Entering the golden age of AI in business communications
With the emergence of AI as the most transformative technology of this era, leaders are embracing AI and its metamorphic impacts on business.
AI can help businesses reduce costs, foster creativity, securely enhance productivity, and evolve skill sets for people who use it. A recent study by Icertis found that 80% of C-suite executives expect generative AI to impact their bottom line within the next five years. Businesses are already using AI for creativity, AI in marketing, AI for fulfillment and manufacturing, and AI for customer service, and this trend will continue.
Getting started with AI for meetings
Business leaders can face change management challenges when introducing the idea of using AI at work. An effective way to begin creating a culture of AI adoption is by using AI tools for in-person and online meetings.
No one wants to be stuck in a meeting, especially if it’s ineffectively planned, facilitated, or worse—unnecessary.
Meetings powered by AI tools help people use their time and resources more efficiently, fueling productivity. AI meeting tools take on routine and time-consuming tasks, giving people more space to collaborate, innovate, and positively affect outcomes.
Before diving into the benefits of how AI technology can make large and small business meetings more effective, let’s look at how they work.
How to use AI for meetings
AI technologies for business meetings can help improve collaboration and communication in several ways, delivering measurable advantages for people and organizations. The primary function of AI meeting tools is the intelligent automation of routine tasks such as:
- Scheduling and rescheduling meetings based on the calendar availability of participants
- Sending notifications, reminders, and follow-up communication.
- Using AI for meeting minutes.
- Accessing business data.
- Providing captions and translations in real time.
- Generating a transcription.
- Creating action items.
- Assigning and tracking tasks.
- Uncovering relevant insights.
- Identifying improvements.
- Increasing security.
Unlocking the benefits of AI in meetings
Meetings can be a well of inspiration, creativity, and contribution—but sometimes they can feel like drudgery. Teams can work more efficiently using AI to automate tasks, keep an accurate, secure record and summary of the discussion, provide insights and improvement suggestions, and assign and track action steps.
Leaders can facilitate more effective meetings using AI technology. AI meeting tools can elevate the meeting experience for people in tangible ways by taking on these tasks:
Handle scheduling and agendas, take notes, and transcribe meeting details:
- Coordinate multiple calendars to schedule a meeting time and date.
- Create an agenda.
- Book a room for in-office meetings.
- Create and share a video conferencing link.
- Use AI for meeting notes.
- Streamline concise communication.
- Create transcriptions and captions in real time.
- Assign action items and follow up.
Personalize the participant experience:
- Customize support and resource suggestions for each participant based on their preferences.
- Create a channel for giving and receiving feedback to encourage consistent improvement.
- Share meeting details across continents and languages to support global collaboration.
- Analyze conversation patterns to understand how teams communicate and solve problems together, helping managers resolve concerns quickly.
- Identify knowledge gaps and suggest personalized learning opportunities.
- Collect knowledge and insights using AI for collaboration.
Build consensus to help ensure everyone is on the same page:
- Keep and share precise meeting transcripts and uncover patterns, insights, and solutions.
- Identify speakers and measure sentiment to expose roadblocks, friction, and opportunities to improve progress.
- Deepen the understanding of key discussion points and topics to facilitate productive collaboration and timely decision-making.
Create a hedge against cyber threats:
- Help protect meeting data from third-party tampering and interception with end-to-end encryption.
- Some tools provide biometric authentication to verify the identity of participants.
- Monitor network traffic to detect anomalies and suspicious activity.
- Identify potential risks to the meeting platform.
Let’s review some of the AI tools and technologies that provide companies with intelligent meeting support.
Exploring types of AI meeting tools and technologies
Software applications that use AI to enhance meeting productivity and efficiency have several functions. The most popular AI meeting tools use a combination of these technologies:
AI meeting transcription Using speech recognition and natural language processing, transcription tools convert speech to text, or text to speech, in real-time or post-meeting. This allows participants to follow along and review the meeting content and flow, especially helpful for late-comers or people who can’t attend. AI transcription can search for speakers and key words or phrases and extract information, such as data retrieved during a meeting or action items. Transcription is especially beneficial for team members with impaired hearing or vision.
AI meeting schedulers These tools use AI to automatically find the best meeting date and time based on the participants’ calendar availability. The tools can consider individual preferences and personalize the experience, such as offering translations or captions when needed or requested.
AI virtual meeting assistants These tools provide a collection of services. AI meeting assistants automatically create agendas, take notes (who doesn’t love the idea of an AI meeting note taker), summarize key points, send reminders, and follow up communication.
AI real-time language translation Using AI to translate speech and text into multiple languages, these tools enable cross-cultural communication in real time, eliminating language barriers, smoothing collaboration, and supporting inclusion.
AI meeting summaries and analytics Like having a therapist for meetings, AI tools use data from the meeting to highlight main topics, summarize key issues, surface insights, analyze trends, and recommend improvements. Tools can measure participant engagement, sentiment, and the overall effectiveness of the meeting.
AI-powered chatbots An integral part of some AI meeting tools, chatbots use noise-cancellation and echo suppression to eliminate background noise, improve audio quality, and enhance the meeting experience.
AI voice assistants Integral for translation, AI voice assistants also facilitate voice control commands, allowing participants to interact with the meeting platform without a keyboard. This functionality can be helpful for people with mobility challenges.
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