Conference Calls
Phone conferences are an invaluable means to businesses these days. They facilitate remote contact while allowing more than two people to join a conversation. There are times when holding a meeting in a certain venue becomes a challenge. People may not be able to agree on a specific date or time. If there is a frequent need to discuss matters and parties are in different places geographically, it would seem unreasonable to bear the expenses of gathering for meetings regularly. Considering the constraints, conference calls become a suitable option to speed up business processes.
Since conference calls usually involve decision makings and may become very lengthy, being prepared beforehand can help the discussion run more smoothly. Though the topic of the conference is obviously clear to everyone, detailed information such as reports, statistics, etc can be sent to everyone before the conference. It will allow the attendees to process the information and come up with not only questions, but even solutions to the problem. Consequently, when the conference is held, everyone can share their opinion and discuss options rather than doubling the time -or potentially more- to start from scratch.
During the conference call, it is important to keep track of the time you take to speak and use it to express your concerns without leaving anything out. But it is also important to make sure you don’t take most of the time, leaving others silent or having limited time to share their points of view. Although time is not generally allocated to speakers in business settings, it would help to keep a record personally. This will give everyone time to share their concerns, ideas, and solutions. The more options you have, the better are the grounds to base upon a decision.
Calls and expenses
Holding conference calls is a smart business decision, and technology has provided many alternatives in this regard. Typical phone calls can become very expensive considering the length and the distance, but VoIP calls provide a solution to both those problems. Regular phone calls use PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network), but Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone services use an internet connection. This means that wherever you are -even on the other side of the world- if you have access to the internet, you can make a phone call or join a conference call. You can use the number you have received from a laptop, a cell phone, or a computer.
VoIP services provide more options than the ones mentioned above. Another option is to have video conferences. Some even have lecture modes to allow the use of PowerPoint slides and more. But these will be discussed in another post.
