These days, many of us are either working remotely or following a hybrid work model. The number of online meetings has soared due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and a Gartner study predicts that only around 25% of business meetings will take place face-to-face by 2024. The rest will entirely rely on virtual meetings.
The need for an efficient collaboration tool
With the rise of virtual meetings, companies have adopted online meeting tools like never before. Many organizations once used different tools for project management, online meetings, and chat instead of deploying a unified platform. Now that businesses are looking for software that includes multiple functions, product developers are enhancing their products so that they can provide the best solutions.
Zoho Cliq, for example, is a complete collaboration tool that facilitates everything from sending chat messages and meeting with teammates to automating workflows. Cliq 3.0 is the latest version of the app, and it comes with new features that enhance the overall meeting experience.
Here are the features that aid users in conducting efficient virtual meetings in Zoho Cliq:
1. The scalability factor
The tool you use must be effective for all meeting types, be it a one-to-one meeting, a company-wide announcement, or a major virtual event.
In Zoho Cliq, you can get together and hold meaningful discussions with up to 1,000 participants.
2. Delegate control by co-hosting
If you're hosting a large-scale meeting, you'll likely be most focused on delivering information rather than managing the meeting participants. Even for small meetings, there are times when you'll want to delegate authority to your teammates.
As the host of any Cliq meeting, you can assign teammates as co-hosts. You can make these assignments when scheduling or even in the middle of a meeting.
3. Whiteboard for visual team collaboration
Say you're running a meeting for a major project discussion, and you're trying to explain the project workflow to participants. With the live, collaborative whiteboard in Zoho Cliq, you can instantly draw a project workflow, plan your strategies, and annotate screenshots. You can also add editors to a live whiteboard and draw with other participants.
4. Connect asynchronously with globally-distributed teams
Geographically-distributed teams are all working on different schedules, and finding a meeting time that works for everyone can be difficult.
With Zoho Cliq, you can easily record and share your meetings to keep everyone in the loop. Recordings can also be used to freshen up your memory. You can revisit them at any time, and they reduce the effort put into manually taking down minutes.
5. Add external guests to your meetings
There will be instances where you'll need to host online meetings with participants from outside your organization, like partners, vendors, and customers.
Zoho Cliq facilitates not only internal collaboration but external as well. You can easily add guest participants to any meeting by sending them an invite link.
6. Spice up your meetings with virtual backgrounds and filters
One concern many of us share about attending virtual meetings is a cluttered background. Want to hide a pile of clothes or simply have a cool background for your video calls? It's all possible with Zoho Cliq's virtual backgrounds. You can also use video filters to make your meetings more dynamic.
7. Engage with GIFs, gestures, and polls
Say you want to get the opinion of all your meeting participants. With Zoho Cliq, you can instantly start a poll during an ongoing meeting and collect live data.
Plus, you can infuse more fun into your meetings with GIFs and gestures. This allows you to elevate engagement during meetings as well. For example, users can share laughing gifs and thumbs-up gestures to quickly express their sentiments.
8. Grid view and stage view
Zoho Cliq allows you to toggle between two different views when engaged in a meeting: grid view and stage view.
If you'd like to see all the participants in a meeting, then the grid view is a suitable option.
If you want to mimic a seminar setup with the speakers on stage and participants on the lower deck, the stage view suits you best.
A comprehensive meeting experience
With virtual meetings comprising a major portion of our collaboration efforts nowadays, it's essential to adopt software with features that will help you run productive and efficient meetings. A unified platform like Zoho Cliq provides users with robust virtual meeting software, along with project management tools and chat functions. This eliminates the need to switch between different apps for work and helps reduce costs incurred through purchasing multiple applications.
Looking to learn more about how Zoho Cliq can help you run efficient virtual meetings? Sign up for a demo to explore Cliq meetings and other features, and share your feedback with us in the comments.
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