AI meeting notes: What should you look for?
September 6, 2024
Meetings contain critical information that teams need to reference and act on. Research shows that 80% of meeting content is forgotten within a week, and finding specific discussions across teams is challenging when documentation is scattered, incomplete, or missing entirely. AI meeting notes tools solve these problems by automatically capturing and organizing meeting content.
AI meeting notes platforms provide four primary deliverables:
Transcripts create a word-for-word record of the meeting. For example, a one-hour product development meeting generates a searchable document containing every feature discussion, technical requirement, and team decision.
Action items are pulled directly from the conversation. When someone says "John will update the wireframes by Friday," the AI automatically creates a tracked task with the assignee and deadline.
Meeting summaries distill hour-long conversations into 2-3 paragraphs. A 45-minute sprint planning meeting becomes a concise overview of sprint goals, resource allocation, and key decisions.
Topic segmentation breaks discussions into labeled sections. A client call covering multiple projects is automatically divided into sections like "Website Redesign," "Q1 Marketing Campaign," and "Budget Review."
Here are some examples of how those play out:
Marketing teams planning campaigns can capture every creative suggestion without pausing for notes. Imagine generating 47 tagline options in 30 minutes because no one had to stop and write them down.
Finance teams preparing budget reports save hours of manual documentation. Instead of spending 2-3 hours writing up a quarterly budget review, the AI generates an accurate summary with all key figures in minutes.
IT teams tracking technical requirements ensure nothing is missed. You could reduce requirement-related bugs by implementing AI notes to capture all technical discussions and decisions.
What does your team need from AI meeting notes?
Accuracy
Transcript accuracy directly impacts productivity. A 95% accurate transcript of a 30-minute meeting takes 5 minutes to correct. An 85% accurate transcript can take 30 minutes or more to fix—negating the time-saving benefits.
Speaker identification must be reliable. For example, in a 10-person meeting, manually labeling speakers takes an average of 15 minutes. AI tools that learn to recognize voices can eliminate this task entirely.
Accessibility
System implementation should take hours, not weeks. Example: A 500-person company should be able to deploy the tool across all teams in less than one business day.
Regular use needs minimal training. New users should be able to start recording and accessing meeting notes within 5 minutes of installing the tool.
File sharing must integrate with existing workflows. Teams should be able to automatically send meeting summaries to Slack channels, push action items to Asana, or share transcripts via Google Drive.
Compatibility
Your AI meeting notes platform must work with:
Meeting software: Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Webex, BlueJeans
Communication tools: Slack, Microsoft Teams, Discord
Project management: Jira, Asana, Monday.com, Trello, ClickUp
Document storage: Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, Box
Features to compare in AI meeting transcript apps
Summaries
Effective meeting summaries include:
Discussion topics listed in order of time spent
Explicit decisions marked with timestamps
Action items with assignees and deadlines
Key metrics or numbers mentioned
Follow-up questions requiring resolution
Archives
Meeting archives should provide:
Full-text search across all meetings
Filters by date, participant, topic, and project
Jump-to-timestamp video playback
Automated topic tagging
Custom metadata fields
Example search capabilities:
Find all meetings where "pricing strategy" was discussed
Show every time "Project X" was mentioned by the CEO
List all action items assigned to Sarah in Q1
Locate every budget decision made in 2024
AI Assistants
AI assistants should handle specific tasks like:
Converting meeting discussions into formatted email updates
Creating Jira tickets from action items
Generating agenda suggestions based on past meetings
Identifying topics that need follow-up in future meetings
Integrations
Essential integration features include:
Two-way calendar sync with Google Calendar and Outlook
Automatic posting of summaries to Slack channels
Direct export of action items to task management tools
Custom webhook support for workflow automation
Comparing different AI transcription apps? Ask these questions...
AI Functionality
Specific features to evaluate:
Can it identify and tag repeated customer objections?
Does it recognize when deadlines or commitments change?
Can it generate different summary formats for different audiences?
How accurately does it capture technical terminology?
Free vs Paid Plans
Compare specific metrics:
Cost per user per month
Storage limits (e.g., 10GB vs unlimited)
Maximum meeting duration
Number of integrations included
Transcription hours per month
Security + Compliance
Required security features:
AES-256 encryption for data at rest
SOC 2 Type II certification
Custom data retention periods
Role-based access controls
Audit logs for all user actions
The Circleback Approach to AI Meeting Notes
Circleback delivers enterprise-grade meeting documentation with industry-leading accuracy. Our platform achieves 98% transcription accuracy for English-language meetings and supports speaker identification across 12 languages.
Key differentiators include:
Automated action item tracking with progress monitoring
Advanced search functionality across all meeting content
Custom workflow automation with 100+ app integrations
Enterprise security with SOC 2 Type II compliance