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Read Launches Chief Meeting Officer Suite to Address 1 in 5 Bad Video Conference Calls

April 26, 2022

Read is introducing three new products under the Chief Meeting Officer umbrella to address the problem of bad and unproductive meetings. Based on 3MM+ meeting minutes measured in less than six months, Read has identified the opportunity to reduce at minimum the number of meetings by 20% with 20% fewer participants, resulting in a 20% better meeting experience.  

“Read’s Chief Meeting Officer Suite is responsible for preventing meetings about meetings,” said David Shim, Co-Founder and CEO of Read. “By introducing measurement to every meeting, Read makes sure that every meeting on your calendar matters.”

As part of Chief Meeting Officer Suite, Read is launching Meeting Manager, Executive Assistant, and Meeting Navigator, all built around the concept of better meetings through measurement. Read is able to measure video conference calls by joining as an attendee and measuring audio and video in real-time to generate meeting metrics. After these aggregate metrics are generated, Read automatically deletes the raw audio and video data.

Chief Meeting Officer Suite

Read Chief Meeting Officer: Suite consists of a team of products designed to deliver better meetings through measurement. Insights are gathered together into a real-time dashboard measuring your overall meeting health.  

Read Meeting Manager: Delivers personalized post-meeting analytics, collaboration insights, and coaching to improve your meetings over time.  

Read Executive Assistant: Joins meetings to ensure that meetings end on time with a live meeting timer, and that conversations are balanced with real-time talk time metrics.

Read Meeting Navigator: An in-meeting dashboard helps you steer your meetings in a better direction in real-time by measuring meeting score, sentiment, engagement, and alerting you when there are significant changes during the conversation at the group or participant level.  

Launch on Microsoft Teams and Google Meet

As part of the launch, Read is now available for the first time on Microsoft Teams and Google Meet in addition to Zoom and Webex, bringing the total addressable audience for Read to over 500 million people worldwide.

Read’s State of Virtual Meetings - Q1 2022

Across 3MM+ measured meeting minutes, representing the largest benchmark study on the health of virtual meetings, Read found that 1 in 5 video conference calls had a below average meeting score. Read calculates meeting score, sentiment, and engagement for video conferencing through the measurement of audio and video data.

“Time is our most valuable resource in life and work,” said David.  “Read brings a level of accountability to meetings that returns time back to employees and companies.”

Overall

51% of meetings go over schedule by at least a minute 
31%
of meeting start late resulting in an average delay of 3.3 minutes
21%
of meeting scores are poor based on directly measuring meeting audio (speaker) and video (listener)
24%
of participants in a meeting are disengaged (ex. multitasking, unfocused) 
15%
of meetings have negative sentiment (ex. annoyed, frustrated, confused)  

Opportunities

50% of participants arrive late to a meeting with more than 7 people
48%
of talk time belongs to one participant in a meeting with 3 to 6 people
37%
increase in disengaged participants from the first quarter to the last quarter of a meeting (50 minutes+)
22%
of participants in a 7+ person meeting don’t say a single word
15%
increase in disengaged participants in the last quarter of a meeting when compared to the first 
11%
of participants are in “ghost mode” in meetings of 7+.  Ghost mode is defined as no video, no audio.

Download the full benchmark study.

Available Today as a Free Service

Read’s Chief Meeting Officer Suite is available as a free service with plans for an enterprise version later this year (no software to install, fully cloud based). 

Add Read to your meetings by simply creating a free account and connecting your calendar.  

Built on Transparency and Privacy

By building Read with privacy, transparency, and user control at our core, it encourages more authentic conversations.

Clear Notification:  Read announces it is measuring a call at the start of every meeting.

Easy Opt-Out:  Any meeting participant can remove Read Dashboard by typing “opt-out” in chat or typing in a URL to delete all measured data.

Open Dashboard:  Read defaults to providing all attendees with live metrics to drive a better and more collaborative meeting experience.

Encrypted, No Playback:  Every meeting Read measures is encrypted, and Read does not provide video or audio playback options.

About Read

Read enables better meetings through measurement through a team of products as part of the Chief Meeting Officer Suite. The team of products that make up the Chief Meeting Officer Suite includes Read Meeting Manager, Executive Assistant, and Meeting Navigator, which are designed to deliver insights in and across meetings.  

Read's mission is to make every human interaction meaningfully better, smarter, and happier starting with the more than 500 million people worldwide using Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, and Webex every day.

Founded by David Shim, Elliott Waldron, and Rob Williams in 2021, Read is headquartered in Seattle, WA. Learn more at www.read.ai, follow us on Twitter @read_dashboard, or email us at info@read.ai.    

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