5 Ways Call Conferencing Can Benefit Your Business
Today’s
businesses operate globally and have offices and remote workforce at various
geographies in the world. When companies operate on a multinational level, it
becomes harder for them to bring all their employees on a single platform to
foster uninterrupted communication and improve the overall productivity. Well, call conferencing is a
feature of cloud telephony which addresses this problem.
Call conferencing brings your team members, vendors, clients, and other stakeholders on a single platform to organize formal meetings and collaborate with each other. In this article, we will discuss all about call conferencing and its various benefits for your business.
Content Index
1. What is call conferencing?
2. How call conferencing works?
3. Benefits of call conferencing for businesses?
4. Features of cloud-based conferencing calling.
5. How to set up call conferencing?
What
is call conferencing?
In
simpler terms, call conferencing allows multiple people to interact with each
other. The call conferencing service can be used by anyone as it is highly
accessible. Cloud-based call conferencing offers multiple features which
differentiates it from most commonly used voice conferencing service via
conventional telecom providers.
Cloud-based voice conferencing service is usually cheaper as it can involve international calling charges. Conducting a call conferencing meeting from your regular telecom provider can incur huge telephony bills. In most cases, cloud-based call conferencing providers also offer free minutes bundled in your monthly or annual package.
Additionally,
with cloud-based call conferencing service, you get many important features
which lets you easily manage formal call conferencing meetings involving high
number of participants. We will talk more about these features a little later
in the post. Let’s first see how call conferencing really works.
How call conferencing works?
To
conduct a call conferencing meeting, you will first have to create a list of
participants and then send an invitation to inform them, so that, they are
available for the meeting. However, if an urgent decision has to be made, then
a call conferencing meeting can be done instantly as well.
There are two ways by which you can conduct call conferencing:
1.
Dial Out – Here, as a call conferencing host, you will dial out the
numbers of your participants. For example, you will dial the first number, if
the participant picks up the call, you will put his/her call on hold and then
dial the next number.
2.
Call Me – With this method, you create a call conferencing event using
your cloud PBX portal and then participants call your assigned conference
number with associated pin to join the meeting.
To
utilize the call conferencing feature of cloud telephony, you first have to buy
a virtual business phone number – toll free number or local numbers. In case,
you don’t know about these business phone numbers, then do check out this presentation
on toll
free numbers vs local numbers.
You can use any of these virtual business phone number for utilizing call conferencing service. If you are low on budget, then local numbers will best serve the purpose as you won’t be charged for international calling (your participants will be charged). However, if you want to offer a free call conferencing service to your remote team members and other stakeholders, then you can opt for toll free number.
5 Benefits of call conferencing for businesses
1. Reduce business telephony bills
Cloud-based
voice conferencing service is usually cheaper as it can involve international
calling charges. Conducting a call conferencing meeting from your regular
telecom provider can incur huge telephony bills. In most cases, cloud-based
call conferencing providers also offer free minutes bundled in your monthly or
annual package.
Companies
conduct call conferencing through local numbers, which reduces call costs as
local calling rates are applied regardless of the destination and duration of
the audio conference call.
2.
Reduce operational costs
Businesses
with multiple offices and clients from different locations might ask their
employees to travel for face to face meetings. While face to face meetings are
productive, but business travel incurs enormous costs on companies because of
various expenses, including ticket fares, accommodation costs, etc.
As
call conferencing reduces the need for face to face meetings, it can reduce the
requirement of business travel to a great extent. Instead of traveling distant
places, you can organize audio conferencing by inviting all the stakeholders on
a single platform to facilitate the exchange of ideas.
3.
Improve team collaboration
During
call conferencing, participants can freely share their ideas and contribute to
the ongoing conversation for better decision making. Call conferencing is easy
to set up and requires no technical expertise.
Best
of all, you can set up call conferencing in a short period of notice which
helps in urgent decisions making. Due to its simplicity and high accessibility,
call conferencing has become a critical team collaboration tool for
businesses.
4. No
need for expensive equipment
Call
conferencing service is highly accessible as participants can join the online
meetings without the need of any expensive hardware. You can dial participants
number using any softphone or configured extension and your participants can
join the meeting using their cell phones.
5.
Save time
As said earlier, call conferencing reduces the need of business travel and face to face meetings which not only saves the cash but also time.
Let’s
understand how call conferencing can help your business to save some precious
time. Suppose, your organization have a medium to large infrastructure
consisting of multiple floors, buildings, or even locations, then your
employees don’t have to go to different floors or buildings for work-related
discussion. They can simply conduct a voice conferencing meeting for discussions.
Thus, saving their time and energy.
Saving
time in business is critical as it affects team’s productivity and efficiency.
Features of cloud-based conferencing calling
1.
Call Recording – One of the best features you get with a
cloud-based call conferencing service is that you can choose to record your
online meetings. The call conferencing recordings are kept on a cloud server
for a period that you want.
2. Custom Hold Music – In case, if any participant is waiting for others to join the conference, then you can set a custom hold music or any informational message which they can hear on their hold time.
3.
International Calling – This is a cost-saving feature for
businesses as it allows them to connect internationally via local phone
numbers. As a result, domestic call rates are applied irrespective of the
destination or duration of the audio conferencing.
Invitees
connect to the call conference meeting by dialing the local phone number and
then entering the password or PIN code that is usually shared by the host of
the meeting.
4.
Call controls – As a call conferencing host, you get a variety of
call controlling features such as the ability to mute callers, start call
recordings, lock the call, etc.
5.
Integrations – Most call conferencing providers offer
integration with Email and calendar services which makes it easier for you to
organize your business meetings and invite participants.
How
to set up call conferencing?
Setting up call conferencing is a straightforward task which involves the following steps:
Step
1: Make a list of attendees for the call conferencing who will
attend the meeting and share with the details of the event with them.
Step
2: In this step, you will have to configure your cloud-based PBX
solution to create a conference.
Let’s
see how you can do this using The Real PBX web portal.
–
Login to The Real PBX portal, and from the left sidebar, click on the Call
Conference option, as shown in the screenshot below.
–
After that, you will see the interface, as shown in the screenshot below. Click
on the “Add Conference” button.
You
will now see a pop-up form where you have to specify call conferencing details
such as associated local number, conference pin, and other information listed
below.
1.
Conference Name – Specify the name of your call conferencing.
2.
Description – Write a short and concise description of call
conferencing. Here you can mention the purpose of your audio
conferencing.
3.
Associated No – Select a local number associated with your
account.
4.
Conference User Pin – Specify the password here. Your
participants will have to type this Conference Pin to join the meeting.
5.
Announce when a user joins and leaves the conference – If
you enable this feature, then cloud PBX software will ask the name of the new
participant after he types in the conference pin and notify other participants
that “User Name” has joined the call conference. Similarly, if a user leaves
the call conference, it will inform.
6.
Announce the number of users in the conference to the caller
–
Play
recording for a single user – This feature will allow you to set custom music
or record, which will be played only when an individual user is waiting for
other participants to join the voice conference.
7.
Music on Hold –
Here,
you have to select the custom music recording which the cloud PBX software will
play when a single user is on the call conferencing.
Wrapping
Up
Call conferencing is simple to use, easy to set up, and highly accessible, which makes it an efficient team collaboration tool for businesses to enhance their communication systems. There are endless benefits of incorporating voice conferencing service; most of them are mentioned in this article. In case you have any doubts, then you can connect with our Cloud Communication Expert to get answers to your queries.