Author: Sati Hillyer

Company culture is top of mind for most CEOs today. Culture contributes significantly to productivity, as companies with happy employees consistently outperform their competition. It also contributes to lower turnover, which in turn increases profits significantly. Ultimately, a positive company culture drives profitability and growth.

One way to enhance your company culture is through video engagement. As a recent McKinsey study found, CEOs must lead the discussion of transformation, vision, and culture to effectively bring change to their organization. You and your top-level staff cannot physically be everywhere at once, but you can use video to engage meaningfully with employees. Here are three ways video engagement can enhance your company culture.

1. Engage employees directly.

In 2015, 45 percent of employees in the United States worked from home. With so much of the workforce being remote, it is difficult to develop a cohesive culture with strong corporate values, transparency, and a commitment to employees’ personal growth. Video, however, can bridge the gap and increase cohesiveness.

Specifically, personalized videos directly from management can help create cohesiveness in impactful ways. Employees respond best to change management when you, the CEO, are leading the discussion. Videos allow you to interface with your employees directly and to quickly disseminate your vision, news, best practices, and product information. And employees can view your video at their convenience on their time. It doesn’t matter if your company is one office or many; everyone is receiving the same instruction from the same source.

2. Show your appreciation.

According to a 2016 survey, 82 percent of employed Americans feel that their contributions go unnoticed, and 40 percent would work harder if they were being recognized. Expressing appreciation for your employees is a low-cost, high-yield endeavor. According to a 2003 Gallup Poll, recognition improves employee satisfaction and productivity, lowers turnover, and increases customer loyalty. Video is one way to get this done and seen by as many people as possible.

The size and spread of your company likely make it impossible to meet with every single employee and thank them one on one, but video allows you to praise in a personal way. You can have all of the benefits of a companywide meeting with none of the costs or hurdles.

Remember, your employees have to be reminded that you’re not a robot just as much as your customers and prospects do. They need to know that you and the company at large care for them and value their contributions. The personal touch of a video gets that message across perfectly.

3. Provide access.

When employees feel left out of the loop, company culture suffers. According to a 2014 survey by the American Psychological Association, only about half of all employees in the US believe their employer is open with them, and nearly 1 in 4 employees don’t trust their employer. However, a 2013 Harvard Business Review survey found that 70 percent of employees feel more engaged when management keeps them informed and up to date on strategy.

Ideally, you’d like to keep your employees informed and engaged by inviting them to “sit in” on executive meetings, customer meetings, conferences, etc. But that’s not realistic for a variety of reasons such as time, coordination, costs, exposure to confidential information, etc. Through personal videos, however, you can share snippets of these meetings with your employees, providing access to scenarios or instances that they would not otherwise be exposed to. This exposure builds trust and results in employees being more vested in the company’s success.

Also, these videos provide clarified context as well. As Sam Hodges, co-founder and US managing director of funding circle, explains, “When you’re offering a clear view across departments, the sheer volume of information or industry slang can be intimidating and often debilitating for peers in different functions. It’s critical to provide context, commentary, and clarity around what this information actually means for different people.”

Used correctly, videos can be a medium of cultural change. As organizational psychologist Laura Hamill states, “Culture is not a Ping-Pong table. Culture is not having margaritas on Friday. That’s just surface level. What matters a lot more is what happens when people go back to their desk, when they have a meeting with their manager and interact with the leaders of the company. It’s day-to-day interactions, how people feel they are treated, and how they’re valued.” Video can help your employees feel valued, supported, and connected.

Please try to connect with your employees more effectively and work together to enhance your company’s culture. Start by sending them a quick and engaging video.

Originally posted on the Salesforce blog.

OneMob, a 2015 Gartner Cool Vendor in CRM Sales, Brings Personalization to the Buyer’s Journey, Resulting in More Trust, More Responses and Faster Sales Cycles.

San Francisco, August 17, 2015 – OneMob Inc. announced today that it is seeing tremendous customer growth as new companies leverage the OneMob platform to personalize the way they connect with prospects, customers, partners and employees. Using OneMob’s apps, these customers have seen explosive results including a 15X increase in email CTRs and a 10X increase in response rates. More importantly, they are building trust and improving relationships through personal video, two key components that get lost with canned voicemails and automated emails. OneMob’s video and voice messaging platform for Salesforce enables companies to harness the power of video to transform the way they sell, service, market and engage with customers.

With Internet speeds increasing and mobile smartphones vastly improving, video is becoming the new medium of communication. OneMob is leveraging this trend and layering personalization into the fold by making it incredibly easy to record and send personal, company branded video and voice messages that are fully integrated and tracked in Salesforce. According to CEB, 53% of customer loyalty is driven by the sales experience, and OneMob customers can now be more personal, trusting and engaging across the entire customer journey, ultimately producing more closed revenue.

The company also announced that Salesforce Ventures, Salesforce’s corporate investment group, has invested in OneMob. Salesforce Ventures joins existing investors Tim Draper, Steve King (former CEO of DocuSign), Gainsight CEO Nick Mehta, Sand Hill Angels, Alchemist Accelerator and others. OneMob will use the investment to grow its sales, marketing, customer success and engineering teams.

If you’re interested in joining OneMob, send your resume to careers@onemob.com.

Comments on the News

• OneMob – “We see video as the new method of communicating in the enterprise, from prospecting to account management to customer support,” says Sati Hillyer, Founder and CEO of OneMob. “Cold calling and text-based emails alone are ineffective and irritate the buyer, leading to a decline in responsiveness. Today’s buyers want to work with a real person, not an automated email or voicemail. Sending a OneMob video message creates trust, the key ingredient in any customer interaction, and ultimately results in an incredible 10X response rate. And most importantly, all the video engagement activity is accessible and seamlessly logged back into Salesforce.”

• Cisco – OneMob has entered into an agreement with Cisco to bring OneMob’s asynchronous video platform to Cisco’s collaboration experience. This began with OneMob porting their iOS solution to Android to run natively on the Cisco DX series, an Android-based video endpoint that unites voice, video, conferencing and collaboration capabilities on a single device on the desktop. According to Rowan Trollope, SVP and GM of the Collaboration Technology Group at Cisco, “This is an opportunity for us to transform sales and customer outreach by integrating OneMob on the DX series. Leading the charge for business-based video technology, Cisco is always looking to work with innovative video technology solutions, and is pleased to offer OneMob’s video platform on the DX Series. OneMob is optimized for the Cisco DX and is giving business users another crucial tool to produce a memorable and more personal sales experience.”

Additional Resources

• Get Started today with OneMob: http://www.onemob.com
• Follow OneMob on Twitter: http://twitter.com/onemob
• Like Salesforce on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/salesforce
• Follow Salesforce Ventures on Twitter: https://twitter.com/salesforcevc

About OneMob, Inc. – Recently named a Gartner 2015 Cool Vender in CRM Sales, OneMob’s communications platform personalizes customer interactions. Their first product allows sales, customer success and support reps to record, upload and send personal, branded, and trackable video and voice messages to grow sales and renewals, all fully tracked and measured in Salesforce. OneMob customers include Intuit, Act-On, Glassdoor, Sacramento Kings, Fisher & Paykel, Betts Recruiting, Gainsight, and Re/Max. For more information about OneMob, visit: http://www.onemob.com.

Salesforce Ventures—Salesforce’s corporate investment group—invests in the next generation of enterprise technology to help companies connect with their customers in entirely new ways. Portfolio companies receive funding as well as access to the world’s largest cloud ecosystem and the guidance of Salesforce’s innovators and executives. With Salesforce Ventures, portfolio companies can also leverage the expertise of the Salesforce Foundation to incorporate its 1-1-1 model of integrated philanthropy to make giving back part of their business model. Salesforce has invested in more than 100 enterprise cloud startups since 2009. For more information, please visit www.salesforce.com/ventures.

Salesforce, Sales Cloud and others are among the trademarks of salesforce.com, inc.

Read the original press release here.

We can’t believe it’s been a whole year! Seriously, where has the time gone? The past year has been full of twists and turns, but never a dull moment. We’re so grateful to build a team and company like OneMob and want to thank all our employees (and their families), customers, investors, advisors, prospects and friends for your support and guidance. We’re better because of you!

Here’s just a few highlights:

• Joined Alchemist Accelerator in Class 8
• Launched the OneMob iOS App at Dreamforce 2014
• Received some love on the Salesforce and Sales Hacker blog
• Launched the OneMob AppExchange Package
• Helped Cisco, LinkedIn, Sacramento Kings, Act-On and the Omid Foundation see amazing success with video
• Awarded the Gartner 2015 Cool Vendor for CRM Sales
• Moved into our new office (480 2nd St. Suite 203, San Francisco, CA) – stop by and say hi!
• Evangelized OneMob across the nation at Chicago, San Francisco, Washington D.C., San Diego and New York
• Launched the OneMob App for the Cisco DX Series
• Grew the team to 11 people
• Launched the OneMob Web App

And we’re just getting started. Onwards and upwards!