3 Ways Loom Cuts Back on Email and Meetings

 

How we use Loom, free video recording solution, to cut back on emails and meetings.

Sometime last fall we discovered a magical video app that has helped us cut back on both email and meetings.

Meet Loom.

Loom is a Chrome browser extension that makes it super easy to record your screen, voice, and face. You can record a specific tab in your browser window, your entire browser window, or your entire screen. There are controls down at the bottom to pause your recording if the phone rings or someone knocks on the door.

And until you hit a certain number of videos in your library, it’s free!

How We Use Loom to Stay Productive

We primarily use Loom to help us communicate with our team, clients, and to answer support questions from The Palm Shop.

1. Support videos

When someone emails us with a support question for our shop and it’s either specific to their site or it’s not something we included in our tutorial library, we use Loom to record a quick video to answer their question.

We used to write out steps in an email, which took a lot of time and often led to additional emails since people find it more difficult to follow written instructions.

The videos are accessible for a few weeks and if it’s an issue we’re asked often enough, we can download the video and upload it to Vimeo or our training library.

I wish I had known about Loom back when we were wedding photographers and we received emails from parents who couldn’t figure out how to download images from their child’s wedding gallery. It also would have been great when we worked on album revisions with couples!

2. Client Feedback

There are times when we work odd hours or our days are full with meetings or projects—which can make squeezing in a meeting tough.

Plus meetings are something you generally have to get dressed for. And I don’t know about you, but showering, drying my hair and doing my makeup takes about 45 minutes on a good day, which means that scheduling a 20 minute meeting can take well over an hour out of my day. Since the people we work with are generally busy too, it could take a week or two to find a time that works for both of us to hop on a call.

When projects need a little more explanation, it’s a lot more time effective to send over a Loom video outlining our thoughts, content we need from our clients, or just general ideas. The video allows our clients to watch the video in their free time.

We’ve found our clients have really appreciated the ease of recording videos, too! They often respond to our Loom videos with videos of their own. This has helped us get more specific feedback faster since clients don’t have to find the time to sit down to type out all of their thoughts.

Don’t get us wrong—we’re totally happy to hop on a call when we need to. But Loom videos have significantly cut down the amount of time we need reserve for feedback meetings.

3. Team and Contractor Training

Before we expanded the Davey & Krista team in the fall, we started recording Loom videos of tasks we repeat often. This included things like exporting logo files, beginning a new website, and creating graphics for social media. We created a library so that when we assigned new tasks to team members, we could add the video as a reference.

This way we didn’t have to set aside a ton of time for training beyond the time it would take us to complete those tasks anyways.

Our library of videos also makes it easier assign tasks to one another when someone is out sick or on vacation. This way our workflow doesn’t stop whenever someone is unavailable. And as an added bonus, the videos also serve as a reference if someone ever needs to look something up in the future.

The Real Value of Loom

Anytime we incorporate a new tool into our business we want to make sure it provides some sort of return. In Loom’s case, we’re able to spend less time emailing back-and-forth and less time in meetings (or trying to coordinate meetings). This gives us more time to focus on work that actually moves our business forward.

Do you use Loom? What do you think about it? Let us know in the comments.