Posts Tagged ‘Touch Tone’

Conference Call Recordings can Save the Day

Monday, November 9th, 2009

Once you begin to use conference calls in your everyday business you quickly find that they are indispensable.  A conference call is able to bring people together who otherwise may be able to meet due to time or distance constraints.  And as you begin to rely more and more on a conference call for your meetings you will undoubtedly find yourself in a situation where someone is unable to attend your conference call and it is important that they hear the content of the meeting.  In a physical meeting you can usually only rely on someone to take good notes of the meeting to share with the participant who missed the meeting.  With a conference call you have another option.  You can record the conference call and allow the participant who missed the conference call the opportunity to listen to the actual meeting when they can.  With Zip Conferencing there are a couple of ways to provide the recording to the participants who did not attend the live conference call.

  • Digital Playback - First, you can record the conference call and then provide anyone who missed the conference call the ability to dial a toll free number and enter a passcode and listen to the meeting when their schedule permits.  The advantages of this method are that the participant can dial in from anywhere to listen to the call and control the pace of the recording.  You can fast forward, rewind or pause the recording using touch tone commands on the telephone.  The recording is available shortly after the completion of the conference call and multiple people can access the recording at the same time.
  • CD Copy - You can also order a copy of the conference call on a CD in several formats.  The CD is shipped to your location and you can decide who to distribute the CD to and when, controlling the dissemination of the content.
  • Transcription - You can also order a complete transcription of a conference call.  That way you have a full documentation of the conference call for missing participants or just to retain for your records.

So, if you find yourself in a situation where an important participant is going to miss your conference call there is no need to cancel the meeting.  You can simply record the conference call and allow them to hear the entire conference call after it is completed.  Now that is a clear advantage to holding a meeting in person!

www.zipconferencing.com

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Web Conference vs. Conference Call

Tuesday, September 1st, 2009

A Web Conference versus a Conference Call, is it a fair fight?  It is hard in some respects to compare a web conference with a conference call.  A conference call is held on a telephone and has no visual element to it unless everyone looks at the same document at the same time you sent to them previously.  But then, you really don’t know if they are looking at that document do you?  A web conference on the other hand allows you to show documents, web sites, applications, etc to all of the participants on your web conference at the same time.  It even allows you to edit the document real time and can even allow the participants to edit the document on your computer.  And a web conference generally has a conference call component to it unless you are meeting with a single participant.  Then you can just call them on the phone.  So, is it really a contest.

Well, no.  It really isn’t, but most people are choosing to hold a conference call instead of a web conference so why is that.  A conference call has certainly become easy to use and most people have been exposed to the practice of dialing an access number and putting in a pass codeto enter a conference all these days that we rarely have to explain the technology anymore.  And no one is intimidated by using a telephone to access a system and provide commands to the system using a touch tone command like you do to control a conference call.  People are just used to it.  And a conference call provides the basic means needed to communicate with other people over long distance, a voice connection.  Let’s face it, the telephone has been used to communicate over great distances and has been accepted by everyone as an essential means to communicate for business and personal reasons.  On a conference call you can discuss anything and refer to documents if everyone has access to them or was distributed them prior to the meeting.

A web conference on the other hand is relatively new.  It has really only been in existence less than 15 years and only in the last five or so become widely accepted by businesses.  But web conferencing can do what a regular conference call just can’t do.  A web conference can allow the host to share visuals with the participants on a conference call.  And as the saying goes “A picture is worth a thousand words”.  So adding a visual element to any meeting helps with the retention of the material and the engagement of the audience.  I think the only reason that every conference call is a web conference is that people are just not that used to communicating using their computers as they are with their telephones.  As people continue to integrate they way they use their computers with their telephones there will be a shift in the way we communicate and using visuals to help communicate will be the norm.

So, is it fair to compare a conference call and a web conference.  Not really, a web conference wins hands down.  But for now, the telephone has a 100 year head start in establishing itself as the de facto communication device and is winning the race.  For more on Web conferencing visit www.zipconferencing.com

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