Pull Your Chairs (or Phone Lines) Together

Last month I wrote about one of the great features of our reservationless conferencing service, Record & Playback. Another handy feature is Sub-conference. Have you ever tried it or been on a conference where the leader used it? If you are simulating small-group collaboration remotely, this is a feature you definitely need take advantage of. It’s ideal for breakout sessions, small group work, sidebar discussions and training seminars.

I’ve participated in several internal training sessions where this feature has been used, and it really is just like being in a classroom and pulling your chairs together with a few other people to work on a project. All the trainer had to do was tell us what our sub-conference numbers were and the phone commands to move our lines into the sub-conference. Within a few seconds, I was in a separate ‘room’ with my co-workers and we were able to complete our project. Our trainers were using a web conference, so when it was time for us to go back to the main conference, they just chatted a message to all the participants. Again, within a few seconds, we were all back together in the main ‘room’.

Think you might use this feature to make your conference calls more productive? Here are the instructions so you can give it a try.

Starting a sub-conference:

1. Assign your participants to a sub-conference number between 1 and 15 (your conference call can be broken out into as many as 15 sub-conferences).
2. Press *9 to be removed from the main conference.
3. Press 1 to start a sub-conference.

Joining a sub-conference:

1. Press *9 to be removed from the main conference.
2. When prompted, enter the sub-conference number that was assigned to you.
3. Press # to join your sub-conference.

Rejoining the main conference:
Press *9 to be placed back into the main conference.

Switching to a difference sub-conference:

1. Press *9 to be placed back into the main conference.
2. Press *9 again to be removed from the main conference.
3. When prompted, enter the sub-conference number.
4. Press # to join your sub-conference.

Returning a specific sub-conference group to the main conference:

1. Press *9 to be placed back into the main conference.
2. Press *9 again.
3. Press 3 to request a specific sub-conference group to return to the main conference.

Returning everyone to the main conference:

1. Press *9 to be placed back into the main conference.
2. Press *9 again.
3. Press 2 to return all participants to the main conference.

See how this works in your next team meeting or training sessions. It’s a good way to make your remote meetings more interactive and engaging so your participants will get more out of it. After you've used it, come back and let me know what you think!

Christina Todisco is a marketing manager at InterCall and has been in the conferencing industry since 2002. Christina currently provides product marketing support for InterCall’s audio services, reporting and invoice solutions and InterCall Online. When not working, Christina enjoys spending time with her husband, daughter, family and friends.

10 Tips for More Effective Meetings

As Anusha mentioned in one of her previous blog posts, we’re fortunate at InterCall to have an excellent training department that offers courses on a variety of topics—from managing your inbox to becoming a better manager.

Since I work from home and InterCall’s employees are located all over the world, meetings are held online instead of in a conference room. While online meetings are the next best thing to being face-to-face, talking to your computer screen creates a different meeting dynamic than when you are staring at someone from across the table. So, I figured I could probably learn a few things if I attend the Facilitating Effective Team Meetings class.

According to a recent Microsoft survey of 38,000 workers in 200 countries, 5.6 hours each week are spent in meetings and 69% feel meetings aren't productive. I’m sure you’ve been to a meeting that you felt was a total waste of time because the host wasn’t prepared, there was no clear agenda or no one could stop talking about the topic that was supposed to be ‘taken offline’.

Here are some helpful tips I learned that you can use to make your meetings more productive.

1. Know why you’re having the meeting and your expected outcomes – Don’t have a meeting for the sake of having a meeting. Have a purpose and know what you want to accomplish.
2. Build an agenda with time allocations – Identify the areas you want to focus on and how much time you’ll spend on each topic. Send this out prior to the meeting to all the participants so your meeting stays on track.
3. Establish ground rules – Let people know what you expect from them (stick to the time allocations, full participation, etc.) and review the agenda.
4. Designate a note taker and timekeeper – Stay focused on leading the meeting and appoint others to take notes and watch the time. It’s too challenging to try to do it all yourself and your participants will appreciate having your complete attention on the agenda. If you’re using a conference call service, record your meeting so you can go back to it if there are questions.
5. Lead the meeting – Take charge and keep everyone focused. That means shutting down sidebar conversations and asking people to give their opinions.
6. Encourage full participation – Do this by asking directly for feedback, create break-out groups or sub-conferences if you’re all on the phone. If you have on-site and remote participants, make sure to include the remote participants in the discussion.
7. Stay focused – Don’t be afraid to ask people who go off on tangents to save it for another meeting. Your participants will be happy that you’re keeping everyone on task.
8. Summarize to verify agreements and action items – Recap the meeting to make sure everyone knows what was agreed to and who’s responsible for what.
9. Follow-up on assignments and agreements – Send notes so people are reminded of who needs to do what, by when and don’t forget those who missed the meeting. If you recorded the conference, include the playback link for reference.
10. Evaluate your meetings – Ask for feedback from participants and see what you can do differently next time.

I will admit that I haven’t put all of these into practice, but I have started emailing an agenda prior to the meeting and screen sharing it during my web conference. It has actually made a big difference and made my meetings more productive. I’ve also stated sending out notes after the meeting, which really helps keep me organized.

How about you? Do you use any of these suggestions in your meetings? Any other tips you would share?

Jill Huselton is a senior marketing manager at InterCall. She's been in the conferencing industry for nearly 15 years, working in operations, account management and marketing, mainly based in Colorado. Before leaving the Mile-High City, she hiked a 14er, one of her top accomplishments. Now she's traded the mountains for the beach and works from a home office in North Carolina.

Improve Productivity with Record & Playback

How often do you host a conference call and at least one person who needs to be there can’t make it. Or, maybe you have meetings that you need to be able to go back and listen to again. This happens to many of us, which is why one of the most popular features of our reservationless conferencing service is Record & Playback. Right from your phone conference, a simply command lets you archive a conference call. You can even start and stop the recording throughout the meeting if you want to create segment or only record certain portions.

Not only is the feature easy to use, but accessing the recording later is just as simple. You can listen over the Internet or by dialing a toll-free number. You may also purchase a CD, downloadable link or a transcription of your recording.

For those of you who haven’t figured out how to be in two places at once or who don’t have superpowers that allow you to recall everything you’ve ever heard, Record & Playback could be just what you needed. Below you’ll find instructions to use for your next audio conference call.

Starting a Recording

1. Once your conference begins, press *2 on your telephone keypad to start a recording.
2. When prompted, press 1 to confirm that you would like the recording to begin.
3. our conference is being recorded once you hear, 'The conference is now being recorded.

Pausing/Resuming a Recording

1. Press *2 to pause your recording.
2. When prompted, press 2 to confirm you would like the recording to pause. You will hear a beep once the pause in the recording begins.
3. To resume your recording, press *2.
4. When prompted, press 2 to confirm you would like to resume the recording. You will hear a beep once the recording has resumed.

Ending a Recording

1. Press *2 to end your recording.
2. When prompted, press 1 to confirm that you would like the recording to end.
3. Your recording will end once you hear, 'This conference is no longer being recorded.

Playback a Recording
Detailed playback instructions will be automatically emailed to you within one hour after the end of your conference. You can choose to playback your recording over the Internet or by telephone. Your recorded conference is available for playback for a period of 30 days.

Playback Keypad Commands

3 Fast forward 30 seconds
7 Rewind 30 seconds
# Pause 30 seconds (or until any key is pressed)
* Exit recording

Think this might be helpful for your meetings? Have you used this feature before? How do you increase productivity by making information more accessible?

Christina Todisco is a marketing manager at InterCall and has been in the conferencing industry since 2002. Christina currently provides product marketing support for InterCall’s audio services, reporting and invoice solutions and InterCall Online. When not working, Christina enjoys spending time with her husband, daughter, family and friends.

Too Much to Remember?

It seems like everywhere I go or new service I sign up for, I get another password or PIN number to remember.

These days, our brains are crammed with password and number combinations for every part of our lives, from corporate network logins, social networking sites and email accounts to bank accounts and credit card PINs.

If you are like me, then you often feel as though you can’t possibly remember everything you are supposed to. Studies have been conducted to examine our collective ‘external memory’, which is the Internet. With a few keystrokes on your computer or smartphone, you can get a phone number, address or birthday. Having a GPS means you don’t have to remember how to get somewhere. Even the art of memorizing poems, like my grandmother did, is going by the wayside.

As the need for online security grows, so will our logins and the challenge of keeping them all straight. Even if you store information in a safe place, it’s usually so safe that you can’t remember where it is when you need it. We almost have no choice but to embrace the tools available on the Internet and use them to help you. There are loads of password management software you can use to store it all, like RoboForm and LastPass.

When it comes to audio conference calls, how many of us can actually remember a phone number without having it stored in our phones, let alone our conference code and leader PIN? Ever found you need to join a conference call, and out of the office, without a laptop, you are stumbling around for a pen and a bit of paper to scribble the details down?

InterCall’s free Mobile Assistant works just like the password management software. You can access your reservationless conference call with a single click of a button or tap of the screen—all from your smartphone. There’s no need to remember long numbers and codes anymore, freeing up your brain capacity for other important things, like remembering to get your phone, bring your GPS or buy that birthday card.

Sandra Di Giacomo is the Asia Pacific marketing manager at InterCall. Originally starting out as an account manager in InterCall’s Sydney office, she also lived in Tokyo for two years before making her way to Singapore where she is now based. When not working, she enjoys travelling, photography and cooking.

Tips for Managing a Virtual Workforce

As the economy and our marketplace become more global, having a distributed workforce is a normal part of business. Not only are offices spread around the world, but a growing number of people work either full- or part-time from their homes. If you are managing remote employees, a whole new set of challenges develop in these situations; you may rarely see, never have met or not even speak the same language as the people who you are supposed to coach and hold accountable for getting a job done.

Right now, approximately 34 million workers in the United States work from home or a remote location at least one day a week. That number is expected to almost double to 63 million by 2016, which represents a staggering 43% of the U.S. workforce. On a larger scale, according to IDC’s Worldwide Mobile Worker Population 2009–2013 Forecast, more than one third of the global workforce will be mobile by 2013.

There are many reasons to have a remote workforce, such as saving office/real estate costs, meeting customer requirements, offering a better work/life balance and having access to a larger talent pool. No matter what’s behind your decision, if you’re managing employees who aren’t in your office, you have to engage in a different management style if you want to make everyone successful.

The days of popping your head into someone’s office to check in or get a status update are long gone for many people. I experience this firsthand; for my marketing team at InterCall, half of them work from a home office. Below are some tips I've found from the Society of Human Resource Management and the National Federation of Independent Businesses that you can use to keep productivity and morale up for your virtual workforce. You can also get more information from our February webinar, Managing Blind: Redefining Management in a Global Virtual World. I've applied many of these in my own situation and found them to be quite helpful, particularly the unified communications tools.

• Take the time to train virtual employees and managers on the company’s mission, in addition to telecommuting policies and expectations, such as:
  • Values and goals
  • Expected business hours
  • Not substituting working from home for childcare
• Make sure workers have appropriate and reliable equipment that is required to do their jobs
• Set up remote communication tools, like audio conference calls, web conferencing or video conferencing solutions, mobile apps and instant messaging, so remote employees can easily be reached and reach other employees, as well as collaborate on team discussions and projects
• Schedule regular meetings with all team members to get updates on projects and hold workers accountable for their deadlines
• Don’t micromanage; if your expectations are being met, then trust your employees to do their jobs
• Take time to understand the culture where your remote employees are located, particularly if they are located in another country
• Make sure to spread the workload among all employees so that those in the office don't feel like they are unfairly taking on a larger burden of the responsibilities compared to those working remotely
• Create spaces in your office so remote workers can periodically come to ‘plug in’ or provide them with a location where they can collaborate with other remote co-workers/professionals

Remember, it takes self-disciplined and motivated people to work outside of an office, and those people usually work harder and longer hours. To avoid burn out and feelings of isolation, find ways to make them feel included. Using web conferencing with web cams or video conferencing solutions gives your team that face-to-face feeling they’d have sitting around a conference table together. And if you can get it in your budget, bringing everyone together in the office or another off-site location can go a long way to fostering team spirit.

What have you done in your company or work environment to put these practices to use? Do you have other tips to share?

Cambria Vaccaro is the Senior Director, Marketing Communications and our “Industry News” blogger.  Cambria has been in the conferencing industry for nearly fifteen years, and has seen it evolve from a traditional video bridging service to include cool web features and remote communication services.  She is an avid runner, cook and mother of two gorgeous girls.

If you’re like me, you spend a lot of time in meetings every day. Have you ever stopped to think about how much time is lost due to meeting management mishaps? We’ve all experienced them—background noise from the participant who forgot to mute their line, the barking dog, the loud downtown traffic, the clamor at the airport. It never fails that once the audio conference call gets started, there are the interruptions to ask who just joined as you hear the entry tone or to ask if a specific participant is on the call to answer a question. Something like “Is Dan on to answer that one?” probably sounds familiar. All this lost time adds up pretty quickly.

So how can you host better meetings? Watch this short video to find out!

With online tools that integrate audio and web conferences, you and your participants can meet in an interactive environment, at any time, from anywhere. Using web conferencing services, you can:

• Visualize and manage your audio calls from your computer with simple point and click commands so you can mute that participant with the barking dog, see who has joined the meeting and know who to call on for answers.
• Take your meetings to the next level of interactivity by sharing and showing materials from your computer. You and your participants can easily and seamlessly collaborate online with documents, share PowerPoint slides or conduct a web tour at a moment’s notice.
• Add desktop video to your meeting to give it more impact. With a webcam and a high-speed connection, you and your presenters can broadcast live images to meeting participants. All it takes is a click of your mouse.

Have you tried using the web to enhance your audio conference calls yet? Noticed any improvements in your meetings?

Sarah Murphy is a marketing manager at InterCall. With over ten years of experience in the conferencing industry, Sarah has worked with customers and products that cover all segments of conferencing, including traditional operator attended services, video and online meeting solutions.

As social creatures, we all like to talk and share things. It is tough, though, when you’re working to get something done, but instead you have to deal with a constant barrage of people coming into your office wanting something or needing an answer to a question. In the age of instant communication and immediate gratification, people don’t even wait for the “Come in” call when an office door is shut, if they even bother to knock at all.

Working from home, my only interruption is my puppy wanting to play, but I still deal with the remote ‘knockers’: the ones who send an email and two seconds later follow up with an IM telling me to check the email they just sent. Talk about not having any patience.

There’s nothing worse when you are trying to talk on an audio conference call and you’ve got someone at your door asking a question—splitting your attention means something gets missed and it is usually what someone says on the phone.

Check out this video to see if it looks familiar. Then take a quick survey and tell us about your meeting interruptions. Ever had a meeting go like this one?

 

Jill Huselton is a senior marketing manager at InterCall. She's been in the conferencing industry for nearly 15 years, working in operations, account management and marketing, mainly based in Colorado. Before leaving the Mile-High City, she hiked a 14er, one of her top accomplishments. Now she's traded the mountains for the beach and works from a home office in North Carolina.

There's a debate brewing in online conferencing: What's the difference between a web conference and a webinar? Is there one?

Online Meeting Tools Review sheds some light on the subject with an interesting post explaining the difference.

According to the post:

A web conference is a non-public online meeting emphasizing collaboration. One person may be the host, but desktop sharing and other tools make it easy to switch the role of presenter.

A webinar, on the other hand, is often open to the public and offers more of a single presenter and large audience ambiance. The experience for the audience is largely passive, although tools such as polls, chat functions and Q&A sessions can add interactivity to a webinar.

Conferencing Software for Online Web Conferencing
Now that you know the difference between the types of online conferencing programs, you can decide on the best software for your purposes. Small meetings, project assessments and “touch-base” sessions, as well as some collaborative sales meetings where your prospects may be expected to have a lot of questions, would fall under the web conference umbrella.

Look for conferencing software with collaborative tools such as desktop and file sharing, shared web browsing and easy “one-click” entry into meetings.

Conferencing Software for Webinars
Training (customer or employee), marketing seminars and press conferences are considered webinars.

You'll want chat functions for attendees, the ability to poll attendees and to host question and answer sessions. Additionally, you'll want tools for marketing your webinar in advance and to follow up with attendees after the event, as well as tools to track attendance.

Before you can select the best web conferencing software for your company, you need to define your conferencing purposes and goals.

Don't forget to consider InterCall’s streaming services as another option for one-to-many presentations. 

What meetings could you replace with web conferencing?  Are there opportunities for you to save time and money by hosting a webinar? If you need help assessing the right solution for your business, use our interactive tool to get started. 

Sara Steele is an associate marketing manager at InterCall responsible for various corporate communication initiatives; including social media and channel marketing efforts. Sara began working with InterCall after graduating from the University of Colorado in 2006. In her free time, she enjoys running, skiing, and spending time with family and friends.

I had some great feedback from my blog post last week that covered best practices to follow when hosting audio conference calls. Along with making sure you are prepped and ready to go with all the logistics of your meeting, there are a few things you and your participants can do to keep your lines clear and therefore reduce distractions.

• Electronic devices (such as BlackBerrys or cell phones and associated hands-free devices, laptops, etc.) can interfere with line quality if located too close to the phone. If possible, place such items a good distance away from the phone you are using for the conference call.
• If you are conducting back-to-back calls, make sure to disconnect your initial conference call line prior to dialing back in for the next call. (Failing to do so could produce a ‘flash hook’ scenario, which feeds a loud signal into the call.)
• When entering your conference code and leader PIN do not press the keys too quickly—this will enable the system to ‘read’ them most effectively.
• During an Operator Assisted Q&A session, participants should pick up their handsets to ask questions. This will ensure the best possible audio quality and volume from their lines.
• If you are conducting a call using a conference room phone, microphone or speakerphone, be aware of the location of the phone/microphone at all times and speak directly into the device to ensure the best possible audio quality and volume.
• If you are conducting an Operator Assisted conference call using a conference room phone, microphone or speakerphone, test the volume and line clarity with the operator prior to starting the call.

These tips should help your conferences run smoothly, but if you do have issues, our tech support team is there to help at any time. You can press *0 on your phone keypad during your conference to bring an operator into your call or press 00 to speak one-on-one outside of the meeting. You can also call us ahead of time if you have questions.

Christina Todisco is a marketing manager at InterCall and has been in the conferencing industry since 2002. Christina currently provides product marketing support for InterCall’s audio services, reporting and invoice solutions and InterCall Online. When not working, Christina enjoys spending time with her husband, daughter, family and friends.

Our customers frequently ask for tips to help make their audio conference calls more effective. It isn’t hard and keeping a few best practices in mind will help make the difference between feeling productive and like you just wasted 30 minutes of your time.

Before the Call

• Stay organized and be prepared for your conference call.
• Notify your participants of the date and time of the call. (Have you downloaded InterCall’s Outlook® plug-in to make scheduling your meetings easy by automatically including your conference account details in the calendar invite?)
• Communicate any items that need to be prepared prior to the meeting.
• Send the agenda to your participants.
• Log into InterCall Online to adjust any settings on your account. For instance, if you will have a lot of people in your meeting, you can turn on silent entry so you do not hear continuous beeping as participants join or drop off.
• If you are traveling, download InterCall Mobile Assistant so your account info is stored in your smartphone and you aren’t fumbling for your codes.

Starting the Call

• Be on time or early to your call.
• Have the phone commands easily accessible so you can utilize all of the conference features. These are listed on the back of your wallet card or you can download a quick reference guide.
• Be sure you are in a quiet location where you will not be disturbed and try to minimize background noise.
• Turn off call waiting, pagers and cell phones.
• Conduct a roll call so you know who is there.
• Briefly state the goals of your meeting and the agenda.
• Do not put your phone on hold as this may put music into the conference and prevent others from continuing the meeting.
• If you're recording your meeting, let everyone know before you press *2 on your phone keypad.

During the Call

• Keep your conference on track by engaging your participants and keeping them informed of upcoming tasks and meetings.
• Say your name before you speak and encourage others to do the same. It is easy to forget that everyone on the call may not be familiar with all the voices.
• Ask for feedback from specific participants instead of the entire group. You're more likely to get a response instead of silence while everyone waits for someone else to answer.
• Table any discussions that are not relevant to the agenda for a later time and place.
• Try to involve all of the participants in the discussion.
• Promptly deal with any noise or distractions by pressing *0 to request an operator.
• Summarize the issues discussed and recap any action items resulting from the call.
• Establish the day and time for the next conference call.

I hope this helps you to host better meetings so you get more out of them. Have you found other things that make your calls run more smoothly? We’d love to share some more ideas with our users.

Come back next week and I’ll give you some suggestions for improving your line quality.

Christina Todisco is a marketing manager at InterCall and has been in the conferencing industry since 2002. Christina currently provides product marketing support for InterCall’s audio services, reporting and invoice solutions and InterCall Online. When not working, Christina enjoys spending time with her husband, daughter, family and friends.

Hello, Who Just Joined?

If you’re like me, you spend a lot of time in meetings every day. Have you ever stopped to think about how much time is lost due to meeting management mishaps? We’ve all experienced them—background noise from the participant who forgot to mute their line, the barking dog, the loud downtown traffic, the clamor at the airport. It never fails that once the audio conference call gets started, there are the interruptions to ask who just joined as you hear the entry tone or to ask if a specific participant is on the call to answer a question. Something like “Is Dan on to answer that one?” probably sounds familiar. All this lost time adds up pretty quickly.

So how can you host better meetings? Watch this short video to find out!

With online tools that integrate audio and web conferences, you and your participants can meet in an interactive environment, at any time, from anywhere. Using web conferencing services, you can:

• Visualize and manage your audio calls from your computer with simple point and click commands so you can mute that participant with the barking dog, see who has joined the meeting and know who to call on for answers.
• Take your meetings to the next level of interactivity by sharing and showing materials from your computer. You and your participants can easily and seamlessly collaborate online with documents, share PowerPoint slides or conduct a web tour at a moment’s notice.
• Add desktop video to your meeting to give it more impact. With a webcam and a high-speed connection, you and your presenters can broadcast live images to meeting participants. All it takes is a click of your mouse.

Have you tried using the web to enhance your audio conference calls yet? Noticed any improvements in your meetings?

Sarah Murphy is a marketing manager at InterCall. With over ten years of experience in the conferencing industry, Sarah has worked with customers and products that cover all segments of conferencing, including traditional operator attended services, video and online meeting solutions.

No, No, I Wasn’t Talking to You

As social creatures, we all like to talk and share things. It is tough, though, when you’re working to get something done, but instead you have to deal with a constant barrage of people coming into your office wanting something or needing an answer to a question. In the age of instant communication and immediate gratification, people don’t even wait for the “Come in” call when an office door is shut, if they even bother to knock at all.

Working from home, my only interruption is my puppy wanting to play, but I still deal with the remote ‘knockers’: the ones who send an email and two seconds later follow up with an IM telling me to check the email they just sent. Talk about not having any patience.

There’s nothing worse when you are trying to talk on an audio conference call and you’ve got someone at your door asking a question—splitting your attention means something gets missed and it is usually what someone says on the phone.

Check out this video to see if it looks familiar. Then take a quick survey and tell us about your meeting interruptions. Ever had a meeting go like this one?

 

Jill Huselton is a senior marketing manager at InterCall. She's been in the conferencing industry for nearly 15 years, working in operations, account management and marketing, mainly based in Colorado. Before leaving the Mile-High City, she hiked a 14er, one of her top accomplishments. Now she's traded the mountains for the beach and works from a home office in North Carolina.

Do You Need Conferencing Software for Webinars or Online Web Conferencing?

There's a debate brewing in online conferencing: What's the difference between a web conference and a webinar? Is there one?

Online Meeting Tools Review sheds some light on the subject with an interesting post explaining the difference.

According to the post:

A web conference is a non-public online meeting emphasizing collaboration. One person may be the host, but desktop sharing and other tools make it easy to switch the role of presenter.

A webinar, on the other hand, is often open to the public and offers more of a single presenter and large audience ambiance. The experience for the audience is largely passive, although tools such as polls, chat functions and Q&A sessions can add interactivity to a webinar.

Conferencing Software for Online Web Conferencing
Now that you know the difference between the types of online conferencing programs, you can decide on the best software for your purposes. Small meetings, project assessments and “touch-base” sessions, as well as some collaborative sales meetings where your prospects may be expected to have a lot of questions, would fall under the web conference umbrella.

Look for conferencing software with collaborative tools such as desktop and file sharing, shared web browsing and easy “one-click” entry into meetings.

Conferencing Software for Webinars
Training (customer or employee), marketing seminars and press conferences are considered webinars.

You'll want chat functions for attendees, the ability to poll attendees and to host question and answer sessions. Additionally, you'll want tools for marketing your webinar in advance and to follow up with attendees after the event, as well as tools to track attendance.

Before you can select the best web conferencing software for your company, you need to define your conferencing purposes and goals.

Don't forget to consider InterCall’s streaming services as another option for one-to-many presentations. 

What meetings could you replace with web conferencing?  Are there opportunities for you to save time and money by hosting a webinar? If you need help assessing the right solution for your business, use our interactive tool to get started. 

Sara Steele is an associate marketing manager at InterCall responsible for various corporate communication initiatives; including social media and channel marketing efforts. Sara began working with InterCall after graduating from the University of Colorado in 2006. In her free time, she enjoys running, skiing, and spending time with family and friends.

Better Line Quality Means Fewer Distractions

I had some great feedback from my blog post last week that covered best practices to follow when hosting audio conference calls. Along with making sure you are prepped and ready to go with all the logistics of your meeting, there are a few things you and your participants can do to keep your lines clear and therefore reduce distractions.

• Electronic devices (such as BlackBerrys or cell phones and associated hands-free devices, laptops, etc.) can interfere with line quality if located too close to the phone. If possible, place such items a good distance away from the phone you are using for the conference call.
• If you are conducting back-to-back calls, make sure to disconnect your initial conference call line prior to dialing back in for the next call. (Failing to do so could produce a ‘flash hook’ scenario, which feeds a loud signal into the call.)
• When entering your conference code and leader PIN do not press the keys too quickly—this will enable the system to ‘read’ them most effectively.
• During an Operator Assisted Q&A session, participants should pick up their handsets to ask questions. This will ensure the best possible audio quality and volume from their lines.
• If you are conducting a call using a conference room phone, microphone or speakerphone, be aware of the location of the phone/microphone at all times and speak directly into the device to ensure the best possible audio quality and volume.
• If you are conducting an Operator Assisted conference call using a conference room phone, microphone or speakerphone, test the volume and line clarity with the operator prior to starting the call.

These tips should help your conferences run smoothly, but if you do have issues, our tech support team is there to help at any time. You can press *0 on your phone keypad during your conference to bring an operator into your call or press 00 to speak one-on-one outside of the meeting. You can also call us ahead of time if you have questions.

Christina Todisco is a marketing manager at InterCall and has been in the conferencing industry since 2002. Christina currently provides product marketing support for InterCall’s audio services, reporting and invoice solutions and InterCall Online. When not working, Christina enjoys spending time with her husband, daughter, family and friends.

Top Tips for Better Audio Calls

Our customers frequently ask for tips to help make their audio conference calls more effective. It isn’t hard and keeping a few best practices in mind will help make the difference between feeling productive and like you just wasted 30 minutes of your time.

Before the Call

• Stay organized and be prepared for your conference call.
• Notify your participants of the date and time of the call. (Have you downloaded InterCall’s Outlook® plug-in to make scheduling your meetings easy by automatically including your conference account details in the calendar invite?)
• Communicate any items that need to be prepared prior to the meeting.
• Send the agenda to your participants.
• Log into InterCall Online to adjust any settings on your account. For instance, if you will have a lot of people in your meeting, you can turn on silent entry so you do not hear continuous beeping as participants join or drop off.
• If you are traveling, download InterCall Mobile Assistant so your account info is stored in your smartphone and you aren’t fumbling for your codes.

Starting the Call

• Be on time or early to your call.
• Have the phone commands easily accessible so you can utilize all of the conference features. These are listed on the back of your wallet card or you can download a quick reference guide.
• Be sure you are in a quiet location where you will not be disturbed and try to minimize background noise.
• Turn off call waiting, pagers and cell phones.
• Conduct a roll call so you know who is there.
• Briefly state the goals of your meeting and the agenda.
• Do not put your phone on hold as this may put music into the conference and prevent others from continuing the meeting.
• If you're recording your meeting, let everyone know before you press *2 on your phone keypad.

During the Call

• Keep your conference on track by engaging your participants and keeping them informed of upcoming tasks and meetings.
• Say your name before you speak and encourage others to do the same. It is easy to forget that everyone on the call may not be familiar with all the voices.
• Ask for feedback from specific participants instead of the entire group. You're more likely to get a response instead of silence while everyone waits for someone else to answer.
• Table any discussions that are not relevant to the agenda for a later time and place.
• Try to involve all of the participants in the discussion.
• Promptly deal with any noise or distractions by pressing *0 to request an operator.
• Summarize the issues discussed and recap any action items resulting from the call.
• Establish the day and time for the next conference call.

I hope this helps you to host better meetings so you get more out of them. Have you found other things that make your calls run more smoothly? We’d love to share some more ideas with our users.

Come back next week and I’ll give you some suggestions for improving your line quality.

Christina Todisco is a marketing manager at InterCall and has been in the conferencing industry since 2002. Christina currently provides product marketing support for InterCall’s audio services, reporting and invoice solutions and InterCall Online. When not working, Christina enjoys spending time with her husband, daughter, family and friends.