Whether you are a remote worker, a team leader, or an executive, there’s a good chance you spend a considerable part of your day in online meetings.
While video meetings are great for connecting at a distance, they can also present several challenges, such as lengthy and unproductive conversations, action items you forget after the meeting, and poor follow-through.
That’s where Artificial Intelligence (AI) will start to revolutionize and eliminate the frustrations of video meetings, in that it can turn valuable time in a video meeting into effective, actionable time. Let’s learn how.
1. Automated Meeting Scheduling
One of the toughest issues in virtual collaboration is setting up meetings. Getting to multiple people’s calendars, working through different time zones, and avoiding conflicting schedules can take hours.
AI-driven tools like x.ai and Clara Labs can automate this by reading through everyone’s calendars and automatically finding the best time to meet. They can handle rescheduling requests as well.
This helps not only to save time but also to ensure that meetings get scheduled during the times when people will be most available, which reduces stress and can improve attendance.
2. Intelligent Meeting Agendas
An effective meeting begins with an agenda. AI tools are now useful in helping people create intelligent agendas, drawing on past meetings, tasks for the team, and ongoing projects.
For example, Fellow and SoapBox are AI tools that will suggest items to discuss, based on what was talked about in previous meetings, action items that are still outstanding, and team priorities.
This guarantees meetings will be held regarding these topics in the order discussed, instead of wasting a lot of time on discussions that don’t apply.
3. Real-Time Transcription and Note-Taking
Taking notes is often one of the most time-consuming parts of virtual meetings. It can be challenging to keep notes and participate in the discussion.
AI-enabled transcription tools like Otter.ai, Fireflies.ai, and the built-in AI transcription feature on Microsoft Teams can automatically transcribe your meetings for you in real time.
These tools not only record every entry word, but can highlight key topics, action items, and decisions as well. Teams can then immediately share the notes created so that no valuable content is lost, and the participants can fully concentrate on the discussion. For sectors that rely on accurate documentation, such as healthcare, AI-powered medical dictation software helps ensure accurate and accessible meeting records.
4. Smart Summaries and Highlights
In addition to transcribing, AI can summarize meetings into brief summaries. Tools like Avoma or Gong rely on machine learning to summarize long-winded discussions, pull out important nuggets, and create action items. Krisp’s AI meeting summary ensures key points and tasks are captured automatically, saving time and improving team productivity
Summaries are also helpful for team members who weren’t able to attend the meeting or have short memories, so it’s good practice to offer summaries to your team.
This substantially reduces the need for your team to consider listening again to long recordings and allows your team to forget about the meeting and move on, which can make this process more efficient overall.
5. Enhanced Collaboration Through AI Insights
AI integrated with your cloud PBX system not only records meetings but also actively captures valuable data to enhance collaboration. For example, some AI tools analyze speech patterns and participant engagement levels, providing insights that improve communication and team effectiveness.
They may provide insights as to which participants are dominating the conversation and which are staying quiet, enabling meeting facilitators to encourage participation and demand a more balanced approach.
AI approaches can also track if similar issues arise or patterns develop over several meetings, allowing evaluative insights into team productivity and efficiency/metrically problematic communication interactions.
With this data, managers can alter formats of meetings, address problematic issues repeatedly, and address team efficiency as a whole. To further support knowledge sharing and team training, organizations can leverage VOD solutions, enabling recorded meetings and key insights to be accessed on-demand for review and ongoing learning.
6. Automating Action Items and Follow-Ups
A meeting is considered productive when decisions turn into actions. AI tools can be used to automatically track action items, assign the work to responsible parties, and/or incorporate due dates.
For example, after the meeting, the AI assistant may highlight the outstanding item(s) in a task list and tag responsible team members to take action and prototype to meet the deadlines. This can reduce the likelihood of action items falling through the cracks or becoming lost.
As enterprise project management software like Wrike, Asana, Trello, or Jira become increasingly integrated with AI, the actionability of every meeting point leads to tangible productivity; meetings become more than just information sharing by making the points actionable.
7. Language Translation and Accessibility
In today’s global workforce, virtual meetings often involve participants from different countries who speak various languages.
AI-powered translation tools, such as those in Zoom or Microsoft Teams, provide real-time captions and translations.
This ensures that everyone can understand the discussion, regardless of language barriers.
Accessibility is further improved for participants with hearing impairments, as AI transcription and captioning tools make meetings more inclusive. To support teams in presenting ideas more clearly during these multilingual meetings, the best AI presentation generator can quickly produce structured, visually coherent slides that keep every participant aligned, regardless of language differences.
8. Predictive Analytics for Better Decision-Making
AI can examine past meeting data to give predictive insights to improve decision-making.
As an example, it can show which types of meetings produce the most actionable outcomes or even patterns in how effective decision-making took place.
This leads to managers creating meetings that are more likely to lead to results. AI can also help prioritize what meeting topics or people we should discuss when we are spending valuable time in a meeting.
9. Reducing Meeting Fatigue
Lengthy, unstructured meetings can lead to “Zoom fatigue,” which can drain focus, energy, and productivity. AI can help mitigate this by recommending appropriate meeting duration and format.
For example, some AI tools analyze engagement levels during a meeting and propose shorter, more focused meetings.
AI can also provide insights into whether a meeting should have been a quick chat, email, or project management update. This approach decreases fatigue and enhances the meaning of meetings.
Wrapping It Up
AI is changing virtual meetings from a time-consuming obligation to a productive, results-oriented environment. Automating scheduling, note-taking, and following up, delivering informative insights, and collaboration turn meetings from talking for the sake of talking to achieving good outcomes.
Navigating the complexities of remote and hybrid work has become commonplace for organizations, and to be successful, using AI in virtual meetings should no longer be thought of as an option, but a requirement. Teams that utilize AI-driven meeting tools save time, alleviate fatigue, and increase productivity, meaning teams can put more energy into innovation and growth, rather than administrative work.
