Being in the conference call industry for over 14 years I have seen a lot of issues with conference calls. And many of them are directly related to the conference call service company. The technology to make a conference call is sophisticated and involves many components that can fail. So naturally, no matter what measures a conference call company takes to prevent a conference call issue, they can still happen. Luckily, over the years the technology has gotten better, and the other components have also gotten better. Today, the conference calls are clearer and more reliable than ever. So why do people still have problems on conference calls. Some of the issues that occur on a conference call will never go away, because the issue is caused by the people on the conference call and that will never change. Here are some of the common issues you will find on a conference call.
- Echo – Echo on a conference call can be caused by many things, including issues with the telephone carrier. But these days the issues that used to occur on a long distance call have largely been reduced to the point where it is unlikely that the long distance telecommunications carrier was the culprit. Usually echo on a conference call is caused by one of the participants having more than one connection on the conference call up in close proximity to another connection. Sometimes someone in a conference room with a speaker phone will also have another phone connected to the conference call. To eliminate the echo you simply need to mute the offending connection and it will go away.
- Noise on the call – It is not impossible for the telecommunications carrier or conference call service provider to have an issue, but these days the biggest introduction of noise onto a conference call is one of the participants. Usually it is someone on a cellular phone and they are either in a moving vehicle or in a high noise situation like an airport. The best way to eliminate the noise is for that participant to mute their line until they need to speak on the conference call and then they can just unmute themselves.
- Hold Music on the call – Many people do not realize what their phone system sounds like to a caller when they place that caller on hold. So, usually what happens is a participant will step away for a minute and place their phone on hold while they are in the conference call. This will introduce whatever is on their phone system onto the entire conference call. The way to eliminate this issue is to use the mute function in the conference call instead of placing your phone on hold.
- Too little or too much volume – Sometimes a connection will have a low or high volume when connected to the conference call. This can happen for many reasons. Conference call service equipment adjusts connections automatically to compensate for different levels but you can also adjust the volume of individual participants from within the conference call.
So, as you can see most of the issues on a conference call these days are caused by the participants themselves. And fixing these issues is usually not a big problem. To assist with the correction of conference call issues, Zip Conferencing has operators available 24/7 from within the conference call to help identify and eliminate these problems. You can reach an operator anytime by pressing *0 on your telephone from within the conference call.