The world is full of opportunities and there are much more industries than ever before. Everyone wants to look for the ways to save money or move ahead with maximum ease. With the latest technologies, it is really amazing to see many new gadgets available on the market. We live in a very busy world and rely on technology to get almost everything done through it.
Among the latest technologies that have been practically effective for us, conference call is something that specifically fulfills most businesses’ basic requirements for communication. This technology refers to an increasingly popular way to do a business, facilitating them to have a good hold on business meetings.
What is a Conference Call?
Conference calls are very much alike phone calls that usually connect three or more individuals at the same time. This facility is mainly used by businesses in order to communicate with two or more of their key personnel simultaneously, usually to obtain input from everyone involved or to broadcast information required by more than one individual at the same occasion.
Conference calls have been established to be a cost-effective and efficient way to keep in touch with multiple people across the globe. With this facility, traveling costs have been reduced to a minimum while conferencing costs at a faction of the costs required for flying to other cities or countries for meetings. In fact, call conferencing has become the standard of cost efficiency capabilities for businesses these days.
Conference calls were originally facilitated through a phone while the latest version is based on the internet based conference calling. Both telephone and internet based conference calling is facilitated by conference call services providers. These companies use specialized conference calling tools which are usually very expensive. For companies, however, using conference call services whether its telephone or internet based is cost-effective due to affordable service cost.
Modes of Conference Calling
With the old mode of conference calling, your telephone is used as the medium of communication which is further accompanied by two diverse ways to utilize conference call services, i.e. operator-assisted services and the reservation-less. The operator-assisted service is facilitated via an operator who helps you interconnect many participants to a conference call. This practice usually requires reservation a day before the scheduled meeting or conference.
The reservation-less conference call, on the other hand, is often less expensive, and so is more popular than the other mode of telephone based conference calling. Thanks to a toll-free number which is assigned to your company, this mode is known as reservation-less. Since you can always call at that number, it does not require any reservations or prior notice.
Conference call services offering telephone based conference calling classify their services into two further categories i.e. question-and-answer conference calling and broadcasted conference calling.
- Broadcasted Conference Calling – As name suggests, the broadcasted conference calling is meant to broadcast necessary information to multiple people who only can listen to the caller speaking. It comes with one-way exchange where only the speaker talks and nobody else can interact or throw questions.
- Question-and-Answer Conference Calling – This type of conference calling works in a completely opposite way. With question-and-answer conference calling, participates are allowed to ask questions and get answers from each other in order to come up with a solution to certain situations or matters being discussed.
Commonly known as web conferencing, the newest version in conference call services is based on voice-over internet protocol or VoIP. This version uses an internet service and some other features of original call conference options facilitated by the telephone based conference calling. Web conferencing is usually useful for the situations where you need to use visual presentations, aids, and projection illustrations in order to share ideas with the individuals on the call.
Some of the most commonly used activities that can be done are application sharing and slide presentations. An individual on the other side of the line can present facts through conference call which is being accessed through a software program, enabling other parties to view the presentation and hear it over speakers or headphones. Likewise, call conference services through VoIP are equally effective for video conference or a call conference which is enhanced using web cameras.
Conference Call Services Providers
Conference call services are the companies that provide you with the hardware, software and other relevant services for your business communication needs. They aim to help you with conducting important business meetings and conference virtually. With such a useful service, you can even conduct important meetings when you are not at office or travelling abroad.
In order to organize a business meeting, you will need to ask your conference call services provider to provide you with the necessary services. Tell them the time and date when you want a meeting or conference to take place. They set up a specific telephone number that will be given to all parties so they can simultaneously call into and join the conference call. Amazingly, these types of meetings or conference can be conducted to have different parties from different parts of the country or the world at one place and discuss business agenda in the same way as they do otherwise.
Conference call services have many other features to offer for your business though each service provider may vary from other in terms of features, services, quality, and costs. For that reason, it is recommended to do a good research before deciding on a company to avail the best conference call services for your business.
The Bottom Line
With conference call services, you can invite all business parties to participate in a business meeting where you can discuss about what is happening in your business, what ways could be used to increase productivity, spot problems areas, and many other things. The best part is that these call meetings are carried out by phone or internet, allowing all key personnel to join the meeting from wherever they are in the world. Simply put, conference call services are inevitable to conduct virtual business meetings and conference calls for you.
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