Posts Tagged ‘Applications’

A Conference Call for a Company Announcement

Monday, October 18th, 2010

A customer recently called and needed to speak to all of their employees quickly in order to make an announcement about the acquisition of the company.  They are not a regular conference call user but thought that it may suit their needs.  Well, needless to say, this company was so impressed by the capabilities of our service they have since become a regular user of conference calls for more applications within their business.  Why are conference calls so well suited to making a company announcement?

Many times a company announcement is necessary to quickly get the word out to employees about an important milestone in your company’s history. A conference call is best suited for these types of announcements because it would otherwise be impossible in most cases to get the employees together quickly. Many times the employees are scattered around the country or around the world and just can’t physically get together that easily. Then there is the cost of getting everyone together. Even if you have the time to pull everyone together the cost of getting a group of employees together can be exorbitant. A conference call allows you to get the employees together quickly and easily for a relatively small amount of money.

Depending on the size of the group you may want to customize your conference call with some features that will make the call a success. With Zip Conferencing you can do this yourself by selecting the conference options you want on the conference call through your own interface. A couple of options I would recommend would be the Music on Hold option and silence entry and exit. Music on Hold makes it so your participants will listen to music until the moderator joins the conference call. Otherwise a large group of participants will be making noise and your audience will wonder when the conference call will begin. Entry and exit tones silenced for the conference call will also reduce distracting noises for the participants and the moderator alike. Another conference call option you may want use is muting all participants. As moderator of the call you have the ability to mute all participants on the conference call. That way your audience will not hear any distracting noises while you make your announcement. After you have made your announcement you can then open up the lines for questions or comments.

With Zip Conferencing you can host up to 300 participants on a conference call and do a company announcement without having to pull all of the employees together.

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Conference calls because of a volcano?

Monday, May 10th, 2010

Okay, I have been in the conference call industry since 1995 and I have seen a lot of applications for conference calls.  There have also been events that have triggered the use of conference calls like 9/11, but I have to admit this is the first time I have seen an increase in conference calls because of a volcano.  But then the volcano in Iceland obviously caused a lot more interruptions than any other volcano in recent history.  And when travel is interrupted the use of conference calls goes up.  And it always seems that when people are forced to use conference calls and web conferencing because of an event they realize how easy the services are to use and how effective they can be at allowing you to have a distance meeting.

And why wait for a volcanic eruption to discover how conference calls can save you time, money and increase your productivity?  Businesses have discovered for a long time that using conference calls and web conferencing to replace some of your in person meetings is not just he practical thing to do but simply a good business decision.  Let’s face it, most meetings we have are not necessary to have in person.  You are simply communicating with people you know and sharing ideas, advancing a project or doing a presentation.  Unless you need to do something physically with the participants or desire to shake hands all of this can be done remotely.  And even as a staunch promoter of conference calls I understand that sometimes you need to get together with the other participants to build a relationship.  And doing that remotely is difficult if not impossible.  So, have your initial meeting in person, break some bread but then have the next meeting by way of a conference call or web conference.  All of the participants will be thankful of the time saved in getting together physically.

So, don’t wait for the volcano to make you try a conference call or a web conference.  It is time to incorporate distance meetings into your regular way of doing business.  And then if something happens that prevents your next inperson meeting you will not feel the impact.  You and your participants will be thankful for the conference calls!

 

Conference calls and web conferences can truly offer a reliable substitute for in person meetings.  I certainly agree that there is no substitute for sitting around a conference table together

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Conference Calls in Healthcare

Thursday, November 19th, 2009

There is a lot of talk surrounding healthcare these days, so I thought I would point out some of the many applications for conference calls in the Healthcare industry.  Although healthcare is a largely one on one experience ina local surrounding, the healthcare industry is actually a large user of audio conferencing and web conferencing.  Just like any other business, the Healthcare industry tackles many of the same issues on a daily basis as any other industry and is always looking for ways to reduce costs and improve productivity.

For physicians, using a conference call is mainly done as a participant.  Doctors regularly are being trained on the latest techniques and therapies to assist their patients and many times these trainings are done remotely using audio conferencing and web conferencing.  Not only are the doctors incented to attend these training seminars, but the companies that are vendors in this industry are also incented to conduct the training seminar.  Pharmaceutical companies for instance need to promote their drugs and what better way then to hold a free seminar for doctors that describes the drug, its uses, efficacy and side effects.  That way the doctors are getting the information first hand from the experts on the drug.  And by conducting the training seminar using a conference call and a web conference, the drug company is able to reach more doctors in less time and much more cost effectively than if they attempted an in person meeting.  In addition, the drug companies have found that getting a doctor to attend a remote meeting via a conference call is easier than trying to get them to take the time to meet at a location.  Even as a participant, the doctors benefit from attending the seminar via a conference call by reducing their cost and increasing their productivity.

Another user of conference calls and web conferencing you may not expect are the hospitals.  Many times hospitals are regional in nature and have affiliations with other hospital location in an area.  The administration offices are often shared to reduce their overhead.  So, you have a business that has multiple locations where employees need to share information and meet on a regular basis.  The perfect scenario for the use of conference calls and web conferencing.  Similarly, physician and nurse staffing organizations exist that supply personnel to hospitals and healthcare clinics across a regional area and also need to communicate with their employees via conference calls.  And another maybe obvious example is when there is a company that owns multiple walk in healthcare clinics across an area.  These are basically small outlets for healthcare that are part of the same company spread across a region.  Like any other business, the managers of the locations are in need of regular communication with headquarters and are big users of conference calls and web conferencing.

Yes, like most industries, the Healthcare industry finds many benefits by using conference calls and web conferencing.

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Conference Calls in the Courts

Monday, September 21st, 2009

In the past 14 plus years I have seen conference calls used in a variety of applications that I would not have thought of myself.  As people in different industries became familiar with conference calls and how they worked, they developed applications within their businesses themselves.  One of the applications that uses conference calls very effectively is in the court system. 

Many of you may have heard of or seen the application of video conferencing in the court system where a defendant is able to appear before a judge without the need to leave the jail and appear in person.  Well, it seems there is a place for conference calls as well.  Our company was approached by a court clerk about the possibility of using conference calls to allow attorneys, defendants and litigants to appear before a judge without the need to physically appear in the courtroom.  With the very crowded legal system it was thought that this would save valuable court time and offer advantages to the participants as well.  So, we designed a method of bringing people before the judge in an orderly fashion and it saved the judge the time and effort of getting in front of the participants.  Because, in many areas of the country a judge appears in several court rooms across a wide area because they do not have a dedicated judge for the court.  And many of the appearances are pre-trial non-evidentiary appearances that do not require an in person appearance.  Thus the court conference call was born.

This practice still exists today and is widely used in many parts of the country.  It has saved countless hours of time and energy for the courts, attorneys and their clients.  The way it works is a conference call is set up for the participants on the date and time of their appearance.  The attorneys and their clients dial into the conference call and the judge will go through the courts docket over the conference call just as if the participants were in the courtroom.  Everyone agrees to appear on the telephone a head of time and the conference call can be attended from anywhere.  The clients save money because the attorney does not take all day to go to the court to attend a minor proceeding that otherwise only takes a few minutes.

Sometimes the best conference call applications are the ones that the customers think up for themselves.

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Conference Calls Explode

Friday, June 19th, 2009

I have been in the conference call business since 1995.  At that time many people had not even been on a conference call and web conferencing was little more than an idea.  Over 50 % of the conference calls we ran back then were operator assisted because the concept of running a reservationless conference call was foreign to most people.  Now the technology has made it simple to run a conference call from any phone at any time without the need to schedule the call and web conferencing and sharing your desktop with someone thousands of miles away is just a few clicks away.  It has been an amazing ride and newer technology promises to make conference calls even easier and more compelling for the customers than ever.  No wonder the amount of conference call minutes has exploded to over 40 billion minutes a year and is expected to continue to grow to over 70 billion minutes by 2012.  Zip Conferencing is poised to bring you the best technology the industry has to offer at rates that make the service affordable to everyone.  Never before has this technology been so easy to use and so affordable.  In this blog I hope to bring you some of the conference call applications used by customers across many industries in hopes it will help you find a way to improve communication in your company.  I welcome any input and feedback on Zip Conferencing, questions about our services, the web site and I hope you will share the ways that you are using conference calls and the benefits they bring to you.  Just like the technology itself promotes, there are power in numbers and sharing makes us all better.  Enjoy!

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