Haha…hope that title got your attention! That’s how one feels when talking to an audio conferencing company sometimes because some make you feel it’s necessary to get the “works” package. Getting all the features offered by your audio conferencing company may not be advised. When you speak to them you are already prepared to join because you understand all the benefits of using a conferencing service in your business. Tempting you with all the bells and whistles, the conference call providers are really only trying to help. Just make sure that you don’t over spend, as all the benefits of conferencing may be lost because of adding services that are unnecessary. One thing to note, it is pertinent one has a bridge line. The ability to have multiple people on the audio call is the essence of holding a conferencing call. Make sure it is stable and secure and all will fall into place….okay maybe it takes more than that but this is the foundation you need.

What features would be considered extras? Here are a few examples. Having an attending operator for the conferencing call. He or she could welcome the participants and help maintain order as well as portray a professional image. They can help you organize especially if you take on other extras such as role call which allows everyone to know who is present on the audio call. The operator can put people into queue then introduce each participant before they ask questions. Would you like to prescreen your participants? The operator could collect the necessary data.

Would you be interested in customer reference codes? With customer reference codes it can be help to identify the calls listed on the customer’s conferencing invoice by name, number or possibly a combination of both. Customers may then choose up to a predetermined amount of alphanumeric characters to denote customer-specific information for accountability purposes. This would greatly help to keep organization of data that one may not want to announce publicly on a conferencing call. You can come up with many ways to use this feature. There are plenty of other extras available which we will discuss further in future posts.