If your product needs to work with video and audio data from video conferencing calls, there are a couple of ways to obtain this data, which we've written about previously for Zoom specifically.
Over the last few years, recording bots have become the most widely accepted way of obtaining the video and audio data from calls. From looking at tons of products, and talking to dozens of founders that have a recording bot as part of their product, these are the top 5 reasons companies choose to build a recording bot in their product.
1. There are no restrictions
Unlike importing the meeting from Zoom Cloud, Google Drive, OneDrive, and other meeting cloud storage systems, there are no prerequisites to having the meeting bot join and record. The bot can record even if:
- The user is not the host
- The user is on a free plan
- The user doesn't have admin rights to install an app
This means products with a bot can serve any user, with faster sales cycles, because they don't need to go through the IT security review process. On the other hand, if you were to natively integrate with Google Meet, it would require the user to be on the Business tier or above, requires the user to be the host, and also requires the user to give read and download access to their entire Google Drive - which typically is blocked by IT teams.
2. It's a standard
For years, recording bots have been the way that the best tools on the market integrate with video conferencing, such as market leaders in the sales space like Gong and Chorus. Why is this important? It means that if you use meeting bots in your product, your customers already understand how they work, and are comfortable with the user experience.
3. It works the same on every platform
As we all know, it's important to have a consistent product experience for all your users. This simplifies everything from sales, to customer success, to writing documentation. However, the APIs of each meeting platform are very different. While RTMP live-streaming is possible on Zoom for example, it's not possible on Google Meet. Meeting bots work the same way for every single platform, producing a consistent product experience for all your users.
4. It captures the most data
A recording bot can capture a lot more than just the video and audio from meetings. It can:
- Give you perfectly diarized transcripts with speaker names already labelled
- Give you the meeting title
- Know when a screenshare starts or stops
- Know when a participant joins or leaves
- Know when a participant mutes or unmutes
- Know when a participant turns their camera on or off
- Capture chat messages
- ...and much more
It may come as a surprise that you can't access most of this data through video conferencing APIs directly. When building product, you can deliver an enhanced user experience with more data, which is exactly why some products have a recording bot component.
5. It enables real-time product experiences
Because recording bots sit in calls as they are happening, recording bots are able to capture the audio, video, and other data from calls in real-time. This enables products to work with the data in real-time, which in turn, enables real-time experiences for their users. Here are some examples on the experiences you can build with real-time meeting data:
- Prompt sales reps on what to say during a demo, in real-time
- Display talk time percentages of each participant during a daily standup, in real-time
- Take time-stamped notes during a user interview, in real-time
- Create and share video clips of a meeting, in real-time
6. It's an opportunity for driving customer awareness
From sending messages in the chat, to displaying a video feed advertising your product, meeting bots are a great way to have everyone in the meeting know about your product. This is a tactic used by top tools like Fathom, Grain and Read AI to reach explosive viral growth.
Want to build a recording bot?
If you're trying to build a recording bot into your product, Recall.ai offers a unified API for meeting bots that works on any video conferencing platform. Book a demo today to get started.