How To Make Your Business Conference Calls High Tech And User Friendly

Different Choices for Business Conference Calls

With all the different choices that need to be made in business to have an efficient and profitable company, communication solutions can often be over looked or disregarded. What happens when there is an important conference call that has to be made and it doesn't work? Have you ever had an important meeting and nobody can sign into the conference call number? With our increasingly hectic lives and busy schedules that most employees have in this day and age, the technology needs to work the first time, and work great. Listed below are a number of different business conference call options.

1) Web Conferencing - There are many kinds of web conferencing services which may depend on your budget in what you can afford. If you have a small to medium sized company, this technology could involve using a computer and having all of the users on one website so they can view your screen where you have uploaded a sales or training PowerPoint. This is also called a webinar by many companies and can decrease your travel spending for the company as you will be able to get a lot -accomplished via video rather than having to fly to the destination.

With certain companies you can use your web cam to stream live to your viewers. I have even seen companies that will allow you to use 6 web cams during your conference call. Some of the coolest technology out there today will allow you to hold your call on your Blackberry, iPhone, or any wireless device.

2) Webcasts - During my time at the last company I worked for we held Webcasts all the time which connected about 1000 of us around the country to one single meeting. This is actually live streaming video over the internet where an audio video company comes in to tape the presenter and streams the feed through the internet. This may need to be done because of the high volume of users on the other end. We were set up with our own website address and blasted it out to everyone to logon at a certain time. This service can be costly but if you are holding such a large event it may have to be worked into the budget.

3) Operator Assistant Conferencing - If you have a conference that may require you to have a question and answer section then an operator might be the right answer for the conference call. The operator stays on for the duration of the call and then takes the callers questions and feeds them to you.

4) Recorded Conference Calls - One of the many options that conference call providers have is that they can record your web cast or call which you can then use instead of an employee who may not be available at that time.

5) Free Conference Calling - This has to be one of my favorite features of going high tech because there are actual companies out there that give your company a free number for everyone to call into yet there are no charges. Basically whoever calls in is only being charged their own rates on say their home phones or cell phones. We use VoIP at home and all of our calls no matter where they are placed to are free. I loved it because when I called into the conference line it would be free, but if I used my cell phone I would be using up minutes. One of the companies can actually hold up to 500 callers on a line which is amazing and could save a company thousands of dollars a year.

6) Creating Podcasts - Maybe you have never heard of podcasts, or you have heard of them but are sure what they are. The word originally started from people who have IPods and were listening to these snippets of self created audio programming. Such as a blogger talking into a microphone instead of writing to a blog. In a nutshell a podcast is an audio file that can be listened to via the web or your MP3 player. After the conference call has occurred you can then automatically turn it into a podcast for your callers, employees, students, etc. Without making it sound too advanced there are even ways you could have people subscribe to your podcasts so that when you add a new conference call podcast to your website they would know it instantly. If you look on the internet about podcasts you will see they are very easy to create and many of the business conference call providers will help to do just that which means you don't have to know a thing about the technology.

I hope I have provided you with some information you may have been seeking. All in all, business conference calls are getting easier and more user friendly. In addition to that new conferencing technology could possibly save your company thousands of dollars in the long run. Do your research when looking at all the different companies because some may have just the options you need without all the extra fluff.