Why Video Calling is the Best way to Build Trust in the Virtual Workplace

September 15th, 2017 by ali No comments »

In descending order, in-person contact, video calling, audio calling and text messaging/emails are the most effective means of communication for building trust according to a research of Michigan University

When the going gets tough, talking face-to-face with your opponentis the only way to get out of it in most situations. This shows the power and importance of in-person contacts in building trust among people. Now, there is scientific evidence that back up the validity of the expression “we’d better talk in private”: according to a research of the University of Michigan (http://www.business2community.com/communications/video-conferencing-formation-workplace-trust-01778381#Kt51pdUzWH4cJZL3.97) that purposely targets virtual workplaces,  face-to-face meetings are the most effective way to build trust among people and virtual meetings the next.

This is not surprising at all, as video conferences simply recreate the experience of a face-to-face meeting across distance. The strong development of this technology in the last years plays a great role, as today video conferencing ensures their users high quality video sessions that are able to perfectly replicate the experience of a meeting in the reality. To give an example, we mention the suite of video conferencing servers TurboMeeting of R-HUB (http://www.rhubcom.com) that allows its users even to cooperate in real time with very low frame delay (some few seconds) and get an enhanced experience of telepresence. Even the smallest non-verbal message is preserved through the usage of these light and compact devices that can be comfortably placed on a shelf of your bookcase as little as they are and that are sold at a price that does not go over a thousand of dollars.

A strong point of video conferencing is that all the initiatives and actions that are recommended by experts to build trust (like recognizing excellences, for example, or task delegation) can be easily included in any working relation that is managed through video conferencing. In other words, video conferencing allows managers to transpose and utilize the same tricks and techniques they learnt in traditional workplaces in an utter natural way, without the need of more or less long periods of retraining to get used to a new technology.

The fact that video conferencing is a technology that assures managers a smooth transition from the traditional workplaces to the new digital workplaces is certainly one of its key-factor of success. According to Credence Research, the growth of video conferencing in workplaces is explosive, with an expected rate of increase per year of + 20% in the next few years: in other word, it is a real technological revolution.

In conclusion, video conferencing is a very effective way to build trust thanks to its capability to perfectly render the experience of a real in-person contact and the possibility to transpose all the recommended actions to build trust into the virtual workplaces. However, it works if we use video conferencing tools that are able to ensure superb HD quality and seamless image streaming like TurboMeeting.

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Six Good Reasons why you should implement Remote Support for Retail Clients

September 12th, 2017 by ali No comments »

In a globalized economy, enabling remote support for retail clients is a must, as your customers could live three continents away from the headquarters of your organization. Remote support is the only way to effectively help your client, without spending an arm and a leg in building up a net of local agents

Never utilized Amazon? One of the services of this popular platform that customers appreciate most is precisely its fast and efficient remote support. There is no issue that Amazon remote support cannot address often in a couple of days only, which explains the piles of enthusiastic comments left by consumers. The fact that Amazon customer service is one of the main key-factors of success of this multinational on the global market is well known by business experts, at the point that Amazon is often flagged as  a great example of success story for almost every retailers  that aims to work globally.

R-HUB`s TurboMeeting (http://www.rhubcom.com) allows your organization to implement an efficient and cost-effective remote support, no matter whether you have to support a CMR or a digital display. Thanks to TurboMeeting, your business will then grow fast for at least six good reasons. Let’s see them.

Time Saving

Remote support decreases drastically the time of response, as your technicians can utilize directly the pcs of your customers to solve problems. To understand the importance of the speed of service, consider that a good 78 percent of customers have left a transactions as the support service provided was too poor.

Profit Increase

Saving time plus increasing customer satisfaction, totals earning more profits, as a result of a higher sales volume. This equation sounds elementary, doesn’t it? It is less evident that your organization can drive more resources to revenue producing tasks that way, so that your revenues are further fed.

Fewer Hassles

Through remote support and remote access, technicians can solve many problems directly on your customer’s PC`s. This eliminates a lot of painful steps like spending hours on the phone to understand problems that could be then addressed and solved  in a few minutes. TurboMeeting allows remote support also for unattended computers. In other words, in some few cases your technicians could be able to solve the problem even before your customer get aware of it.

A Larger Market

Remote support is – obviously – the only way to go global without building up a complicated and expensive organization of local agents and retailers that provides your customer with customer help and support. It is also the only way to get out of your local market and grow fast in terms of sales volume, geographical extension and number of customers.

 Prevention Enabled

Thanks to R-HUB remote access servers, your technicians can routinely check your customers’ PC`s and IT infrastructures, in order to detect some potential issues.  You can thus implement a consistent and effective active monitoring as a part of a more general strategy of prevention of potential issues.

Security First

The utilization of an on-premise server based technology by R-HUB assures your organization and your clients the highest level of data protection and security with TurboMeeting, which has been always regarded as the most sensitive and difficult to tackle aspect of any e-commerce.

In conclusion, implementing a good remote support service will speed up time, make your business grow without geographical limits and help you to save money, time and stress, with great advantage for you and your customers.

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How to make you Virtual Meetings Effective and Efficient since the stage of Preparation

September 8th, 2017 by ali No comments »

Clarity, sense of purpose and responsibility are the three key-factors of success of any conference call that must be carefully taken care of during the preparation of any virtual and real meeting

Virtual meetings do not differ so much from real meetings on many regards. In both cases, it is important to avoid turning your meetings into a boring, sneezy and pointless experience for participants.

It is a bit like giving a show: if you are going to host a virtual meeting, you should then do your best to be a good actor and provide the best possible experience for your guests. What it takes is putting a lot of care on the preparation and the follow-up, as the after and before are the two most delicate stages of any meetings.

Luckily, there are several good practices that can help hosts in managing their meetings.  The three golden rules for the stage of preparation are clarity, sense of purpose and responsibility. Let’s examine them in further details.

  • Clarity. The first step is always to set the goals of your virtual meeting in advance. A lack of clear, sound goals is immediately mirrored in confusion and time-wasting in any virtual or real meeting. Therefore, spend some time in laying down the reasons why you are calling participants and arrange a clear agenda.The goals to achieve during your meeting must be articulated in a set of multiple, distinct points, so that to be more easily understandable and simpler to commit to memory. You must get your agenda across the participants at least 24 hours before. The participants will have all the time to prepare themselves for the meeting that way.
  • Purposeful preparation. It’s up to you define your purposes. If you have only a vague, general idea of the reasons why you are going to call a meeting, it is highly probable that the meeting will run without a precise direction. On the other hand, being too much detailed is a mistake as well, since also a diversion could lead to surprising results in some cases. In other word, it is necessary to be flexible. The right strategy is to funnel any contribution into the greater purpose of the team or the project.
  • Appoint a responsible person. Choose a good manager for your virtual meetings. Any meeting needs a chairman that gives the permission to each individual participant that wishes to speak and is able to moderate the discussion. Steve Jobs also use to give the chairman the responsibility of the achievement of the goals set for the meeting. In my experience, his trick works well.

In conclusion, the mantras for a successful virtual meeting are clarity, sense of purpose and appointing a responsible for the achievement of the goals. A good preparation of a meeting will bring good results in terms of goal achievement and participants’ best satisfaction.

Are you interested on virtual meetings and the techniques to manage them effectively and efficiently? You are going to find further resources on R-HUB`s blog (http://www.rhubcom.com)

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Is it Better to place a Conference Call or a Video Call?

September 5th, 2017 by ali No comments »

The advantages and disadvantages of the two most popular methods of virtual conferencing in business

Better to have an audio conference or a video conference with your team? You would have asked yourself this question hundreds of times and especially today when every good virtual conferencing tool (for example, TurboMeeting of R-HUB, http://www.rhubcom.com) gives you the option to choose between these two means of communication. Although the usage of video conferencing is decisively on the increase, the screen has not yet outplaced the more traditional audio conferences. Therefore, the answer depends on the practical situation you are. Let’s then have a quick look at the pros and cons of these two technologies in order to choose the one that suits our needs better.

  1. Conference calls are cheaper and easier to use and set up.

Conference calls are cheaper and easier to set up than video calls. This is the reason why they are preferred for quick communication and when it is not necessary to show documents, slides, or other visual materials. Another strong point of calls is that users do not need any computer, as a simple mobile or smartphone is enough to access. In other words, conference calls are destined to stay, despite the success of web conferencing. The fact that a good 75% of organization has adopted this mean of communication confirms our assumption (source: http://techcrunchies.com/conference-calls-statistics/).

The common issue with conference calls is voice crispness. On Skype, how many times have you had to withdraw on a textual chat because at a certain point you barely understood what the other speaker was saying?

  1. Video conferences are more engaging.

Nobody would think to give a webinar through a trivial phone conference call. There are occasions, like webinars, lectures, product presentations, administrator board meetings, when telepresence, visual and non-verbal communication become crucial.  Today, products like R-HUB`s TurboMeeting allow users to enjoy an experience very close to a real meeting during a video conference, plus the possibility to utilize tools like polling, document and desktop sharing. TurboMeeting solves also the problem of the greater difficulty of setting up video conferences, as it makes the operation very similar to audio conferences.

The common issues with video conferences are that they are more expensive and less comfortable to configure. However, these problems have been partially addressed by the new generation of video conferencing solutions, as the example of R-HUB`s TurboMeeting well proves.

In conclusion, ordinary audio conferences are great for quick and ordinary daily communication, when there is no need to show visual materials. Video conferences are decisively more suitable for webinars and distant learning, product presentations, tele-selling, and, in general, any occasion when it is necessary to show visual materials or to recreate an environment as close as possible to a real meeting.

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The Secret to be a Successful Remote Salesman

September 4th, 2017 by ali No comments »

9 tips from best marketing experts on how to sell remotely and successfully.

Selling remotely presents some additional challenges to traditional sales.  There is no supporting team and the potential distractions are higher, just to mention some few of the most obvious issues. However, marketing experts have worked out some best practices that can be surely helpful for distant salesmen to reach the aggressive goals that digital firms request today.

1 – Understand the importance of personal communication tools. According to Mark Cox, managing partner at In the Funnel, video chat and phone chats are crucial in a world where communication is often reduced to a mere exchange of emails and written messages without any personal touch. Video conferencing instruments like R-HUB`s HD video conferencing servers (http://www.rhubcom.com) servers are ideal to perform this task, as they offer you a safe and reliable tool to place interactive and engaging HD video conference calls.

2- Motivation is all. Kendra Lee, author of the Sales Magnet, explains that the only real way to get results in sales is real motivation.  Control cannot replace passion in any job, including distant selling.

3 – Start with the most difficult tasks. Shari Levitin,  professional speaker, advice to start with the most difficult tasks at morning like strategic planning and meetings, as our decision making ability peaks at dawn to slowly decrease later during the day.

4 – Discipline, discipline! Barbara Giamanco, Social selling advisor at Social Centered Selling LLC, worries us that working from home relies on self-discipline much more than working in an office. So, beware of distractions: being no boss around, it is up to you to check yourself.

5 – Create a routine. According to Sarah Duffy, talent specialist at Open View Venture Partners, the lack of an office can create a scattered workday. So, it is important to create a routine, like to set a time to start and stop or to have a break.

6- Focus on results. The ghost writer and speaker Jeff Haden stresses the importance of results for those working online. Presence is not important at all, as there is no office or boss that checks us.

7 – Make up for the loss of social interactions. Working from home means losing most social interactions and the connected stimuli. Therefore, it is important to find alternative ways to meet people and be stimulated. Matt Bennetti, Senior Director of Corporate Development at Salesforce, suggests that remote workers should join enterprise social network like Chatter.

8 – Be aware, results weigh much more online than in a traditional office. Liz Hall, VP of people at Trello, observes that while office workers can get away with just being visible, remote workers cannot. Remote workers have only their results as a way to show their skills.

9 – Design your own schedule. This is the great advantage of working home, after all. Lauren Maffeo, Content Editor at GetApp.com, suggest that you should exploit this opportunity. No matter whether you are a night owl, or a guy who gets up early. Working remotely means that you are the owner of your time. Exploit this unique freedom.

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