Conference calls are of great use for any business. It is a flexible way to get in touch with your team. Conference calls help to build engagement and trust among people across the globe and bring people together for a specific task from different locations. By having a recording of the meeting you can capture the moment and later transcribe it for future use and reference. Most businesses communicate with their partners, associates and staffs at different locations using conference calls. Transcribing business conference calls helps to analyse all events and interactions from sales presentation and team meetings to corporate meetings to training. Conference calls can be transcribed accurately with the help of business transcription services.
Fixing a Bad Conference Call
Setting up and running conference calls smoothly can be quite challenging. When planning a conference call, there are a number of factors to consider to avoid problems that can lead to a bad experience for participants. When people are forced to go through a low quality conference calling experience, there may be repercussions. Once there is an issue, it is vital to fix it as soon as possible. To deliver the reliability the user demands, conference call organizers can consider the following tips:
- Make sure that all facts and details are provided to your conference call provider.
- Identify the telephone numbers of the calling and called parties, time and date of event, and what happened during the call. Details such as whether the participants were using cell phones, landlines or UC clients on their laptops and the location they are calling from should all be provided. Mention background noises, if any, that may have had a role to play in creating the issue.
- Report an issue as soon as it occurs because sooner is always better than later. This is because conference call providers are dealing with a huge number of call records and therefore retrieval can take some time.
- If there is an issue with quality, you must convince the help desk that you have a problem that requires quick repair. A quick solution is not always possible when first level technicians are extremely busy or else the issues may be too complex to address quickly. Another problem is when your requests for repair or trouble tickets get misrouted or stuck, in which case you have to call back again for support and the entire process of ticket issuing and clarification will have to be repeated.
- You could employ some tools and try to isolate the issue. If you are in the position to retrieve events, you could use call recordings, packet traces, call records through your interface/console, and other details about the issue.
Tips to Ensure Successful Conference Calls
- Decide on the type of call that you want to make. Video conferencing is also useful as it allows simple visual presentations. With video conferencing everyone will be able to see and discuss better but audio conferencing calls are less expensive and less complicated.
- For high quality, professional conference calls make sure that you have conferencing machines. Consider the number of people who will be involved in conference calls before buying the equipment. The equipment should work flawlessly with the phone lines, computer and the internet. If necessary, you can also set up video cameras.
- Once the equipment is ready, invite other participants and make sure that others also have the necessary equipment ready. Fix a time and let them know about it but consider the different time zones.
- Conference call hosting services are sometimes run like formal meetings that are operator assisted. You can also go for basic conference calls which do not involve any special equipment but uses only online service.
- Once the conference call has started, it begins with the introduction of every individual but some people may not be interested in talking much through the phone while others may become bold and argumentative. Ensure that the conference call runs smoothly.
- Any background noise created by the participants such as chairs being moved around, people chatting, machinery noises, music playing in the background and so on can be very distracting. So, make the participants aware of the disturbance they are causing. The best way to do this is through communication before the conference call regarding the etiquette to be observed during the conference.
- Ensure that the groups participating have leaders, without which chaos will reign. The leader should make sure that everyone is given the necessary attention and sufficient time to speak out. In case there is a digression, the leader should get things back on track.
- Another important thing is to distribute the necessary information and documents to all participants well before the conference starts. This will help to avoid confusion during the conference related to any documents or other information that are mentioned in the course of the conference.
- Poor voice quality is a major issue that hinders the smooth running of a conference. This occurs most often when someone is using VoIP service that depends on factors such as phones and other devices used, bandwidth and codecs used among others. Such an issue can be sorted out only by the participants themselves, and instructions regarding such problems must be provided before the conference.
Conferences and meetings are a strong way of communication among organizational employees. It is during such meetings that many important commitments and decisions that propel the growth of the business may be made. This process is very engaging and creates a feeling that all participants are part of the meeting and directly in contact. Transcribing a conference call provides a detailed written note of what all happened during a conference. This transcript can be used as employee training material, or to review the decisions made during each meeting separately, and also for future references. So transcribing conference calls is useful for the business and if you want to transcribe your conference, you may want to consider hiring a conference call transcription company. They have experienced transcriptionists who can convert your conference calls into the desired text format with utmost accuracy.
