Voice conference calls dubbed "a necessary evil" by nearly half of enterprise
Everyone's sick of you talking over them
Nearly half of the UK enterprise is at the end of their tether with conference calls, dubbing remote voice meetings "a necessary evil" or even "the bane of my life" in new research conducted by Computing and Citrix.
The recent whitepaper, entitled Great to see you: the advantages of moving to video conferencinginvestigates how the added visual element of video conferencing could dispel some common problems associated with hearing but not seeing colleagues on a call.
A total of 40 per cent of those questioned described voice conferencing as "a necessary evil", while four per cent went as far as using the "bane of my life" description.
Breaking it down, 60 per cent of respondents cited "people talking over each other" as their top pet peeve on a voice-only conference call, followed by 37 per cent hating call cut-offs due to bad connections at various remote sites.
The very British habit of awkwardly discussing the weather aggravated 31 per cent of people, who said "uncomfortable silences" while waiting for people to join were the main issue.
With 28 per cent of people challenging "people that go on talking because they can't see no-one is interested" and 20 per cent fearing unseen "lurkers" on the call who don't need to introduce themselves, it seems a pattern emerged through the research - there are many reasons people would rather see each other.
A total of 57 per cent of research subjects agreed that being able to put a face to a voice would improve conference calls, while 51 per cent realised that being seen would automatically improve peoples' attention span.
Thirty-six per cent of those questioned said bonuses include knowing when someone is interested (or not) in what you're saying, not to mention the ability to share doucments easier across the group via visual interfaces.