Recovering MSP Owner turned Product and Solutions leader at Zomentum | MSP Mentor providing ‘Tactical Support’
Cameras on or off during Zoom calls? 🤔 🎥 My thoughts… It’s absolutely right to have your camera off if you don’t feel comfortable for any reason whatsoever. I routinely have calls with somebody with a disability that means they wouldn’t feel comfortable having their camera on. Another person I regularly speak with works at a large company where they’re advised to keep their cameras off on external calls unless absolutely necessary for some reason. Cameras are banned entirely on internal calls. There has also been significant research into the additional (and entirely unnecessary) cognitive load added by video calls which leads to burnout and other mental health concerns. Nobody owes you an explanation if they have their camera off. ❌ What do you think?
I'm just on a sales call demo..... I have my video on... He doesn't... Is that right?
I feel is it rude having camera off. Might as well call you on the phone.
Ben Spector, this purely depends on the type/context of a call. If it is a customer-centric call then cameras should be on, for multiple reasons majorly including the psychology, body language etc that ties into having an effective conversation. For example, there was a time when in-person sales (for high ACVs) were imperative then COVID brought in the concept of virtual sales and now if someone tells me that in a virtual setup, cameras should be turned off during a sales call then the time is not far when voice recorded bots would run sales calls 😉 In short, I feel cameras off or on are so role/context centric.
I make complicated things, simple and memorable – Quality, Training, InfoSec, Marketing and Business Development
8moIf it's a meeting in my calendar, I prefer the camera. Mostly because I'm terribly vain and think highly of my winning smile. With sales calls I want to see and know who I'm going to be working with too. That being said, there are situations where confidentiality and security clearance is necessary and so it's forgivable to not have camera on or even see the person's surname; though I'd only expect customers consultants or other stakeholders to have that privilege, the salesperson would still normally have it on.