Posts Tagged ‘Customize’

Customize your Conference Calls

Wednesday, January 11th, 2012

Conference calls are used by businesses in every industry because they are still the most convenient and cost effective way to meet with people across distances large and small.  And because of this conference calls are used by a variety of people.  And luckily, people are different and have different tastes in things so why not conference calls too?  You should not have to eat the same flavor of conferencing options as everyone else in the world and not even in the same company.  So Zip Conferencing has designed a system that allows every conference moderator to customize their calls with a variety of options.  Here are just some of the things you can control on your conference calls.

Entry/Exit Tones – The system will play a tone across the conference when a participant joins or exits a call.  You can control if the tone plays only when someone joins or only when someone exits are not at all.

Music on Hold – Many times people will want their participants to be able to talk to each other when they join the conference call even if the moderator of the call has not yet joined.  But if you would like you can make it so the participants listen to music on hold until the moderator joins the call.

Name Announce – Instead of just playing a tone when someone joins your conference call you can have the system record their names when they join the call and play it across the conference.  You can even conduct a roll call when you join the call as the moderator and have all of the names played.

Post Conference Report – Ever wonder how long your conference call was and how many participants were on it?  Our system allows you to receive a post conference report by email following your call that details the number of participants, the time they joined the call and even the number they dialed in from.

So why settle for the vanilla of conference calls when you can have any flavor you want?  Customize your conference calls today with Zip Conferencing.

Posted in Conference Calls | Comments Off

Low Cost Conference Calls Provide Powerful Business Tool to All

Thursday, December 9th, 2010

It wasn’t too long ago that I was with a conference call services provider and we were offering low cost conference calls for 50 cents per minute. And at that rate we were saving customers of AT&T over 40%! Well, even at that rate conference calls were easily justified to large businesses because of the savings they recognized in travel and the increased productivity. But now, with toll free conference calls priced less than 10 cents per minute, this powerful business tool is available to businesses of all sizes.

There was a time when the majority of my customers had over 50 employees. But low cost conference calls has really changed that dynamic. Now there is a much wider mix of companies utlizing low cost conference calls. I have many 1 – 3 employee companies who have realized that conference calls can help them be more productive and provide a very important communication link to their customers. Small home construction companies are using conference calls to keep their customers up to speed on their home building developments and coordinating with building supply vendors to make selections for their home. Small Accounting firms and CPAs are using low cost conference calls to keep their customers informed and to have meetings with investment firms and attorneys with their customers. Small law firms are using low cost conference calls to hold conference calls with opposing council and their customers.

And not only have low cost conference calls now opened up the advantages of conference calling to businesses of all sizes but the service itself is richer than ever. Zip Conferencing allows its customers to customize their conference calls in such a way that they have full control over all of the facets of the conference call. With Zip Conferencing you can decide whether participants are announced into the conference call with a tone, their name or not at all. Customers can have their participants listen to music or provide them the ability to speak without the moderator present and engage a number of security measures to insure their privacy on the conference calls. And much more. So now companies of all sizes have the same high quality, feature rich conference call services available to them as large companies. And with small companies the ability to save money on travel and be more productive are no less important than to large companies.

Low cost conference calls have truly leveled the playing field for companies of all sizes in many ways.

Posted in Conference Calls | 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

A Conference Call Service Provider should be Your Partner

Thursday, December 3rd, 2009

I think that everyone is aware that conference calls can save you time and money.  It is easy to figure that holding a conference call is going to save you money if the alternative is flying to someone’s location to hold a meeting.  But what I think a lot of people miss are all of the options available with a good conference call service provider.  I know when I started in the teleconferencing industry in 1995 I had been on conference calls and just assumed that it was just a simple matter of getting a dial in access number and a pass code and holding your conference call.  Boy, was I wrong.  Most people have no idea of all of the options available for audio conferences and web conferences.  And that is why a good conference call service company should act as your partner and help you discover all of the options available so that you can customize the conference calls you hold to fit the needs of your company.

Even just a plain automated conference call can be customized with a number options.  For instance you can vary how and whether you are notified when a participant enters or exits your conference call.   With Zip Conferencing you can have a tone play, play the participants name or have no sound at all when they enter or exit the conference call.  And all three options can be enabled when entering, exiting or both.  Some people want to make sure that the conference call can not be used when the Moderator of the conference call is not present.  You can set the option to have the participants listen to music while they wait for the moderator to join the conference call.  This prevents participants from being able to use the conference call information to hold their own conference call.  Another measure to ensure that participants are only able to use the conference call when the participants are present is the ability to close the conference call when the Moderator exits the call.

There are also tracking features that some people like to keep tabs on what the call was about.  For instance, an attorney want to track the calls so that they can charge back their clients for the cost of the conference call.  You can enable a feature on the conference call that requires a Moderator to enter an accounting code at the start of the conference call.  An attorney would enter a Client Matter # and then they could track this back to the client at the end of the month.

All of these options and more are available, but most people don’t use them.  It is most likely because their conference call service provider has not taken the time to describe these option, listen to their business needs and suggest ways to best use the conference call service to fit their business needs.  That is where the conference call service provider can be an invaluable partner for your business.

www.zipconferencing.com

Posted in Conference Call Service | Comments Off