Today’s work environments are no longer confined by office walls, and the idea of a nine-to-five work schedule is nearly nonexistent as mobile workers and remote offices gain popularity. A Gallup survey released in February of this year surveyed American employees working remotely, and it revealed that more Americans are working off-site for longer periods of time. In the report, the overall number of employees who reported working remotely four to five days a week rose from 24 percent in 2012 to 31 percent in 2016. And the same survey revealed that the computer and information systems industry ranked second among industries embracing remote work. So how do these companies that employ remote workers easily break down the geographic barriers that can often hinder communication, collaboration, and overall productivity? One of the many tools they often use is video conferencing.
Video conferencing is diminishing the gap between on-site and off-site workers, offering companies a new channel through which their teams can communicate and collaborate regardless of location. In fact, in a post by Teem addressing how businesses can improve work productivity, the second most important thing a company should possess when hosting a conference with remote workers is technology. Possessing the right technology and tools allows for face time with the persons involved.
SourceForge spoke with Stephane Giraudie, the CEO of Voxeet, in regards to the state of the video conferencing industry, the common frustrations users face with video (along with their associated remedies), and how Voxeet and their collaboration with Layer can deliver unprecedented unified communication.
The Problem with the Video Conferencing Industry
In the video market, there are both free and enterprise-level video conferencing platforms that different companies use depending on preference and compatibility. Popular solutions such as GoToMeeting, Uberconference, and more are all available to consumers, and most are common names in the video conferencing and remote meeting industries that pop up in daily conversation. While these solutions serve their purpose, Voxeet believes that much more can be done in the way of video conferencing to help improve audio, video, and collaboration efforts. Plus, Giraudie notes that the concept of video conferencing and remote meetings have greatly changed over time. Unlike before when people wait for ten minutes or more, companies these days connect calls more easily.
While years back, people had to come to the office to discuss projects, now people can simply use their mobile devices to connect. Mobile showcased applications make it possible for people to get 3D sound screen share from their mobile phones.
One of the first things Voxeet wanted to address was reliability. “A video conferencing solution needs to work on any and every device,” said Giraudie. “If one participant has a bad connection from a specific device or browser, it is going to affect the entire conference. So we made sure our solution is top notch on multiple browsers.” This is thanks in part to WebRTC, the open source development stack that allows individuals to make a call or participate in a meeting without having to download software or install an extension.
Stephane Giraudie, CEO of Voxeet
Voxeet also believes in simplicity when it comes to video conferencing. “It used to be that when you were going into a meeting, you hoped that the call would just work,” shared Giraudie. “There were always some friction points, and it could take up to ten minutes to get on a call. But these days, the video and conferencing calling experience is getting better and easier.” Giraudie attributes this to the rise in popularity of APIs, which allow for different experiences because companies can embed solutions into the tools they already use. “We spent three years developing our conferencing app and building an extensive UX toolkit with different types of integrations for our clients to use in order to speed up their deployments,” said Giraudie. “One of our recent partnerships (with Layer) shows how we can now move from messaging to a real call within the UX.”
Voxeet also places a big focus on the concept of integration, and this is not simply limited to compatibility with popular CRMs. Instead, Voxeet wanted to offer a solution that works with and in a company’s workflow. “You need a seamless experience that carries over and through the user experience instead of creating external workflows,” said Giraudie.
Beyond video, Voxeet also realized that customers care about one more thing: audio quality.
Voxeet’s Quest for a Superb Audio Experience
“When we started our company and began doing research for our product, we performed a number of customer interviews and found that they were frustrated with audio frictions on conference calls (ie. where the sound cuts out because multiple people are talking),” shared Giraudie. “We listed a total of 13 issues that frustrated people, and we used this list as a blueprint in order to create a better sounding video experience. We realized that video is very important, but the sound quality is where all of the frustrations lie.”
Voxeet’s sound technology facilitates better communication for remote employees.
In order to meet these audio issues commonly faced in video conferencing, Voxeet created Voxeet TrueVoice™ 3D sound technology. This state-of-the-art audio technology was developed over the course of four years to provide users with 3DHD sound. The individual voices feature uses a unique distributed stream architecture with client-side mixing. Additionally, the technology’s network analytics feature can identify low-quality 3G, 4G or Wi-Fi connections so that users can switch to a local phone line easily, even if they are in the middle of a call. It contains features that help eliminate the frustrations encountered by remote teams during conference calls by allowing each user to have their own audio string instead of pushing everyone through an audio pipeline.
Giraudie revealed that, in a research study conducted by Voxeet, 70% of the participants preferred the audio quality from TrueVoice as opposed to the audio they received from a Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) call.
The Concept Behind Voxeet’s Technology
In face-to-face conversations, sounds follow a rather complex journey before they reach the ears for the brain to then decode and relay the message. A popular example of this is the “cocktail party effect,” a phenomenon that showcases how the brain drowns out background noise to focus on and decode the information relayed by a specific sound or person. It is also commonly referred to as “selective hearing.”
Quality audio is important for successful business communications. In today’s busy open-office layouts and remote workspaces, utilizing traditional conference software with a single microphone can cause all of the sounds and audio to get mixed into garbled noise. It becomes impossible for the brain to use spatial information to filter and decode the message that the sender is relaying. To combat this, Voxeet introduced their unique TrueVoice technology that mimics natural sounds so the brain can easily decode the messages. No more garbling, static, or dropped calls.
Voxeet’s TrueVoiceTM 3D sound technology eliminate communication frustrations.
“The challenge we address is to deliver a great audio chat experience for the end user regardless of location, device, or network,” mentioned Giraudie. “We achieve this by creating a differentiated, separate stream architecture that delivers the best sound quality and a great UX.”
Apart from clear sound quality, Voxeet also offers its users powerful messaging, file sharing (even mobile devices to desktops, the web, or the cloud), the ability to capture conversations and replay them, mobile presentation capabilities, an option to share call summary emails, and a redesigned user interface.
Voxeet and Layer Collaborate to Improve Conference Rooms
In order for communication to be successful, there needs to be a careful balance of asynchronous communication (written word) and synchronous communications (spoken word). In the digital age, this dichotomy is still present: synchronous communication is manifested when using real-time voice and video solutions, while asynchronous communication is manifested through the use of instant messaging or emailing. But there can still be some disconnects in the modern business world if these two types of communication do not meet, whether that be a missed communication thread, not having the option to record a meeting or call, etc.
To fix this, Voxeet and Layer decided to team up to bring a unified, innovative solution to businesses. Layer, a messaging API company, foresees unified communication as the future of collaboration, and thus partnered with Voxeet’s voice and video call API to bring real-time communications to customers in the form of customized customer experiences. Voxeet can be integrated into the Layer SDK with only a few lines of code, and the result is a collaboration solution with high-quality audio, messaging, video calling, and more.
Voxeet provides an optimized UX toolkit (complete with UX components) for iOS and Android that is plugged into the Layer SDK.
About Voxeet
Voxeet was launched in 2012, and in the same year earned the DEMO god award at DEMO, a series of technology-focused business conferences in which pre-selected companies and entrepreneurs launch new products and services. As a leading real-time collaboration platform that uses WebRTCto achieve a highly secure, crystal clear 3D surround-sound, audio and HD video experience, Voxeet has been included on the prestigious Gartner Cool Vendor list. It also made it to the 2017 “Hot Vendor” in Unified Communications and Collaboration by Aragon Research. Today, Voxeet continues to stand by its mission that “conversation matters,” and pursues this through an API library that enables screen sharing, presentation mode, broadcasting, call recording, translation, messaging, scheduling and more.