Technically great, but branding and pricing make it a tough sell
August 19, 2020

Technically great, but branding and pricing make it a tough sell

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with BlueJeans

Prior to the quarantine, BlueJeans was our preferred video conference solution for the entire organization. Since quarantine, many users have opted to also use Zoom. They have no technical or business reason to do so besides they like saying the name.

Pros

  • Best audio quality
  • Integration with the dolby conference phone
  • Command center

Cons

  • Re-brand the product to something more business-friendly and promote it. Many people don't know the name and/or find it silly. Having to explain the meaning of the name to clients and co-workers and then they think it's more of a consumer or small business product and then I have to explain its an enterprise-focused service that takes quality and security more seriously than Zoom. Cue the awkward silence and then someone more important than me telling me how much they love saying the word Zoom and telling me we should switch. A huge opportunity was missed by not capitalizing on all the bad press Zoom received earlier this year. Now everyone just wants to "zoom" and think all the bad press was unwarranted.
  • Sales and billing are painful. Enterprise accounts are overpriced and fencing them off from the other plans is completely unnecessary and feels like a money grab. We originally went with BlueJeans for the interoperability with Polycom and Cisco systems, but other solutions now offer that and they price it so it's just a company-wide add-on that doesn't require special overpriced user accounts. When my CEO asked why they were so expensive, I mentioned the Polycom interoperability and he told me "no one uses Polycom any more".
  • Keep everything separate from Verizon. The product and service work great. Don't attempt to fix what isn't broken. Too many success stories right now where acquisitions are more successful when they are left alone by their parent companies. The primary issues are branding/promotion and sales/billing. Calling it "BlueJeans by Verizon" or re-branding to anything else that relates to Verizon creates even more confusion. People think they it means they need Verizon cellphone plan to use it or they have had a negative experience with Verizon in the past and now they relate that negative experience with BlueJeans. For most Verizon users, the company and the service work just "fine". It's not Apple-level fandom. The service costs more than their competitors, but consumers and businesses know they pay for their coverage and maybe their support if they have an issue. They don't see the Verizon name on another product and think they want it because it works just "fine" or they will pay more for something that works just as good as other products that are free or more ubiquitous.
  • All the video conferencing services are hoping to win all the customers. It's not going to happen. Everyone has their preferred service for many different reasons. BlueJeans should become a service that can connect to all the other services. I know Dolby Voice Room can technically do something like that, but it's basically just a SIP/H.323 endpoint that can connect to other providers that support the protocol, but not many users opt for that feature since it costs extra and they aren't sure what it actually is.
  • BlueJeans has the best audio quality of any provider. All the infrastructure is there to create an audio-only service. I know its possible to use BlueJeans for audio-only video calls, but it's against the terms of service and I'm referring to something like a fully hosted SIP provider. 10 digit phone numbers, voicemail, texting, extension numbers, call transferring, hold, and conferencing. Desk phones and/or SIP compatibility. Full replacement for PBX systems and existing hosted SIP solutions.
  • Still, no feature to see more than 9 simultaneous callers. I have users/teams who use Zoom just because it has that one feature. Instead, the virtual backgrounds feature was released. No enterprise users asked for that.
  • Hard to put an ROI number to it, but BlueJeans enabled us to avoid replacing some old Polycom systems.
I chose BlueJeans for the integration with Polycom and Cisco Room systems. The audio quality and Dolby rooms have kept us with the service.
If someone is looking for the best audio quality or integration with a conference phone, I would recommend BlueJeans. I recommend it for the command center. Hard to recommend it otherwise, with so many cheaper and more popular options out there.

BlueJeans Meetings (discontinued) Feature Ratings

High quality audio
10
High quality video
8
Low bandwidth requirements
6
Mobile support
6
Desktop sharing
7
Whiteboards
Not Rated
Calendar integration
6
Meeting initiation
5
Record meetings / events
5
Slideshows
5

Comments

  • Lee Snyder | TrustRadius Reviewer
    Hello, Thank you for taking the time to provide your detailed feedback! We strive to make the BlueJeans ease of use as frictionless as possible, and we sincerely apologize that we fell short in a few categories. If there is anything that we can do to help with any of these issues, please send an email over to communitysupport@bluejeans.com or use the link below: https://support.bluejeans.com/s/contactsupport.

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