Archive for January, 2010

Managing Large Conference Calls

Friday, January 22nd, 2010

There was a time when you would not even think about running an automated conference call for 20 or more participants.  If you were going to run a conference call of that size you would run the conference call with the assistance of an operator.  And even today, an Operator Assisted call might be the right conference call solution depending on your application, but the conference call technology has gotten to where running a large automated conference call is manageable if you know a few tricks.

The main problem with running a large conference call is the noise the audience can introduce during the call.  It is bad enough when there are just 4 or 5 participants and one of them introduces noise because they are on a cell phone, rustling papers on their desk, talking to people in their room, etc.  Just imagine having 100 people on the call.  The odds that someone is going to make noise during the conference call are pretty good.  In fact, virtually certain.  So, what can you do to hold an orderly conference call with a large audience?  Here are a few tips to make for a successful large conference call.

  • Turn Off any Tones –  Most conference call service companies provide tones on the conference clal so you know when a participant joins the call.  This is fine when you have 5 people on the conference call, but can be more than a distraction when there are 20 or more.
  • Mute All – The conference calling service should provide  a way to mute all participants as the Moderator of the conference call. 
  • Use an online interface if offered – Some conference call service companies offer an online conference call interface that allows you to see the callers and control the audio portion of the conference call.  This can be very helpful, especially if you intend to open up to questions from the audience.  That way you can see the callers and manage the call easier.
  • Use Web Conferencing – In addition to enhancing your conference call with visual presentations, a web conference can allow you to manage a Q&A session better than just using an audio conference.  With a Web Conference you are giving your participants a way to raise their hand for questions and a way for you to open up an individual line to allow them to ask their question.
  • Practice – The best thing you can do to insure your success with a large conference call is to run a practice session to make sure you are familiiar with all of the conference call controls and how to use them.

If you follow these tips you can run a large conference call successfully without the need to use an expensive Operator Assisted Conference Call.

www.zipconferencing.com

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Conference Call Hosting – Take Control of your Meetings

Tuesday, January 19th, 2010

If you are the organizer of a meeting, you are responsible for the meeting’s success.  When the meeting is a conference call there are a few things you can do to make sure you have an effective meeting.  Just like in a face to face meeting you need to establish control of the meeting right up front so that everyone knows you are in charge and what the ground rules are going to be.  Here are some ways to take control of the conference call if you are the host.

  • Be on Time – Especially as the Host of the conference call it is important that you are on time and that the participants know that the meeting will start on time.  This is respectful of the time of your participants and you will find that over time you will get better participation if they know the conference call will start and end on time.
  • Have an Agenda – Even if it is a skeletal outline of what is to be discussed, an agenda distributed ahead of the conference call will give the participants an opportunity to prepare for the meeting.  Participants are much more likely to participate if they are comfortable with the material being discussed and are ready for the topics.
  • Establish and Hold to a time frame – Make sure that you end the conference call on time.  Many times participants have back to back meetings and ending on time or ahead of schedule will encourage ongoing participation on the conference call. 
  • Eliminate or reduce any noise – With so many conference call participants joining the conference call by using a cell phone these days it is almost impossible for someone to not introduce noise into the conference call.  As a conference call Host you can mute all of the participants if there is no need for active participation in the beginning of your conference call and then open up all of the lines for discussion later in the conference call.  This will eliminate the introduction of any noise into the conference call.  Or you should make sure that participants know to mute themselves unless they are speaking in order to eliminate any introduction of noise into the conference call.
  • Encourage orderly participation – Ask your participants to introduce themselves when they are speaking so that all of the participants on the conference call know who is speaking.  And, as Host it is your job to act as gate keeper for who is speaking as well.
  • Review the Action Items and Next Steps – At the end of the call you should review what was discussed, review any actions items and who is responsible for them and then make sure everyone knows when the next conference call is if necessary.

As Host of the conference call you can ensure your success by taking charge of your meetings.

www.zipconferencing.com

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Conference Calls for Emergencies

Thursday, January 14th, 2010

First of all, let me offer my most sincere condolences to all in Haiti who have lost loved ones in this terrible earthquake.  I know that the US and the rest of the world is working as fast as they can speed help to that country and I wish them all the best in this difficult time.  Certainly in a disaster like this many resources have to be pulled together to muster the kind of support necessary to attack the problem.  And a great deal of coordination needs to happen to have all of the resources work effectively together to speed the recovery process.  Conference calls are an excellent way to pull together the various people and agencies to coordinate their efforts.

A major disaster like the one in Haiti does not happen every day, thankfully, but it is easy to see how communication is important to help provide the kind of coordination necessary between the various agencies.  Conference calls allow people to connect without the need to be in person and in this case across the world.  Since conference calls are accessible from around the world there is no limit to the where the people are located on the conference calls.  Participants from various countries can even get together to help coordinate their efforts.

As a small business owner the ability to coordinate global efforts using conference calls probably won’t apply to you.  But having a conference call service ready in case of a disaster for your company is a really good idea.  Emergencies in your business could happen at any time and being able to communicate with the rest of your staff and do it quickly can sometimes mean the difference between a small inconvenience and a total disaster. 

Take for example the case of the wrong price being put into a flyer for your business.  You just figured out that the price that is about to be distributed says $9.99 when it should be $99.99.  Pulling together the Marketing department, the printer and distributor on a conference call may give you an opportunity to head off the distribution before it goes out and determine a good course of action to rectify the situation.  If you had to make separate phone calls instead of pulling together all the parties on a conference call you will lose valuable time.  And in that time you might miss the window of opportunity to head off the distribution of the ad.  This is but one example of an issue that could be dealt with more easily with a conference call.

Whatever business you are in you may at one point experience an emergency that you need to deal with.  Being prepared for that emergency is key because time is short and dealing with the emergency expeditiously can mean the difference between a small issue and a huge emergency.  It costs nothing to get a set of conference call information and keep it at hand for just such an emergency.  Because when time is critical, a conference call can help reduce the time it takes to respond in an emergency situation.

www.zipconferencing.com

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Web Conferencing for Remote Support

Tuesday, January 12th, 2010

Web conferencing has been adopted by sales organizations around the world as a way to do a presentation for a prospect from your desktop,  greatly reducing travel expenses and increasing productivity.  It is also widely recognized for its remote training abilities which allows participants to take a training class without the costly need to travel to a central location.  But another application for web conferencing that is being used, but maybe not as widely known is for the support of customers and employees remotely to troubleshoot software on their desktops.

Since web conferencing allows participants to see each other’s computer screens regardless of the application that is running.  It allows a technical support person to view the PC of a customer or employee which assists them in more easily diagnosing an issue.  A remote participant does not need to try to describe the issue they are having because the technician will be able to see exactly what they are talking about on the web conference.  And if the participant allows it, the technician can even take control of the remote user’s PC and fix the problem while the participant sits back and watches them do the work.

Needless to say, this application for web conferencing is a win-win for the company supporting the product and the customer, since the problem is fixed easily and quickly and any interpretation errors on exactly what the issue is are avoided because the technician is actually viewing the PC themselves.  Like all of the conference call services, the web conferencing in this application saves any travel costs that may have been associated with the service and makes the technician that much more productive since they can handle many of these types of service calls using web conferencing instead of travelling to customer locations.  In many cases, if you are selling your product across the country or around the world, travelling to customer locations to support your product is not even practical.  Especially for a small business that is trying to support their product, web conferencing offers a way to provide their customers an excellent level of service without spending a lot of money.  Supporting your customers using web conferencing just makes good business sense.

www.zipconferencing.com

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Are Conference Calls Too Convenient?

Friday, January 8th, 2010

We are more connected than ever before.  Between the email, voice mail and BlackBerry or other PDA it is difficult to escape the endless stream of information from your work and personal life.  It just seems to me we are heading to where there is no escaping work and like many of the other modern day work convenience maybe conference calls are getting too convenient.

Let’s face it, you can do a conference call from anywhere.  Just like you can talk to people from anywhere, I don’t even want to know all the places that calls are done from, conference calls are as convenient as your next cell phone call.  When cell phones first came out the conference call service industry would discourage people from using them on a cell phone because they introduced a lot of noise and the networks were such that a dropped call during the conference call was pretty much a certainty.  So, naturally our customers would call us and complain about the conference call service because they were losing participants during the call of there was a lot of noise on the call.  And inevitably when our operators would join the conference call we would identify the culprit and most times it was a participant on the conference call on a cell phone.  Well that has certainly changed.  Now most of the participants on a conference call are probably on a cell phone.  With the cell phone networks improvement and better equipment you can join and participate on a conference call from anywhere you can get a cell phone signal.  And that is just about anywhere.

And now that people can get you just about anywhere they can also get you just about anytime.  People seem to expect that since you have a cell phone than I should be able to reach anytime, anywhere.  So, before when you would schedule a conference call with Asia, for instance, the participants would schedule the conference call for a time that was good for all concerned, knowing that people needed to be in the office during normal work hours to conduct the call.  But know it seems that people just assume you can get on a call anytime.  My wife, for instance, is regularly asked to attend conference calls with other parts of the world at all hours of the night.  The other night she had three conference calls from 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm at night with Australia and Asia.  They just don’t seem to think that there are any boundaries since you are always accessible.

So, what do you think?  Are conference calls too convenient?

www.zipconferencing.com

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Conference Call Security

Thursday, January 7th, 2010

The big buzz word these days in the news is security, so I thought it might be appropriate to spend a little time to discuss conference call security.  In general conference calls are pretty secure.  It israther difficult to tap into a conference call from the conference call service provider side of things.  The conference call equipment is located in a secure environment, its directly connected to carrier networks and each piece of conference call service equipment has thousands of participants on hundreds of calls.  It would be pretty difficult to tap into a piece of conference call service equipment unless you are an operator for the conference call service company and listen in on a particular conference call.  That having been said, there are some people who want to make sure that their conference call is secure so here are some options on making a conference call even more secure.

  • Change the conference call passcode frequently – Many people use the same conference call pass code for all of their conference calls.  Like any password you have it is good practice to regularly change the passcode so that it cannot be compromised.
  • Add a PIN number to the conference call passcode – With some conference call service companies you can add an additional PIN number for each participant that requires them to input in order to join the conference call.  This adds a layer of security and identifies them on the conference call.
  • Lock the conference call – Most conference call service companies allow you to lock the conference call so that additional participants cannot enter the conference call after it is locked.  This feature usually locks out any operators from the conference call service company as well.
  • Monitor the conference call from your PC – Some conference call service companies provide a feature that allows you to monitor and control your conference call through a web interface on your PC.  That way you can see the participants and make sure that only the participants you have invited are on the conference call.
  • Roll Call – Whether using a PC interface or through the telephone you can usually automate a roll call with the participants on a conference call so that you know who is on the call.
  • Music on Hold – If you are concerned about the participants being able to speak before the Moderator joins or use the conference call information without the Moderator you can make it so that the conference call will not start without the Moderator and keeps the participants on hold with music.
  • End Conference when Moderator Exits – You can also configure a conference call so that when the Moderator exits the conference call ends and hangs up on the remaining participants.  This will also prevent the participants from being able to hold a conference call without the Moderator.

Even with all of these options there is no guarantee of security as someone could tap into an individual phone line like any phone conversation, but these conference call security measures will prevent the majority of any security concerns on a conference call.  All of these features are available with Zip Conferencing.

www.zipconferencing.com

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Conference Calls and the Entrepreneur

Wednesday, January 6th, 2010

The US Government is doing everything it can to help small businesses as they realize that this is the best way to grow the economy and create jobs.  And even though the funding has loosened up a little, the biggest issue still is getting money from investors to the entrepreneurs so that they can get the businesses off the ground.  But luckily, things have come back to where private investors are getting back into the market and businesses are finding funding sources.  But one of the things I have heard is that the investors are still a little gun shy and want to get involved in their investments and get as much information as they can get.  Conference calls are once again the best way to provide this much needed communication line for the investors and the most cost effective way for the entrepreneur to keep them informed.

Conference calls allow the small business owner to keep their investors informed without the need to hold a costly in person meeting.  Everyone wins in this situation.  The investors are able to stay informed regarding the business matters, the entrepreneur is able to communicate effectively and important to both, the business is able to conserve much needed capital.  Without conference calls, the amount of information flow would be reduced and expenses would go up not helping anyone.

In addition, conference calls are an excellent way for the employees of the business to communicate regularly at a low cost.  Many times a small business is spread out with few resources and simply can’t afford face to face meetings every time they need to communicate the many changes that their business inevitably goes through when it is young.

So, if you are thinking about starting a business these days and wondering what you may need to get started, you should definitely consider getting a conference call service account.  Because conference calls and the entrepreneur are a perfect match.

www.zipconferencing.com

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Building the Best Conference Call Service in the World

Tuesday, January 5th, 2010

I have been in the conference call service industry since 1995 and in that time I have seen a number of conference call service companies from the inside out.  That is how I have been able to set out on my own and go about building the best conference call service company in the world.

When I first started to put ideas to paper on starting Zip Conferencing I began to put down all the ideas that have worked well for me over the years.  Naturally I would like to have a successful business.  But I also wanted to put into practice some of the ideas that may not be the most profitable ideas if you only look on the balance sheet, but provide a great amount of satisfaction for the customers.  Because I believe if you satisfy your customers you will be successful.  No one can sell your service better than a satisfied customer and it is always easier to retain a customer than gain a new one.  Some of the features of Zip Conferencing are simply there to make the conference call service experience better for our customers.

  • High Quality – You don’t have to worry about whether the call is going to work.
  • Feature Rich – The features available for our conference call and web conferencing services are hard to beat.
  • Self Service – I believe that customers would much rather service themselves, if you make it easy, than call into a call center, wait on hold, only to speak to an anonymous voice who may or may not do what you want them to do.  And will probably not tell you what the options are in the first place.  Zip Conferencing has an easy to use self service online account center that enables you to control just about every aspect of your account.
  • Dedicated Support – Every Zip Conferencing customer gets a name of a representative they can contact for assistance.  And out support is available 24/7 365 days a year.
  • Low Cost – I want our services to be available to businesses of all sizes.

The combination of these conference call service features are a culmination of my years of experience and desire to satisfy customer wants and desires for a conference call service company.  I think if you compare to other conference call service companies you will see that Zip Conferencing is built to be the best conference call service company in the world.

www.zipconferencing.com

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