Posts Tagged ‘Conference Call’
Wednesday, March 10th, 2010
It would be very easy to offer a conference call price comparison if conference calling prices were like long distance calling. Long distance calling is all pretty much the same and priced the same. A long distance call simply connects you to another location and every company prices that connection on a per minute basis, or used to anyway. But the point is there is not a lot of difference in the service or price of the service. For a conference call price comparison you need to understand the differences in the services so you can understand the pricing. Only then can you do an apples to apples price comparison. Here are the main areas where you need to investigate a conference call service companies offer.
- Toll or Toll Free - One of the ways many conference call service companies offer a low rate is by providing a low rate for Toll Access to the conference call. The problem with this type of access is that you and your participants are incurring hidden charges in the form of long distance charges for connecting to this local or toll number which is not local to you. Especially if you are inviting customers to the call you do not want them to incur any toll charges to connect to your conference call.
- Flat Rate - Some conference call service companies offer a flat monthly rate for unlimited conference calls. There are two issues with this type of conference call access. The first is you are usually limited in the number of participants who can join the call. The second is you are going to access the conference call via a toll or local number and incur those long distance charges. Toll free access is like a long distance call and costs the conference call service company so you will not see it offered for a flat rate.
- Monthly Subscription Plans - Some conference call service companies offer a discount if you subscribe to a monthly plan. You should take advantage of these plans if you can but make sure to select a plan that fits your usage pattern and calculate the rate based on the minutes you will do for comparison purposes.
- Volume Discounts - Some conference call service companies offer a volume discount based on reaching a certain amount of volume. This is good, but make sure your price comparison is based on your usage pattern as many people do not generate as much conference call volume as they think.
The best way to do a conference call price comparison is to first determine what your usage is or is going to be and then boil down offers to a per minute rate. I would recommend you only use the toll free rate for comparison purposes as this is the way that most people will use the service. Conference call service companies offer a wide variety of features so you should also make sure they have the features you are looking for as well.
Tags: Conference Call, conference call price comparison, Conference Call Service, Conference Calling, Conference Calls
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Monday, March 8th, 2010
One of the surest ways to get traffic to your web site is to give something away for free. But how is it that a service that a lot of people are willing to pay for can be offered by another company for free. Well, I have gone through free conference calls before and explained how that can happen, but what about free web conferencing?
A conference call service company that provides web conferencing to its customers has to pay for a number of things in order to provide the service. Some of those cost items include the following.
- Software development - If the conference call service company has developed the service themselves then they had to pay to have the software developed in the first place. And like any software you develop the development doesn’t end there. There are on going improvements, bug fixes and so forth to fund.
- Reseller fees- Some conference call services don’t develop their own software, they simply resell someone elses technology. In this case there is always a cost to the company who is reselling the service.
- Hosting environment - If you are supporting your own software you need to have a server or servers depending on the number of users to host the software and make it available to your customers.
- Internet Connectivity- If you are hosting your own web conferencing service you need to connect it to the internet and the connection needs to allow many users fast access so you will also need a very good and potentially expensive connection.
- Support Costs - And like any other conference call service you will need to support your web conferencing service with sales and service personnel.
So, if there are all these costs, how does anyone provide free web conferencing? Well, some conference call service companies will offer a dumbed down version for free hoping you will upgrade because the free version doesn’t do much. Or the web conferencing service they offer for free is an old version they no longer support and instead of retiring it they simply give it away so you will come to their site and but the other version. Either way, if you investigate the free web conferencing versions out there you will see that they are not a full version, current representative of what web conferencing can do. And it just may not have the reliability and capacity you would expect with a service you pay for. After all it is free so how hard can you complain?
If you really need a good web conferencing service don’t use a free one. For a low monthly fee you can have access to a web conferencing service that save you time and money wihtout breaking the bank.
Tags: Conference Call, confernece call service, free web conferencing, Web Conference, Web Conferencing
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Friday, March 5th, 2010
I have never been a fan of the word cheap. I think in general the meaning I derive from the word is something of inferior quality not just inexpensive. But that is not how every0ne views it. A lot of people think of cheap as simply the cost of an item. And there are some huge companies that have made a living at selling good stuff cheap. And in most cases the goods they sell are the same goods or services you may find in another store but they simply find a way to sell them cheaper than their competition. And that is the case with Zip Conferencing’s conference call service. I have proved to myself that you can sell cheap conference calls and stioll provide the same or better quality than other conference call service companies.
I am often asked, “How can you sell conference calls at such low rates?” People think that the calls themselves may be inferior in some way because cheap conference calls can’t be as good, right? Well, there certainly are some costs in providing a high quality conference call service that you can not escape but there are areas in the conference call service business where you can reduce costs and pass those saving on to your customers. And these areas have no impact on the number of features or quality of the service. Cheap conference calls can be as good as expensive conference calls and here are the areas where Zip Conferencing has been able to reduce their cost without affecting the quality of the conference call service.
- Self Service Ability- Although Zip Conferencing offers personal service 24/7 we also provide our customers the ability to service their own accounts. The interface is easy to use and available to our customers 24/7 so they can get immediate service whenever they want without having to contact our customer service department. Like an ATM machine is to banks, our online account management tool provides a way to do business with us that is more convenient to use and so the number of customer service agents we need is less than most conference call service companies.
- Online Marketing- Unlike many conference call service companies our marketing and advertising is strictly done online. Since we don’t have to pay a large number of salespeople to produce our sales, our sales cost is less.
- Reduced Office Space Requirements- The lower number of personnel needed means we don’t need as much office space as other conference call service companies.
- Fully Automated - Our provisioning, billing and other back office processes are highly automated which means we need fewer people to perform the normal business functions needed to run a conference call service company.
So, you see, you can get cheap conference calls that are as good as more costly conference calls, just use Zip Conferencing!
Tags: cheap conference calls, Conference Call, Conference Call Service, Conference Calls
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Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010
Over the years the number of conference calls being held has exploded. It is not hard to imagine why since conference calling saves a company money and time. But can there be such a thing as too many conference calls?
Let’s face it. If you work for a company that has integrated conference calls into their culture then you have had those days. Days where you are jumping from one conference call to another with little break in between. Such is the nature of conference calling. You can simply sit at your desk and attend meeting after meeting without leaving your desk. A conference call saves you the travel time, even if it is down the hall to a conference room, so you can schedule an audio conference back to back with another audio conference and stay on schedule. One of the reasons companies have adopted conference calls is because they are increasing your productivity without you realizing it. You can attend more meetings in a day if they are via a conference call and you are saving any travel expenses as well. But for you the increase in productivity translates into more work. Not only can’t you get anything done while you are in a meeting whether it is a conference call or in person meeting, but inevitably you get more work to do while in the meeting as well.
So maybe conference calls are too convenient and too easy to use and too inexpensive because if you are on too many conference calls you can’t get anything done. So even though you have saved all this travel time you now are so loaded with work to do and no time to do it you are struggling and tomorrow there is another slate of conference calls to attend. Even as a conference call service provider I have to admit that you can have too many conference calls. But let’s face it. A conference call is easier to deal with than an in person meeting and after all you just need to say no. Time management is something everyone can improve on and using your time wisely is all about using all your time as effectively as possible. And without conference calls time spent travelling to meetings would be completely wasted. Conference calls are great, just try to tone it down a bit.
Tags: Company Money, Conference Call, Conference Call Service, Conference Call Service Provider, Conference Calling, Conference Calls, Culture, Desk, Face, Imagine, Little Break, Nature, Productivity, Slate, Time Management, Travel Expenses, Travel Time
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Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010
When I tell people what I do for a living they are surprised that there is an industry that exists to provide conference call services to businesses. Many people think that the phone company is who provides the service. Which has always been true. But private companies have been providing a higher level of service for lower costs since the divestiture of AT&T in the early 1990s. The other thing that people want to know is why people don’t just use their phone system which usually has the capacity to run a conference call. Well, there are a number of reasons to use a conference call service instead of a phone system conference button to hold a conference call.
- Phone systems have capacity issues - Most phone systems can only handle a limited number of participants on a conference call. And you are also limited by the overall number of phone lines on the system. If the people in the office are using a number of lines to make calls you may be limited with the number of people you can get on a conference call.
- Phone systems require you to connect the participants - In order to connect people to a conference call using your phone system you will need to dial out to the participants through the phone system. You have to get the people on the phone and sometimes they may be on the phone or out of their office and you can reach them by dialing out to them.
- Call quality on a phone system degrades as you add participants - Phone systems are not made to hold conference calls and as you add participants the voice quality in the conference call degrades. The more people you add the worse the overall quality of the conference call.
- Most people have difficulty operating the conference call function on a phone system - Since there is no standard on how the phone systems assemble a conference call you will need to learn how to assemble a conference call using the phone system. Most people do not use this function often enough to be proficient at it and are not able to smoothly carry out the procedure.
The bottom line is a phone system does not provide a high quality conference call experience compared to a conference call service. A good conference call service company provides a service that is easy to use and gives you an experience that is equal in quality to meeting in person. And at the rates that conference call services are currently available it is no wonder that most people opt to do a conference call using a conference call service instead of a phone system.
www.zipconferencing.com
Tags: Amp, Conference Button, Conference Call, Conference Call Service, Conference Call Services, Conference Calls, Divestiture, Early 1990s, Limited, Many People, Participants, Private Companies, Quality System, Voice Quality
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