Posts Tagged ‘Many People’

Hasn’t Congress heard of Conference Calling Services?

Friday, August 12th, 2011

I would not describe myself as a political activist, but like many people the latest display of ineptitude of our elected officials in Washington, DC I find myself wondering how these people can afford to take a 5 week vacation when their business (our country) is struggling like it is today.  Maybe they need some time back in their home states but haven’t they heard of conference calling services?  At least make it look like you are attempting to do something about the mess we are in by working a little while you are on vacation like the rest of us.  Seems like conference calling services would enable these people to keep things moving and maybe get something done.  After all I have never been able to take a 5 week vacation and I don’t know anyone who has in my lifetime.  I have been working since I was 14 years old and I have not had 5 weeks off ever.  In fact I took a two week vacation once and it felt like I was retired.  It was tough to get back into things when I returned and I have not taken a vacation that long since then.  Now when I am even out for a few days I use conference calling services to stay in touch with things at work.  It helps me to relax to know that things are running smoothly and I won’t be blindsided when I return.  If things at work need to be addressed I won’t even go on vacation let alone for 5 weeks!

Conference calling services are one thing but these people work for the government after all and have every means of communication imaginable available to them.  They could absolutely work from home and continue to accomplish things.  Many businesses now rely on a good portion of their employees working from their homes and it doesn’t slow them down.  Conference calling services and web conferencing services allow people to work from anywhere and still hold meetings and collaborate on projects.  So how about it Mr Congressman?  What do you say?  Can you possibly cut your vacation down to 2 – 3 weeks and get back to getting this country put back together?  We working stiffs who pay your salaries would surely appreciate it.

Zip Conferencing would be happy to provide conference calling services and web conferencing services to any elected officials who would like to keep working.  Drop us an email and we will set you up.

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Conference Call Service or the Phone System?

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

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Conference Calls are Still a Great Value

Monday, October 19th, 2009

There have been many predictions ofValue the conference calls’ demise over the years.  First, the video conference was going to be on everyone’s desktop and people wouldn’t bother with regular conference calls anymore.  Then services came along that purported to provide free conference calls.  Then everyone was going to be speaking into their PCs and wouldn’t use a phone anymore.  And on, and on.  The fact that conference calls done over the telephone are not only still here but doing so well is the basic fact that there is no better value if you want to have a high quality connection and be able to speak to a group of people at a distance.

Video conferencing has been around for a long time.  So why aren’t we all looking at each other during our calls already.  There are probably many reasons.  But first and foremost it is not as easy as a conference call and not necessarily available to everyone.  I mean these days it is hard to buy a PC without a webcam attached, but many people don’t use them or know how to use them.  And the quality of the connection still has a lot to be desired.  If anything, the call can be more distracting than anything.  And then you have the whole social aspect.  The fact that most people don’t feel comfortable having their image in front of themselves and broadcast to many people.  It will be quite a while before video conferencing is as easy to use as a telephone.

I’ve addressed the concept of the free conference call in other posts, but in short nothing is really free.  You simply can’t get a high quality conference call with toll free access for nothing.  And toll free access for your participants is simply the right thing to do.  And if you want to make sure the call is there when you need it to be and want a good sound would you trust it to a free  service?

And we are also still a long way away from having an integrated device on our desktop that does all of our phone tasks as well.  Can you do it today?  Of course, but the complexities of getting it done is worse than getting the video camera to work and if you still have to connect to people using a telephone you still have to connect to the telephone network to do a conference call so you really aren’t gaining anything unless you eliminate that aspect. 

One of the big drivers for new technology is saving money.  Today, the costs of conference calls have come down to the point where it is difficult to justify putting up with any inconvenience to try to save a little money.  Let’s face it, everyone has a telephone and that is really all you need to have and know how to use in order to join a conference call.  And you will get a clear, high quality connection without any issues. 

So, given all the choices that are out there, conference calls continue to grow because they still deliver the best value for the money.

www.zipconferencing.com

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Conference Call Host Controls

Thursday, July 23rd, 2009

Before the adoption of reservationless conference calls, conference callswere run by an operator and if you wanted something to be done on the call you simply asked the operator to perform the task.  Now you simply need to use your own touch tone phone to access a wide variety of conference call controls.  Commonly referred to as Host Controls, these commands allow the Host or Moderator of the conference call to control a number of features on the conference call.    Surprisingly, many people do not use these easy to use commands, perhaps most users are simply unaware of their availability and how easy they are to use. 

Here is a list of the Host Controls available with Zip Conferencing Conference Calls

Conference Shortcuts

- Press *1 to hear a help menu.

- Press *0 to reach an operator.

- Press *6 to mute or “un-mute” line.

- Press *4 to increase conference volume.

- Press *7 to decrease conference volume.

- Press *5 to increase your voice volume.

- Press *8 to decrease your voice volume.

 

Moderator Features:

- Press *91 to hear a participant count.

- Press *92 to hear a roll call of participants.

- Press *93 to disconnect all participant lines.

- Press *94 to lock or unlock conference.

- Press *95 to dial out to participants.

- Press *96 to mute all participant lines.

- Press *97 to un-mute all participant lines.

- Press *21 to activate Subconferencing.

- Press *22 to initiate record and playback (*22 again to pause/stop the recording)

- Press *31 to turn Conference Security Code on/off.

- Press *32 to record your Conference Introduction.

 

The two most used features are muting lines and recording the conference call.  Muting and UnMuting participants comes in handy if you have a large number of people on the conference call and you do not want background noise to interrupt your presentation.  It also is helpful for the participants when they are in a high noise situation and do not want to interrupt the conference call.  They can toggle this feature on and off so they can provide input during the call and then mute their line again when done. 

 

Recording of the conference call is very useful if you want to be able to retain a copy of the conference call or provide participants who missed the conference call the opportunity to hear it.  After recording the confernece call you can either provide participants a dial in number and pass code to listen to the recording, download the recording to your computer or order a CD of the recording for your records.

 

Other options for Host Controls on the conference call include the ability to conduct a sub-conference, volume adjustment and security features that ensure your conference call is only accessed by the people you want on the conference call.  Conference Call Host Controls are easy to use and provide access to valuable features on your conference call.

www.zipconferencing.com

 

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Conference Calls Save Money

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009

Many people who use conference calls in their daily business lives may have forgotten the number one benefit you get when you use conference calls.  Conference calls save money. 

I think that conference call service early adopters were more interested in solving business issues that could not be solved in other ways.  The legal community in particular simply could not find a way to effectively meet with clients and other counsel in a quick and convenient manner when they were unable to meet face to face.  They were not really concerned about saving money by meeting over the telephone as they charge back their customers anyway.  It was the second wave of conference call users that discovered some of the other benefits to using a conference call service. 

Benefits to Using a Conference Call Service

  • Save Money
  • Save Time
  • Increased Productivity

The widespread growth of the use of conference calls has certainly been from their ability to save companies money.  No other technology offers as affordable a solution to solving the need to meet than the basic conference call.  How else can you meet with dozens of people around the world without leaving your desk for just pennies per minute?  So, the most obvious cost you save when you do a conference call is the travel cost to get to a personal meeting.  What other costs can you save with a conference call?

Costs you save when you do a Conference Call

  • Flight Expense
  • Rental Car Expense
  • Hotel Costs
  • Food Costs

And now with the availability of web conferencing and the ability to add visuals to your conference call there are many more applications for conference calls that save companies even more money.  As an industry we again thought that the legal community would be an early adopter of web conferencing since they could share a contract on the screen and edit it with opposing counsel and so forth.  But actually, the largest users of web conferencing have been in the Sales and Marketing areas where they have been able to dramatically reduce their travel costs and shortened their sales cycles.

And now, with the prices for conference call services hitting all time lows in the marketplace there is no better way to save travel costs than substituting your in person meetings with a conference call.  Conference calls save money.

www.zipconferencing.com

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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!

www.zipconferencing.com

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