Workspace Blog

Conference calling and video usage amongst European SMEs.

We’ve just [published the results](http://about.skype.com/2008/03/more_than_half_of_european_sme.html) of research commissioned by Skype, which looks at the behaviour and attitudes of European SME’s with regards to conference calling and video conferencing.

We have always felt that [video calls](http://www.skype.com/intl/en/business/allfeatures/videocall/) and [conference calls](http://www.skype.com/intl/en/business/allfeatures/conferencecall/) are great features for business users, but it was pleasing to hear it directly from the horse’s mouth. The businesses surveyed felt that the main benefits of these technologies include minimising travel, facilitating communication, improving communication and reducing costs. With video calling, the addition of non-verbal communication such as body language is also an important factor.

Many of the businesses surveyed who were not current users of video conferencing said they would be more likely to use it if it was better quality and not expensive. Again this was good to hear as Skype has been putting a lot of effort in to developing [High Quality Video](http://www.skype.com/intl/en/business/allfeatures/videocall/#high-quality-video) which launched earlier this year and apart from the cost of a webcam and a broadband internet connection, Skype video calls are free.