Wondering why you should use Vectera instead of Teams? We’ve made an analysis of both platforms for you, highlighting the features where Vectera can add value to your meetings.
Teams offers diverse features to make remote teamwork easier. But is it the best platform to use with your (new or potential) clients? Spoiler: No.
Is there 1 tool that can do it all? No. The tool you are using to do video meetings with friends (eg facetime or whatsapp video) is totally different from the tool you’ve used to join a webinar. The same applies for Teams, as the name implies, is mainly for team communication. We’re also using team-based chat internally to communicate with colleagues, share your holiday status and show your team that you are available.
So, what are the main reasons to choose Vectera over Teams? Keep reading to find out.
1. Simple, safe 1-click joining process for externals
Teams is meant for teams. That means you can connect easily with everyone from your team, but adding externals to a conversation has annoying pitfalls. The company admin needs to explicitly allow external people to join Teams meetings.
Teams is part of the office suite, which is used by many, many business users. Chances are likely that the person you are inviting to a call also uses Teams for internal meetings. In that case, Teams will try to authenticate that member and you might not connect because the other Team admin did not enable external meetings. If the participant is not connected to a Teams account, Microsoft will push that person to signup with a Microsoft account. It’s definitely not friction less for meeting with externals.
If the participant does not have Teams installed, the web version can be joined, but it’s lacking capabilities of the desktop variant. It’s a conversation stopper if you need to download the app, sign-in / sign-up to collaborate together for instance.
Vectera is different: We don’t want your clients to get a headache while trying to join the meeting. Say yes to simplicity: the only thing you need for Vectera is a browser.
With Vectera you will be able to work and join meetings through a simple URL. As a participant to the meeting, you don’t need to sign up for an account. Simply open the meeting room URL, type your name and request to join the meeting.
2. Keep externals out of your internal communication and availability
Stepping up from Skype to Teams is a big improvement. But remember what happens in Skype when you called someone? They are added as a contact and your status and online presence is revealed. The same applies for Teams contacts that are added in your directory/channels.
Do you really want to be always available for every chat message from your clients? Digital notification overload is bad. It distracts you from your work, it hurts your work/life balance and you can’t effectively measure time spent on clients, especially if you are managing a team of advisors.
It’s better to communicate with short meetings to have a natural conversation instead of endless chat messages; they’re just emails without the “hi” and “best regards”.
It’s better to talk through the different points, makes short notes of key points/decisions/todo’s and move forward.
3. Everything stays in place, ready for the next meeting. No need to re-explain, re-upload, re-copy-paste
Do you have recurrent meetings with your clients? Normally, as soon as a traditional online meeting ends, all shared information and documents are lost.
Vectera works differently. You can create persistent meeting rooms for each of your clients or projects and keep track of all content and communication in one single place. Every meeting room can be accessed by a simple, secure and never-changing URL.
All files, documents, notes and meeting recordings are stored in this meeting room, ready for the next meeting, so you and your client can pick up the conversation where you left off.
4. Professional look and feel marks a good first impression
Vectera was built with a strong focus on interactions with external clients: sales, advisory, training, customer demos, support and more.
When you meet your (new or potential) client for the first time, it’s paramount that you make a lasting impression. With Vectera you can design the whole experience. Use a custom domain, add your own logo and background images to make your brand stand out. All Vectera rooms have a super clean, modern look and feel. And some emojis, if that suits you.
Vectera has a professional looking lobby, with a custom branded waiting screen to give your client a warm welcome. It's even better than a lobby in a building: completely corona-proof by design.
5. Don’t limit yourself to classic audio/video/screen share. Add more creativity and engagement to the conversation
Classic meeting solutions all boast the same features: audio/video/screen sharing. These are the basics that should work, every single time. We’ve got these dialed in.
But what if you could demo your app together with your client? Or give interactive support to your client? Or interactively draw a server infrastructure, a revenue plot or any other graph on a whiteboard?
While with Teams you have to juggle with the separate Whiteboard app, with Vectera you don’t need to do anything because the Whiteboard is already integrated in the meeting room. The whiteboard enables you to write down meeting minutes, visualize spec lists, show proposals and so much more.
And there’s more! With Vectera you can co-browse with the other participant(s), which means you can fill out a form together, navigate through new software or even make exercises. It all depends on your use case - but co-browsing has you covered!
And best of all, your creativity is automatically synced and stored.
6. Deep integration with the tools you are already using on a day-to-day basis
What’s the first step for any kind of meeting? Correct, scheduling it. And Vectera has you covered here as well to make it easy for both you and your clients.
The built-in scheduler allows your clients to schedule meetings with you, be it online, offline or phone meetings. The scheduled meeting is automatically added to your and your client’s calendar. Google Calendar, Office365, iCloud and Microsoft Exchange are supported.
Contact details from new appointments are synced to major CRM systems with native integrations.
Want to take it to the next level?
Vectera’s powerful API allows you to generate meeting rooms based on triggers in your app, fill the meeting rooms with any documents or files and collect valuable statistics.
Wrap up
Teams is meant for teams. It handles internal meetings well, but external meetings with clients is not really its cup of tea. So, when it comes to having external meetings with clients or other companies Vectera has a lot more to offer.
With Vectera you’ll be having professional, high-quality meetings with (potential or new) clients. It’s easy to use and its many tools make it the perfect platform to take your online meetings to the next level.
Start a no-obligations test for free and find out for yourself!
In the table below, you will see a clear comparison between Vectera and Microsoft Teams:
