A1 Garage Door Services is a growing business with 200 employees across ten U.S. states.

To keep their field workers aligned and updated, they run weekly live-streamed team meetings. Some people join from 15 different offices, others are completely remote.

But hosting virtual meetings comes with its challenges.

“In the past, nobody would speak during the calls, and after each meeting, we got questions about things we had already explained. It seemed like people were not listening”, shares Brian Davenport, VP of Service.

Brian wanted to find a way to resolve this and get people more involved during the calls.

“We wanted to increase our employee engagement across the country in all of the live-streamed meetings. That's where Slido came in and helped us to increase this.”

The problem: Lack of participation in remote meetings

Brian’s biggest challenge was the lack of employee engagement during the calls.

“Whenever we posed a question, all we heard was dead silence. Or, we'd move on to the next topic, and then somebody would chime in. It was hard not having a face-to-face connection.”

The managers also had a suspicion that the information wasn’t getting through. But they had no way to measure who paid attention - they just assumed that people did.

“When we moved from teleconferences to Zoom video calls, we noticed that most people played on their phones and didn’t even look at the shared screen.”

Getting follow-up questions about topics the managers had just explained confirmed their suspicion. “I had to answer the same questions multiple times after each meeting”, sighs Brian.

But the final a-ha moment came as feedback from one of their remote office managers.

“He said they felt like we were having a meeting at the headquarters, and they just watched us do it, they didn’t feel part of it. We realized there was a disconnection between offices.”

That’s when they found Slido.

Checking people’s understanding with polls

To add interaction into the online meeting, Brian used Slido polls to gather views from his staff.

“We used polls to get instant feedback from our technical field workers. For example, we presented a new product and asked what they thought about it.”

Brian also used polls to check if his employees understood what they had just covered.

“It was a great way to test whether people were listening. Their answers told us whether the message got through, or which areas were unclear, and we addressed these afterward.”

Using polls helped Brian create interaction and measure how many people took part in the polls: it was around 40 percent. However, the engagement skyrocketed with the launch of Quizzes.

Keeping people engaged with quizzes

Brian got his team members excited when he started using Quizzes.

Everyone was in love with it immediately. Quizzes are a great way to see who is paying attention, and make a game out of it. It motivates people to remember the information.

Before a recent meeting, Brian prepared a 10-question quiz on a set topic. He started the call with his updates and shared the screen with his PowerPoint slides. Then, three other managers presented their news.

“One manager talked about inventory, someone else presented on another topic and then we tested our employees’ memories with a quiz. We didn't tell them there was going to be a quiz to keep them on their toes.”

At another meeting, Brian presented information from a technician’s manual and then ran a quiz related to that information. We got a better idea of their knowledge in these particular areas.

To get people a reason to try harder, they prepared a prize for the winner: a $25 gift voucher.

“Quizzes were the game changer for us. When we started using them, our participation rate skyrocketed. The competitive element got people interested in the content and took our participation from 40 up to 90 percent. And now I have the data to demonstrate this.”

Giving employees a chance to ask questions

While polls and quizzes helped Brian keep his employees’ attention, he was still getting repetitive follow-up questions after each meeting.

“They didn’t want to be seen as asking silly questions. Because of that, I had to answer the same questions multiple times afterward. It would have been easier to answer them all live.”

To address this, Brian invited his team to voice questions in a Slido Q&A.

At the start of the Zoom call, Brian shared his screen with Slido and reminded people to post questions throughout. He reviewed questions as they came in and approved the relevant ones.

After each presenter, Brian brought Slido up on the screen and addressed the questions.

Our employees loved Slido from the start. For the first time, they were able to ask questions anonymously. They all appreciated it, and said it helped them greatly.

Empowering his team to ask questions also decreased the number of follow-up calls.

“Instead of multiple follow-up calls about the same topic, we now get most questions during the meeting and we address them instantly. This saves me a lot of time.”

The result: 90% participation during online meetings

Using Slido helped Brian increase employees’ participation during online meetings and make them fun and interactive.

“Thanks to Slido, our employees pay more attention during online meetings and have a better understanding of the material. As a result, we now get 90% participation. We can see what’s getting through to our technicians, and that’s the biggest value for us.”

Read more about A1 Garage Door Service here

Top 3 benefits of using Slido

1. Increasing participation

“Slido really increases our employees’ involvement in the online meetings.”

2. Connecting people in different locations

“It helps us to connect with people who might not be close in proximity, so allows us to remotely connect with people.”

3. Building collaboration

“With Slido, we’re able to share ideas across the board and increase collaboration between people thousands of miles apart.”