Video Collaboration: An Antidote to Email Overload

According to the technology market research firm The Radicati Group, 124.5 billion business emails were sent and received every day of 2018. Between 2014 and 2018, the average office worker received 90 emails a day, and sent 40. For a company of 1,000 employees, this equals 40,000 emails sent per day, and 10 million annually.  In other words, a lot. What’s the solution?

Cutting Down on Digital Clutter

At one financial services firm, the solution is Allego. There, the wealth management division’s learning and development team is cutting down on the digital clutter – and enhancing employee engagement – with two types of mobile video communications.

The first type simply replaces the text and still images of emails with interactive Allego videos.

“One of our national sales managers did this,” said the head of Learning and Development (L&D). “Instead of sending his weekly Friday email with, ‘Here are the key initiatives for the week. Oh, and congratulate this person on their big win, etc.’ he started making a quick two-minute video that’s now his Friday communications tool.”

‘Windshield Time’

The second video tool is known as Windshield Time, a 15-minute interactive podcast pioneered by one of the company’s independent market leaders. According to the L&D head, “He basically said, ‘What if I hosted a podcast for my peers? I’ve always enjoyed sharing best practices, but I never had an efficient mechanism to do so until Allego.’ The instant popularity of the podcast clearly demonstrates that there was pent-up demand.”

Thanks to Windshield Time (so called because the podcasts resemble a conversation between two sales reps in a car), the host says he’s seen more peer-to-peer sharing in the last year than during his previous 13 years with the company.

Today, the podcast features an internal chat that draws an audience of 150 salespeople who can participate in the conversation. “The Windshield Time host “puts out an episode, people comment on it, and then they start sharing their own ideas. It’s turned into this ongoing way that all of our salespeople can stay connected.”

‘These Are Conversations’

“But the host did something a little more innovative than just starting his own podcast,” said the L&D head. “He began using a split-screen technology to present interviews with senior leaders, as well as his peers around best practices. He even created his own theme song to introduce the show.

“To date, he’s done about 25 episodes. He likes to stress that these are conversations, not one-way communications. He says that ‘it’s not about having 1,000 LinkedIn connections; it’s about promoting conversations and encouraging the sales teams to access them.”

Although  mobile video is unlikely to replace email, Allego videos are generating more enthusiasm and engagement at this firm than the older technology.

Overall, the L&D head says,“We’ve had 100% sales adoption with about 48,000 peer views on the platform in the first 18 months. But for me, the biggest impact is the behavioral and cultural shift that we’ve undergone in the organization.”