How to Optimize Your Time with AI Meeting Assistant Tools

You’ve likely heard the saying, “That meeting could have been an email.” And in many cases, it’s true. Routine meetings can feel like a waste of time when they lack focus and fail to provide action items or takeaways for attendees. AI meeting assistants can help. These are tools that integrate with your preferred video conferencing platform to ensure that every meeting is streamlined and productive.

The best AI meeting assistant tools can handle administrative tasks, such as scheduling, capturing minutes, and sending follow-ups, so attendees can focus during the meeting and get summarized insights afterward.

Here’s how AI meeting assistant tools can support your organization.

What are AI meeting assistant tools, and how are they used?

AI meeting assistant tools are solutions that use artificial intelligence to handle meeting-related administrative tasks. They can support users with tedious tasks like meeting coordination and scheduling, note-taking, transcription, and summaries. Many AI meeting assistants seamlessly integrate with a range of common video meeting platforms, making it simple for teams to implement.

AI meeting assistants can assist with tasks such as:

• Meeting scheduling
• Real-time transcription with speaker identification
• Minutes creation and meeting summaries
• Key takeaways and meeting insight analysis
• Action item assignments
• Post-meeting follow-up and document sharing

 

How AI meeting assistants transform business meetings

AI meeting assistants are powerful tools that provide convenience and time savings for businesses, while driving productivity and efficiency. AI can handle many of the necessary yet tedious administrative tasks that come with meeting coordination, so teams are free to have more productive conversations.

AI assistants can transcribe live meetings in real time and analyze meeting recordings for key insights. Meeting assistants use AI to analyze transcripts, distinguish between speakers, capture meeting insights, and produce summarized notes, action items, and more. Managers can then use meeting recaps to manually assign tasks to team members after a meeting is over or delegate the task to AI.

6 of the best AI meeting assistant tools

While AI business tools are still a relatively new technology, Slack Workforce Lab research found that 81% of desk workers who use AI tools say it’s improved their productivity. Investing in AI now will help you adapt when new developments arise.

To decide which AI tools you should implement to increase meeting efficiency, consider factors like versatility, accuracy, convenience, and time savings. Here’s a list of the best AI meeting assistant tools, according to verified customer reviews, to help you decide which is right for you.

We curated the following list from reviews on platforms such as G2, Capterra, and TrustRadius. We included only tools with ratings of a minimum of 4 out of 5 (or equivalent). To come up with the scores, these platforms collect reviews from verified customers and offer detailed, balanced feedback that highlights the pros and cons of each tool.

1. Slack AI: Streamline meeting coordination where you already work and communicate. Slack AI can automatically take notes during a huddle so your team can focus on the conversation. When you turn on AI notes, Slack AI will use your real-time conversation and messages shared in the huddle thread to capture key takeaways, generate action items, and more. When the huddle’s over, notes are organized into a canvas and shared in the huddle thread for visibility and easy access.
2. Fireflies.ai: Fireflies is a robust AI meeting assistant that records, transcribes, takes notes, and more. It offers customizable settings that allow users to create workflows for tasks like sharing meeting notes or creating email recaps. With Slack’s Fireflies integration, users can send automated notes — with links to the audio recording and meeting transcript — to a designated Slack channel after every meeting.
3. Otter.ai: Get transcripts, automated summaries, action items, and real-time alerts to keep meetings on track. Integrate with Slack to let Otter join a meeting, capture notes and meeting slides, assign action items, and automatically send follow-ups in Slack. Otter can also save teams time by condensing the key points of an hour-long meeting into a 30-second recap.
4. Fellow: This app focuses on accuracy, with a range of features to help keep meetings organized. Fellow provides meeting notes, summaries, and action items, and assists users with creating agendas before meetings. By integrating Fellow with Slack, users get automatically prompted to add to the agenda before the meeting starts via Slack.
5. MeetGeek: With automated recording, accurate transcriptions, and personalized AI meeting notes delivered immediately after the call, MeetGeek helps users stay focused during meetings. Slack users can integrate MeetGeek’s personalized chat assistant to get help drafting meeting follow-ups, translating meeting summaries into another language, recapping the main topics discussed, and more — directly in Slack.
6. Spinach AI: This AI assistant specializes in developing detailed action items to ensure that meetings are more productive. After sharing its AI-generated meeting notes, it will suggest action items based on the topics discussed. The Spinach AI meeting bot for Slack can join your meeting and automatically assign tasks and follow up with team members in Slack afterward.

 

How to pick the right AI meeting assistant for your team

To decide which AI meeting assistant tool is right for you, start by identifying your goals — such as time savings, streamlined scheduling, or detailed meeting summaries. Next, look for solutions with features that will help you meet them. Here are some key considerations:

• Intuitive user experience. Your AI meeting assistant should be straightforward and simple to use. The easier that new technology is to learn, the more likely it is to see widespread adoption within your organization.
• Existing workflows. Automating or simplifying your existing workflows will make the transition to a new AI tool easier for your teams. For example, if your current workflow involves logging the minutes in a central hub after every meeting, choose a tool that can automate that process.
• Seamless integration. Your AI tool should easily connect with the virtual meeting apps you already use. Many available tools integrate with popular video conferencing platforms like Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, and Zoom. Tools that also integrate with Slack let users share takeaways and action items directly in relevant channels for simple and convenient access.

 

Get the most out of your AI meeting assistant

Once you’ve chosen an AI meeting assistant tool, some additional effort can increase its value to your organization. Here are some tips for maximizing the ROI of an AI meeting assistant.

Encourage teamwide adoption

Ensure that your employees understand how an AI meeting assistant will benefit them. Share tutorials and FAQs, provide training, and be available to answer questions. Emphasize the tool’s time-saving value and focus on the importance of collaborative intelligence — humans and AI working together — over AI as technology that will replace employees.

Hesitation to adopt a new tool can stem from misunderstanding, lack of knowledge, user difficulty, or other, unforeseen issues. Managers should educate teams about the benefits of new technology and its uses before expecting them to use it, so create and communicate a change management plan before implementing new tools.

Measure success to evaluate ROI

How effective is your AI meeting assistant at streamlining meetings, improving productivity, and enhancing the overall meeting experience? To measure success, track performance, accuracy, and engagement metrics while also considering the tool’s impact on greater business outcomes, like improved communication, collaboration, and decision-making; increased client satisfaction; and decreased meeting fatigue.

Review productivity markers — such as meeting efficiency, decision-making, and task completion rates — to track improvement after implementing an AI meeting assistant. Measure the reduction in time spent on meeting preparation, scheduling, following up, and documentation. For example, if meeting notes are easier to access and parse for next steps, employees may take less time to act on items discussed.

Address technical issues and privacy concerns

New software can spark deployment or integration issues, so IT teams should monitor new tools closely during the first few months and be prepared to address any problems that arise.

Review your AI tool for inaccuracies and hallucinations, which can occur when tools are trained on large language models (LLMs). When possible, choose tools that you can train using your own private company data, since that can minimize or even prevent inaccuracies from happening.

Also consider privacy and security concerns associated with AI tools. To choose a secure AI meeting assistant that won’t compromise your organization’s privacy, make sure:

• Your vendor meets all the basic privacy, security, and compliance standards — keep in mind, different industries may require more robust security protocols.
• Your vendor agreement states that none of your data will be unnecessarily stored or used to train their language models.
• You configure your tool’s settings to a privacy default. Make sure using it is an opt-in, not opt-out, decision.
• Employees have access to clear guidelines about appropriate AI usage.

 

Case studies: AI meeting assistants in action

Companies of all sizes, across industries, are already seeing real benefits from AI meeting assistants. Let’s look at examples of companies that use Slack AI for increased meeting productivity.

Get instant summaries and surface key details

One fast-growing consulting firm uses Slack AI to increase productivity and surface information faster across the organization. Rather than spending hours scrolling through missed conversations or scheduling additional meetings to share information, its teams use Slack AI to summarize and surface key details, whether in channels and threads or during meetings.

Not only do Slack AI summaries save them multiple hours per week tracking down information from various channels, they make it simple for everyone to find relevant references and resources instantly, allowing the teams to be more agile.

Find information to resolve incidents faster

A well-known furniture retail company was already using Slack for communication and collaboration. It recently participated in a Slack AI pilot program to explore how generative AI could summarize information and enhance its employee experience.

The company uses Slack AI across the organization, especially in its IT department, where it helps the team maintain uptime and quickly resolve technical issues. When a major incident occurs, the IT team uses Slack AI to capture and share meeting notes, summarize channels, and find key data from relevant conversations to get a clear picture of what needs to be done.

Make meetings more impactful with AI assistants

Meetings are a necessary part of doing business. While some meetings can be reduced to an email or direct message, there are many instances when teams need to collaborate in real time. In those cases, organizations should strive to make their meetings as effective as possible.

The best AI meeting assistant tools can help you do that. They streamline meeting administration and create comprehensive notes that encourage quick action. Use AI to make your meetings more efficient, engaging, and productive, so teams can focus in the moment and get the information they need to move forward faster.