CONFERENCE SYSTEM 

Video conferencing can enable key team members to participate in meetings when it might otherwise make no sense. Kerry Holling is the chief information and digital officer (CIDO) of Western Sydney University (WSU). Spread across seven campuses, the university is not only quite large—44,000 students—but also geographically dispersed, featuring seven campuses.

So, a key challenge, says Holling, “is holding a meeting—because there’s always one or more people [needing] to travel—and in Western Sydney, traffic can be diabolical.” But in a recent instance, “we had a person from the medical school who we needed for just five minutes.” Driving an hour each way for five minutes “wouldn’t make much sense,” says Holling. But by video conference, “it was like being in the same room.”

Those intimately familiar with the inferior temporal, superior parietal and orbitofrontal cortexes, as well as various other regions of the brain, assure us that humans process visual information far faster and more capably than text or audio.

For example, writing for Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,1 researchers Cohen, Horowitz and Wolf discuss experiments relating to the ability to recall objects, numerals and other pieces of information based on sound versus vision. In their conclusion, the authors write: “It is clear from these results that auditory recognition memory performance is markedly inferior to visual recognition memory.”

Research from the University of Iowa puts things even more simply and succinctly. A study by James Bigelow and Amy Poremba is titled: “Achilles’ Ear? Inferior Human Short-Term and Recognition Memory in the Auditory Modality.” Quoted in the February 26, 2014 issue of Science Daily, Bigelow summarizes the research by saying: “As it turns out, there is merit to the Chinese proverb ‘I hear, and I forget; I see, and I remember.”

Note our own research as well. Forbes Insights conducted a July 2017 global survey of over 300 executives (sponsored by video conferencing provider, Zoom). This research shows that 62% of executives agree that relative to audioconferencing, video conferencing significantly improves the quality of communication, a figure that rises to 73% among high-growth companies. In addition, 50% of those surveyed believe video conferencing also improves the degree of understanding.

Face-to-face interaction “is generally most effective,” says Tom Keiser, CIO of customer relationship software-focused Zendesk. And using today’s state-of-the-art, cloud-delivered video conferencing, explains Keiser, “it’s the closest thing to working together in person.”

Keiser is by no means alone in this regard. In developing software solutions for its healthcare customers, Magellan Health embraces agile development. As Koushik explains, this often requires “co-location,” where internal team members work at client sites. With video conferencing, “there’s never a sense of distance,” says Koushik.

At Zendesk, Keiser explains, “our meetings tend to consist of not only internal members, but often partners and/or customers. As CIO/CTO, I’m responsible for security, operations, data centers—a lot of key areas that matter to customers.”

Certainly, “in sales, face-to-face is important in the beginning [of a relationship],” says Keiser. And once a client is on board, the goal [becomes] less “getting to know you” and more a matter of “getting things done.” Here, says Keiser, video conferencing becomes a powerful and efficient tool.

With video conferencing, “it’s easy to just put together a call and get face-to-face, making sure customers get their questions and issues addressed.” Video, says Keiser, “personalizes things: They get to know me; I get to know them.” Overall, “that drives better communication, creates trust and builds stronger relationships.”