I first started our digital agency back in 2009, when the online meeting space was primarily dominated by two giants: GoToMeeting and WebEx. Every time we’d kickoff a new meeting, there were the same frustrations by the attendees:
“Hey Kevin, can…. can you hear me? What, what about now?
“Yes (insert client name), I can hear you.”
“Hey Kevin - sorry man, I can’t hear anything. I’ll call your cell.”
Said client would call my cell, and complain about how he couldn’t download the necessary software to run a simple meeting. By the time our participants would finally join, the meeting had already started off on the wrong foot. People were frustrated, and we had lost the first 10 minutes of the meeting. With 6 people on the call, we’ve lost an entire hour of productivity.
Most likely, we’ve also lost some amazing deals - all because of the web conferencing platform.
In interest of full disclosure, I met Lawrence (the founder of Horn) through an entirely independent nonprofit project. We started using Horn, and week by week, new features were being released that were revolutionizing how people meet online. Lawrence was leading a change to fix a broken industry, and I simply had to be involved. It was a product that finally fixed a problem that we’ve consistently struggled with. In terms of other products, our company has simply used them all: WebEx, GoToMeeting, Fuze, UberConference, Join.me, AnyMeeting, Google Hangouts, Skype, Zoom, and the list could go on and on.
For the sake of this article, we’ll focus on three formidable solutions - Zoom, Skype and Horn - and why Horn supersedes them all, especially in 4 main areas:
Brand Continuity Ease of Use Quality Moderation Zoom vs. Skype vs. Horn: Brand Continuity Organizations spend big bucks to ensure their brand is consistent. Everything from how they talk about themselves to visual identify must be carefully and strategically aligned. If you’re able to meet on your organization’s website via an embeddable widget, you’re doing several things.
You’re able to cross market other products/ services in a sidebar. You’re keeping them on-brand. You’re keeping them on your site. It’s good for SEO. Skype doesn’t have this and neither does Zoom. It’s a feature that all web conferencing platforms should have, and it’s a hindrance to any company not fully taking advantage of this. From a business owner’s perspective, it’s so important to get quality leads in the door, so having the ability to manage the entire end-to-end experience from the point of lead inception to the initial sales call is imperative. Horn makes this happen.
Organizations spend big bucks to ensure their brand is consistent. Everything from how they talk about themselves to visual identify must be carefully and strategically aligned. If you’re able to meet on your organization’s website via an embeddable widget, you’re doing several things.
Skype doesn’t have this and neither does Zoom. It’s a feature that all web conferencing platforms should have, and it’s a hindrance to any company not fully taking advantage of this. From a business owner’s perspective, it’s so important to get quality leads in the door, so having the ability to manage the entire end-to-end experience from the point of lead inception to the initial sales call is imperative. Horn makes this happen.
We’re all dealing with a loaded technology stack with differing levels of complexity and learning curves. Both presenters and attendees should be able to quickly get started without any downloads, and continue the conference on a zero-learning curve.
Zoom is powerful, but has suffered from feature-bloat throughout the years. You can start a meeting from multiple sources: Google Calendar; from their app; from the Zoom site; and, it can be extremely confusing for someone to keep track of everything they offer. At the end of the day, all I want to do is quickly setup a meeting and have it happen mellifluously and smoothly.
With Horn, no downloads are necessary; saving time, resources, and therefore, money.
Skype requires a download, and with it’s ever-changing navigation, people are confused on what does what.
Easy. Simple. No fuss. That’s all anyone wants.
Just last week, we were on a web conference using our client’s conferencing platform (which will remain nameless).
It was literally a giant echo-chamber of terrible.
There was no way to understand which user was providing the audio feedback. We went through the exercise of each people muting their audio to determine the culprit, and precious meeting minutes were lost and people were frustrated.
So we ended up switching to Skype, and similar issues ensued. With Horn, the audio quality is impeccable. Take it for a test drive yourself, and see. (link to demo).
In some large meetings such as earnings release calls (link to article), poor audio quality could end up in next day’s headlines. Investing in top-notch quality is an absolute must.
In the above scenario that was generated by poor audio quality, it would have been invaluable to know who the ‘bad audio bandit’ was so we could mute them. This brings us to moderation. How can we mute an attendee if their audio is diminishing the overall quality of the meeting? How can we quickly assign certain privileges such as screen sharing or ‘presenter roles’ on the fly and on a whim?
While Skype’s moderation tools are lacking, Zoom’s tools are frankly quite powerful. However, if they aren’t easy and/ or accessible to the user, then it’s a bit for naught. Horn makes it intuitive and easy to use their most powerful functions.
Communication is everything. You can be the best service or have the most groundbreaking product, and communicating that is the difference between an organizational success (or unfortunately, failure).
Experiencing > Explaining, so go forth, and give Horn a whirl. (link to demo)
