to document these answers and store them in a centralized place. Consider measuring and tracking your metrics in a KPI or business metrics software. You’ll want to revisit this data throughout your digital transformation journey.

3. Define the goals and a vision

Goals are objectives with measurable outcomes. A vision is an overall view of what your world will look like should your organization achieve digital transformation. Both are crucial to tracking your progress and staying motivated throughout the journey.

To define your goals, revisit the answers you uncovered in the previous step. You can also allow each team to brainstorm their own departmental goals they’d like to add. Eventually, you’ll need to narrow down and solidify the goals you’ll want to make a part of the official digital strategy roadmap. You can institute a voting system or leave it up to your leadership team to make the call.

To come to an agreement on a clear vision, ask your team:

1. When we achieve digital transformation, how will the employee experience look and feel?
2. When we achieve digital transformation, how will the customer experience look and feel?
3. When we achieve digital transformation, how will our business operate in new ways?

4. Create a digital strategy roadmap

Using the goals and vision you landed on in the previous step, build out your digital strategy roadmap. This takes it one step further by detailing:

• Why do we need this digital transformation?
• How will we achieve it? What technologies will we implement? What is the estimated cost?
• When will we achieve it? Create a timeline and assign due dates for goals and tasks.
• Who is responsible for each piece of the strategy? Increase accountability by assigning owners to each task and initiative. Do not underestimate the importance of this.

According to global management consulting firm McKinsey: “Digital transformations are more likely to be exceptionally effective when companies give people clear roles and responsibilities and put an ‘owner’ in charge of each transformation initiative. The chance of superior outcomes also rises when companies hold people accountable for meeting the individual goals they’ve been given.”

If you want an example, here’s a digital transformation roadmap from Jibility.

5. Get buy-in

Without buy-in from employees and leadership, your digital transformation will fall flat. Buy-in means that all the parties involved understand the importance of digital transformation and are invested in its success. 

So how do you get buy-in?

• Listen. The focus groups mentioned earlier are an initial way of earning trust to get that employee buy-in. People want to feel listened to, especially when there is a big change coming. They will have concerns and ideas, and the more you listen to and heed their feedback, the better they will feel about the change.

• Show them the value of digital transformation. It’s tough to garner commitment to change when you haven’t shown the value of that change. Communicate the value of digital transformation in as concrete terms as possible, even with estimates. For example, will adopting this new process save your employees 10 extra hours a month? Will updating your products result in 25% higher profits, which will trickle down to salaries and pay raises? Show employees why it matters, and you’ll earn their commitment faster.

• Reassure them that you’re not out to replace their jobs, but enhance them. Many people are leery of technology because they fear it will replace them. Show your employees how digital transformation is about enhancing their jobs, not replacing them.

• Provide proper training and upskilling. Adopting new technology is only the beginning. Once it’s implemented, employees need to feel empowered to use it. That’s where training and upskilling come in, ensuring that your workforce knows how to leverage these new digital tools.

• Regularly celebrate the small wins. Maintain motivation throughout the long process of digital transformation by celebrating small milestones on a regular basis. This can be at the company all-hands meeting, where you give shoutouts to different departments on the progress they’ve made thus far in your organization’s transformation.

6. Test 

Now that you’ve laid the groundwork for your digital transformation, it’s time to start making changes. Look at this step as a trial phase. You’re simply testing out the different technologies that you’ve outlined in your digital strategy, making small bets before you invest completely in something that may not work. Many software companies offer demos and free trials to let you try out their product before you go all in.

7. Measure

Remember the step where you took stock of your situation? Pull out those metrics so you have a baseline to compare against. Now, take those measurements again. Did productivity increase? Did you see a revenue boost? Is customer satisfaction higher? Which new technologies and processes can you tie to any positive gains you’ve seen?

Here’s a real-life example from SupportZebra: When the contact center underwent a fundamental business change from in-person to work-from-home during the pandemic, there was a huge spike in customer complaints about noise. By installing noise-cancellation software Krisp, SupportZebra achieved a 78% drop in those complaints. The simple addition of this AI-powered noise-cancellation technology allowed them to continue their transformation. And they saw measurable improvements, proving they were on the right track.

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8. Invest

Once you’ve placed small bets on new technology, taken it for a test run, and measured the results—it’s time to go all in. Investing in the most promising technology that has shown results is crucial to digital transformation.

This doesn’t mean you can’t change course later; far from it. As we’ll talk about in the next step, you will need to continuously refine your tools and processes throughout your digital transformation.

9. Iterate

Your success in digital transformation will depend on your ability to iterate, measure, tweak, and iterate—over and over. Being agile in your processes will allow you to move quickly, which will give you a competitive advantage. 

McKinsey found that companies that moved the fastest had revenue growth that was almost twice that of companies that had only average reaction times. Why? According to the article “Why digital strategies fail,” published in McKinsey Quarterly: “First movers and the fastest followers develop a learning advantage. They relentlessly test and learn, launch early prototypes, and refine results in real time—cutting down the development time in some sectors from several months to a few days.”

Which of These Steps to Digital Transformation Will You Take Next?

Using technology to fundamentally change and improve your business takes time, and you won’t always get it right. Be open to exploration and pivoting as needed. 

Your organization is on its own unique journey, so go back over these steps to digital transformation to decide where you land. From there, you and your team can collaborate to figure out how best to approach your digital strategy roadmap.

The post 9 Key Steps to Digital Transformation Strategy That You Cannot Ignore appeared first on Krisp.