Posts Tagged ‘Business Conference’

Audio Conferencing can Save a Road Trip

Thursday, January 26th, 2012

Audio Conferencing is one of those things that I wonder what we did without it.  And not just because I am in the business.  Conference calls are so wide spread that I just can’t imagine life without them.  Especially if you are a road warrior or even just someone who finds themselves out of the office on a regular basis.  After all let’s face it there is a lot of down time when you are on the road and there is no reason you can’t remain productive.  Because audio conferencing can really save a road trip.  There are any number of ways that conferencing can save the day on the road.

  • Attend Regular Meetings – When you are out of the office there is no need to miss the regular meetings that keep you in touch.  Simply get an audio conference set up and hold the meeting from the road.
  • Impromptu Meetings – You get the email and need to pull a group together but you are hundreds of miles away.  No problem, just use audio conferencing to pull together the people you need to discuss whatever situation is thrown at you.
  • Handle Emergencies – Every business gets hit with an emergency from time to time and customers know that as well.  It is how you handle the emergencies that will distinguish you.  Pulling together the people necessary to deal with the emergency and making sure everyone is on the same page will do a lot to contain any issues the emergency will uncover.  Audio conferencing allows you to pull together the emergency team in a moments notice no matter where you are at the time.
  • Personal Use – Yes, personal use.  I bet you have not used a conference call for your personal use before but for all the same reasons it can really help.  If there is a personal emergency or even if you just want to congratulate a son or daughter on a big accomplishment why not get everyone on the phone at the same time?

So the next time you are getting ready to go on the road and you are packing make sure you bring along audio conferencing.  You never know when you might need it and it can really save your road trip.

Posted in Audio Conferencing | Comments Off

Discounted Conference Calling Services can be Reliable

Thursday, November 3rd, 2011

If you are looking at getting a conference call service provider for your business and you have looked at some of the long distance carriers and other providers that still charge 10 cents or more a minute you may be a little skeptical of discounted conference calling services.  But just because the service is less expensive does not necessarily mean that the service is of a lower quality or less reliable.  You do still need to be careful as some of the conference call providers have not taken the same steps to ensure quality and reliability like Zip Conferencing has done.  Here are some of the areas that any discounted conference calling services company needs to pay attention to in order to maintain high quality and reliability.

  •  
    • Back Up Power - All of the equipment for conference calling services should be connected to to battery and generator back up power. This makes sure that no matter what power outages are experienced at their place of business your conference calls will not be impacted.  Zip Conferencing uses back up power systems on all of its equipment and can maintain power to these systems for an indefinite amount of time. 
    • Back Up Systems – A key component for conference calling services is the conference call bridge. This is the equipment that creates the conference calls from independent callers into the system.  It is an expensive proposition to maintain back up equipment so many discounted conference calling services companies do not take this step.  But if something happens to this equipment your conference call will be affected.  Zip Conferencing has designed their conference calling services with back up conference call bridges so that if there is ever an issue the traffic can be redirected to the back up system.
    • Telecommunications Redundancy – What happens if the long distance carrier used by the discounted conference calling services company has an outage?  If they do not have another carrier as back up you will not be able to get to your conference call.  Zip Conferencing uses multiple telecommunications carriers that insures that if one of the carriers experiences a disastrous outage they can still perform your conference call. 
    • Support – One of the areas that discounted conference calling services will differ is with support.  You may not need support very often but when you do you need it to be there for you.  Zip Conferencing offers conference calling services with an award winning support team. Our operators are monitoring our conference calling services 24/7 and can even join on your conference call if you need assistance.  No mater what time of day you can access support and get the help you need.

So, discounted conference calling services can be reliable but you need to investigate and make sure that discounted doesn’t mean your conference call quality or reliability will suffer.

Posted in Conference Calling | Comments Off

Conference Call Basics

Thursday, April 14th, 2011

Since I have been in the conference call business for over 15 years I regularly forget that most people don't understand the conference call service business.  Conference calls have become such an integral part of businesses these days it is difficult to find someone who has not been on a conference call.  But the fact is that there are a lot of people who have not been on a conference call and an even larger number who have never hosted one.  So, for these people I would like to offer some basics about how  a conference call works.

  • Automated Dial In - The type of conference call that most people are familiar with these days is the automated dial in call.  With this type of call you connect to the call by dialing an access number and then entering a passcode on your telephone to enter the conference.  Basically anyone who dials the access number and passcode at the same time will be put into the same conference call.
  • Reservationless - Another popular feature of conference calls today is called a reservationless conference call because once the conference call company provides you with the information for the call you can use it at any time without having to make a reservation.  This feature made conference calls much easier to use and is in big part the reason for the growth of conference calls over the past 15 years.
  • Hosting a Conference Call - So, maybe you have been on a reservationless automated dial in conference call but you have never hosted a call.  To host a conference call is not much more difficult than joining one as a participant.  As Host of the call you simply need to inform your participants when the conference call is going to take place and distribute the information.  Usually the Host will simply email their participants with the date, time and dial in information.  As Host you also simply need to dial in at the same time and enter a passcode to join the conference call.  That's it.
  • Host Controls - With Zip Conferencing, the Host is supplied with a different passcode than the participants.  The Host passcode enables the Host to access special features that the participants cannot access.  Host controls include the ability to mute/unmute all participants, control volume and record the conference call.  The Host is also able to control a number of aspects of the conference call through their online account management system.  Those options will be discussed in other posts here.

If you have never hosted a conference call have no fear as it is just as easy as joining one hosted by someone else.

Posted in Conference Call | Comments Off

A Business Conference Call can make all the Difference

Friday, January 14th, 2011

A business conference call can make all the difference in the success of your business.  Yet, today it is estimated that the market for conference calls has only been penetrated 58% which means that 42% of the businesses that should be doing business conference calls are not.  That is a pretty amazing statistic when you think of it.  And I bet many of you are thinking that there is no way people don’t know about using a business conference call to get people together on issues for their business.  But I can tell you from experience that a lot of businesses still are not using a business conference call yet.  I can tell through the conversation I have with potential customers that there are still a lot of people out there who are not using a business conference call for their business.  And it is hard to believe.  Especially in this economy and the number of new businesses being started up.  A business conference call offers so many benefits to your business without a large expenditure.  Large businesses are big users of business conference calls because they have long understood the benefits they get from conducting regular conference calls with their staff and customers.  Here are some of the benefits you can expect from incorporating a business conference call into your regular business processes.

  • A Business Conference Call Saves Time- When you are a small or medium business or better yet, a brand new business, the one thing you will never have enough of is time.  By utilizing a business conference call when you can you will find yourself saving valuable time that otherwise would have been spent travelling to an in person meeting.  Travel time is very unproductive even with all of today’s gadgets that help keep you informed and allow you to do work away from the office.  You can hardly be working on a document when you are walking through an airport or driving your car.  The more time you can find yourself at your desk the better you will be in the long run.  A business conference call can be used for the initial contact with the customer especially if you need to pull multiple people from your company into the discussion or if the customer has several contacts that need to hear your pitch.  And during the implementation process a business conference call can keep your project on time and make sure that everyone gets the same message all the time. 
  • A Business Conference Call Saves Money – The other thing you can’t get enough of is money.  Especially if you are starting out your capital is a precious commodity.  A business conference call is much less expensive than any in person meeting you can have with your staff or customers.  Many small businesses have staff scattered throughout the country or the world and the expense to travel to visit these people on a consistent basis is just too much.  A business conference call allows you to stay in touch with everyone for a fraction of the cost of travelling to them in person.  And the cost of the travel is one thing.  What about the cost of the hotel, meals, rental car and everything else that goes along with it?  A business conference call can save you thousands of dollars on one trip.
  • A Business Conference Call Increases Productivity – And usually if you own a small business or are just starting a new on you will never have as many people on the job as you would like.  So you need every person as productive as they can be in order to get the job done.  A business conference call allows you to stay at your desk for the meeting and return to work immediately following the conference call.  Aside from the time saving productivity you gain with a business conference call you also benefit by working together to accomplish the task and keep all informed along the way.  A business conference call can prevent a lot of back and forth communication between you and the other parties.

The bottom line is a business conference call can make all the difference in the world for your business.

Posted in Conference Call | Comments Off

Residential Conference Calls help bring Families Together for the Holidays

Tuesday, November 23rd, 2010

They are reporting that 40 million people will travel for Thanksgiving, but many families just can’t get together for a variety of reasons which makes residential conference calls important around the holidays. No doubt you have been on a business conference call at one time or another. For businesses the conference call has become an essential tool that provides savings in time and money and makes meetings possible that otherwise would not be due to the location of the participants. Residential conference calls fill the same need for families that would like to get together but just can’t physically get in the same location.

There are a number of reasons that families need to get together like a family emergency, a birth or death in the family, a wedding or around the holidays. With Thanksgiving this week many family members will make the trek to be with their family despite all of the travel hassles and expense to get there. And there is no substitute for sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner with your family. But just as many people who travel can’t make the trip for one reason or another.

Usually when a family member can’t make it we give them a call and pass the phone around the room so everyone can speak tot hem. Then when the call is over we try to piece together all that was spoken of to all the different people. Why not use a residential conference call and get everyone in the same place at the same time?

Residential conference calls can be very affordable because the number of participants is usually small since many members of the family are probably in one place and you are just trying to include the few people who couldn’t make it into your gathering. With only two or three participants total you can hold a residential conference call with Zip Conferencing for an hour for less than $10. You could even include the missing members at your table to enjoy the entire meal if you want for less than the cost of desert!

So, this holiday season if everyone can’t make it to your house why not try a residential conference call, the next best thing to being there.

Posted in Conference Calls | Comments Off

Business Conference Calling in any Economy

Monday, November 15th, 2010

I get asked all the time “How’s Business?” and since I became involved int he conference calling business in 1995 the answer has remained the same, “Business is Great!”.  That is because business conference calling makes good sense in any economy.  Certainly since 1995 I have been through growth economies and recessions and the growth of business conference calling has not really changed.  Why is that?  Well, let’s examine what is going on for businesses in a growth economy and a down economy ans see why business conference calling continues to grow in either economic condition.

Downturn in the Economy - Over the past couple of years during the recession business conference calling has continued to grow.  That is because businesses are trying to save time and money.  Saving money is easy to understand when the economy is bad.  Businesses are generally selling less and trying to conserve cash until sales pick up.  But most businesses still have to continue to sell what they can and spend less doing it.  Because business conference calling saves a lot of money compared to conducting in person meetings businesses are happy to spend money on conference calls.  When you think about the cost of getting people together, especially when they are located a great distance apart you can see why spending money on conference calls makes sense.  And in addition to saving money on travel, business conference calling save a great amount of time as well.  In a down economy businesses are trying to do with less resources because sales are off and they can’t afford to carry the same staff.  But they still have work to do and meetings to attend with customers and prospects.  Business conference calling really helps businesses to put what resources they have on the job and spread those resources over more responsibilities.  Someone can sit at their desk and through business conference calling attend meetings across the country all day.

Growing Economy – In a growing economy companies are trying everything they can think of to get the most out of the situation.  And many times the growth in the economy follows a period of downturn in the economy.  During the downturn businesses have laid people off and now they are trying to keep up with the growth with the resources they have so business conference calling can really help.  Someone can get more work done than if they attempted to attend all of the business meetings in person.  Sales can get to more prospects in a day using business conference calling than if they tried to attend all meetings in person.  And even in a growing economy saving money is always welcome.  So if your business is trying to get more done with less resources and save money doing it business conference calling makes all the sense in the world.

So it really doesn’t matter what the economy is doing.  Business conference calling continues to grow because it makes a lot of sense to businesses of all sizes.

Posted in Conference Calling | Comments Off

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.

Posted in Conference Call | Comments Off

Residential Conference Calls

Monday, March 29th, 2010

Just about everyone has done a conference call in their business life.  Conference calls have become universally known for their convenience and ability to save people time and money compared to an in person meeting.  But can you also use a conference call service for your residential conference call needs?  Sure you can, here are some of the uses we have seen for residential conference calls.

  • Family Party Planning – Many times you may want to have a party with your family and you need to work on logistics like during the holidays.  If you have a dispersed family and you need to get everyone on the same page a conference call will allow you to get all of the family members on the same page.
  • Family Emergencies- If you have a family emergency you need to deal with such as a death or hospitalization of a family member and you need to coordinate with the other family members you can do a conference call to get together more easily.
  • Birth of a child – A new family member is a great excuse to get everyone on the phone so you can celebrate with everyone in the family.
  • Local Organization – If you have a local club or organization that you organize you can use a conference call to coordinate your efforts with the other members of the organization.

Basically, anything you can think of where you need to get multiple parties together to discuss something you can coordinate with a conference call.  Conference call rates have gotten low enough where even for residential conference calls it makes sense rather than an in person meeting if you would like to save money and time.

Posted in Conference Calls | Comments Off

Conference Calling goes Mainstream

Thursday, October 15th, 2009

I have had the fortune to be involved in a few industries as they have gone from the early adoption phase to the accepted norm stage.  I was in the telecommunications industry shortly after the divestiture of AT&T.  I was in the paging industry as it grew wildly and then died just as quickly with the adoption of the cell phone.  And then I joined the conference call industry and over the past 14+ years I have seen the conference call service industry go from a niche application mostly used by the legal industry to a widely used business tool.  Conference calling has truly reached the level of mainstream acceptance.

I am not sure how an expert would judge whether conference calling has reached mainstream acceptance, but I am sure the growth of the industry is certainly one of the factors.  And no one can deny that the conference calling industry has been fortunate to realize exponential growth over the past 14 years.  One of the biggest factors for the growth in the conference calling industry is the change to a reservationless system where you don’t need an operator or schedule a conference call with anyone.  The ease of use of conference call technology has also contributed to the growth.

When I started in the conference calling industry we received many calls from people at businesses who were trying to understand how to get multiple parties on the conference call and they really were not familiar with the technology.  Now we receive calls from people who have inevitably been on a conference call but maybe they have never hosted a conference call before, but now plan to use the service.  The method of conference calling has become somewhat standardized and everyone seems to know what the experience will be like on a conference call.  So, now we spend a lot more time telling customers about the benefits of our service over others and educating them on the small differences between conference call service companies instead of educating them on how a conference call works. 

But probably one of the biggest indicators I have seen in the past few years that conference calling has hit the mainstream is the use of conference calls for personal use.  Because so many people have been exposed at work to conference calls, they are now finding applications in their personal lives to use conference calling.  The wide availability and lower costs of conference calling have really helped this new area of applications.  We have had people use conference calling for wedding and event planning like family reunions where the participants are not able to meet physically.  Recently we even had a family use a conference call so that the missing family members could attend a grave side service because they all could not attend the service in person.  I think that the conference call industry will continue to grow with the advent of new applications as more and more people think up new ways that they can use conference calling to their benefit.

www.zipconferencing.com

 that is widely used

Posted in Conference Calling | Comments Off