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

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.