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Pained with soaring gas prices? You don’t need to dust off the two-wheeler to get to your next business meeting. Now that audio teleconferencing is affordable and easy to use, executives and professionals are using this tool to accomplish more in a time-constrained environment and to save money. Conference call meetings can be an attractive alternative to travel which can easily add hours or days of non-productive time each week …and, they can save on gas!
Successful teleconferencing takes some planning and the following tips can help you be effective.
1. Engage a Reliable Teleconferencing Service
Arrange services with a conference calling company that provides high-quality, dependable audio conferencing service, security for your calls and 24/7 technical support. This avoids call disconnection, static on the line, and frustrated call participants.
Look for a service that provides dedicated toll-free and toll dial-in numbers, secure moderator and participant passcodes and simple touch-tone conference call controls (e.g. muting, volume controls, and operator assistance). In case you need to add someone who isn’t on the call already (such as a customer, attorney, technician) it is also useful to have the ability to dial-out during the call and add that extra person on.
2. Plan Your Call
Invite all of the people who are involved with the issue at hand, especially those who need to participate in decisions or help carry them out.
Provide everyone the date, time and anticipated length of the call. Let participants know what subjects you want to cover. Send out any written documents your callers will need ahead of time. Give your participants with the dial-in numbers and participant passcodes.
3. Manage Your Call
The call host should dial-in 5 minutes prior to the call as a courtesy. In many services, participants will hear music-on-hold until the host joins the conference, a security feature that prevents unauthorized use of your conference call.
If needed, record the conference call – a standard feature with many conference calling service providers. This might be used for allowing someone who could not join the call to listen at a later time. If call recording is used, your service provider should have an announcement to participants that the call is being recorded.
When you start the call, let everyone know who is on the call and review the items you are going to cover.
Ask participants to mute phones when not speaking and to avoid creating background noise such as rustling papers or side conversations.
Cell phones can create noise on the line and may need to be muted when the cell phone user is not speaking.
If a cell or cordless phone is near a microwave, this can cause static and the caller will need to move away from the microwave.
Ask all callers to identify themselves when speaking, address others by name when asking questions and not to place phones on hold when they have music-on-hold, which will be disruptive.
Before ending your call, poll the group and set a date and time for your next call, if needed. Many teleconferencing providers give the host the ability to automatically end the call using the touch-tone pad on the phone, which is a good practice in case a participant forgets to hang up (it happens frequently!).
4. Follow-up
Send out a summary e-mail or note identifying any follow-up action items, so everyone is clear on what steps to take next.
For recorded calls, provide the dial-in information to anyone you want to hear the recording. And, if needed, order CDs of the recorded call.
About the author:
A former AT&T executive, Tom Ireland has worked 25 years in the telecommunications industry and is the managing partner of Best Conferencing which offers the full range of conference calling services. Tom can be reached at tomireland@bestconferencing.com. More information is on their website http://bestconferencing.com.
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Technology 