When I tell people what I do for a living I am still amazed that people don’t know that companies like Zip Conferencing exist. Most people do a telephone conference call on a regular basis or have certainly been on one recently but don’t know where they come from. I guess many of these people are in a company where the buying decision for conference call services is made by someone else and they just know how easy it is to get on a telephone conference call. And that is why a regular telephone conference call still makes the most sense.
Let’s face it, technology has come a long way in the past 15 years since I started my career in teleconferencing so why is the regular telephone conference call still growing in use? Well, in the past 15 years I have heard the prediction of the demise of the telephone conference call with the invention of every new group communication technology that has come along. But there are several reasons why the regular telephone conference call is still the easiest, most convenient and least expensive way for a group of people to get together.
- Universal Connectivity- A telephone conference call uses a device that everyone is familiar with, the telephone. You don’t have to teach people how to use a telephone and these days most people know how to connect to a conference call as well. And with a telephone conference call all you need is a telephone. And any telephone will do. When I started in 1995 we still had to help people who had rotary phones onto conference calls that require you to enter a pass code but that is no longer the case. And cell phones were not as reliable as they are today and would cause issues on conference calls as well. But today any telephone can connect to a conference call with ease.
- Easy to Use- With the invention of reservationless pass code entry telephone conference calls the usage in conference calls skyrocketed. That’s because the industry made the service easy to use. And over the years it has exposed just about everyone to a universal method of joining a telephone conference call. Everyone pretty much knows that you have to dial an access number and then put in a pass code to connect to a conference call. There is no need to get participants to learn a new technology or download something onto their computers.
- Convenient- Today you can access a telephone conference call from anywhere in the world from any telephone. You don’t have to worry if you can get an Internet connection or anything. All you need to do is make a telephone call and you can connect to a telephone conference call. So, you can be travelling, at home or in the office and connect to the conference call. So it is convenient to the host and participants alike.
So, despite all of the predictions about its early death, telephone conference calls still make the most sense if you want to hold a group meeting with people in disparate locations. And until they replace the telephone it will continue to be the group meeting method of choice.