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Guidelines to successful conference calls

The following hints and tips are based upon our many years of running audio conferences. We hope you find them usefull.

1. Send out an agenda and stick to it

Meetings by phone are no different to traditoinal meetings - they are far more effective if participants are aware of the agenda in advance.

2. Arrive early and encourage punctuality in your delegates

As the chairperson, I suggest you join the call a few minutes earlier than the appointed time so that if any of the delegates arrive early they will not hear the ‘on-hold’ music and will receive confirmation they have dialled in successfully.

Impress on your delegates that the teleconference will begin on time and they are expected to arrive on time. Otherwise, you will find yourself continually being interrupted by late joiners and having to back track.

3. Actively 'Chair' the meeting

Many face to face meetings are more like informal gatherings with no agenda and no effective chairperson - consequentially little is achieved.

When meeting via teleconference, it is even more important that the meeting is chaired effectively as there are no visual cues meaning participants cannot rely on body language to gauge when it is appropriate to speak.

If I am chairing a conference call with participants who are not familiar with the medium, I ask them to think of me as performing a similar role to the Speaker of the House of Commons. The key discipline is that only one person speaks at a time when invited to do so via the Speaker (chairperson).

Even if I have no visual materials to present, I often run a web conference in conjunction with my audio conference with just one PowerPoint slide showing the agenda. This helps to keep the participants' minds focused and also provides a mechanism by which they can indicate they wish to speak by 'putting their hand up' by pressing a button on their computer screen.

4. Resist using cheap speaker phones

One of the easiest ways to spoil a good audio conference is to have participants dial in from cheap speaker phones.

I am sure that most people reading this will have experienced difficulty hearing people who have called them on a one to one basis using their speaker phone. I know my heart always sinks when someone says "I'm just going to put you on speaker phone so xyz can join us". The result is almost always a struggle to hear a bunch of people through echoes and audio clipping.

The vast majority of speaker phones are simply not designed to deliver clear audio and the majority of rooms are not designed for acoustics. The net result is awful audio. The effects of bad speaker phones are compounded on an audio conference when more than one line is involved.

Unless you are equipped with a speaker phone specifically designed for audio conferencing, you are much better off dialling in from a regular handset. If several people in the same office wish to participate in the call, have them dial in from separate lines.

5. Make a note of the names of people as they join and keep a list

This way you will know when everyone who is expected has arrived and when you can begin. If you lose track. Many conference call systems can be configured to record the names of participants as they join allowing you to get a roll-call of who is dialed in.

6. Lock the conference call for added security

If the issues you are discussing are sensitive or confidential, you may wish to lock the conference once everyone has arrived to stop others joining. Consult your conference call provider's user manual for instructions on how to do this using your particular system.

7. Let everyone have their say

It is very tempting to talk over people or allow others to do so, make it clear that everyone will have their turn to speak.

8. Keep notes and circulate minutes

I find it best to keep notes during the call and circulate a filenote of what has been said after the call to all delegates for their records. Some more advanced conference call services offer a transcription service meaning they can provide you with typed notes of the conference call to save you time.

If you prefer to keep your own minutes then it's a good idea to record the conference call so that you can always go back and review any parts you miss.

Our OzoneENTERPRISE service includes transcription, translation and recording functions.

9. Ask delegates in noisy environments to mute their microphones.

To ensure that everyone can hear each other properly, it is important to keep the noise down to a minimum.

You will find that if one or more of your delegates is on a mobile phone in an airport or other noisy environment such as a computer room, it makes it difficult for everyone to hear.

Simply ask them to mute their microphone by pressing the mute button on their telephone handset or by activating the conference bridge's 'line mute' function.

Most teleconferencing systems include a function which allows users to mute their handsets at the conference bridge.

Most enterprise class audio conferencing systems allow the host of the audio conference to force all the participant's handsets into mute mode. This is often called 'Presenter Mode'.

Presenter mode is particularly useful when a host (or small group of hosts) wish to deliver a message to a large group of participants. A typical application is a board of directors wishing to address all employees in their company.

With, say, several hundred participants listening on the line it is very important that one or two employees in noisy environments do not disrupt the call. Presenter mode audio conferences are often held in conjunction with a web conference (also known as a 'webinar').

A web conference allows the presenters to show visual materials such as PowerPoint presentations and provide a mechanism by which participants can indicate they wish to speak when their lines are muted by pressing a button on their computer screen.

Use of individual muting on smaller calls (less than 25 participants) and invocation of 'Presenter' mode for larger calls will vastly increase the quality of the call.

10. Summarise and invite comment by roll call before closing

As with any meeting, it’s a good idea to summarise what has been said during the meeting and go around the ‘room’ asking everyone in turn if they have any final comments before you close the call.

This way you can’t be accused of not letting everyone have their say!

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