Top Four Tips For Selecting a Great Conference Call Company

By Chris 




 If look around in your locations, you can observe that there are conference call companies over the last several years. Many of these companies are simply glorified websites with no personnel or technology behind them. If you should need assistance on your conference calls, no one will be there to help you. Here are five tips for selecting a great conference call company that will produce excellent results for you at fair prices.


1. Make sure that the conference call company is more than a website. You should check out the company's website first, but then you should call them and ask them some questions about their company. You should inquire about how many people they have on staff and if they have customer service that is accessible when you have a problem with a call. Another good question is, Do they have their own conference bridges? Also try and find out how old the company is and how much experience the founders of the company have in the conferencing industry.

5. Once you have selected a conference call service and start using the service, check your bill out to make sure that the charges are correct. Multiple the number of total number of minutes on your statement times the quoted rate that you were given and check to see that this total is equal to the total on your bill before taxes. If you have been overcharged, get back to your contact immediately to correct the error and request a credit.

2. Be careful of free sites. There are a number of free conference calling sites on the Internet. In most cases, these services are limited in that they have no customer service and all of your parties have to pay for their own long distance service, which is sometimes more than you would pay for the conferencing service with a paid vendor. Some of these free services also require you to change dial in numbers and pin codes periodically, which becomes a hassle for you and your conferees, trying to remember which code is good today.


3. Make sure that you get a free trial. This is the most important tip since "the proof of the pudding" is in you actually making conference calls and judging the quality for yourself. While you are making trial calls, be sure and try the operator recall feature to see if an operator actually comes into your call to assist you. If the operator arrives late or never arrives, then the company probably has limited resources to help you in the future. Another important point to judge is the clarity of the call. The call should be very clear and all parties should be heard clearly. If the volume is low or parties sould fuzzy or there is clipping on the call, then this is a problem. Try someone else.


 4. Check references. While you have the company's representative on the phone, you should next ask for references. You should get at least three and no more than five references, hopefully in the same industry that you represent. Once you have obtained these references, call each one of them and inquire about their experiences with this company. Be sure and ask them about the clarity of the calls, the quality of customer service and the accuracy of the billing. When you have checked all of your references, you should then decide if this vendor ranks high on your list. If you have some concern that this vendor may not be the one for you, then call another vendor and repeat the process.


If you follow these five simple tips in selecting a conference call service, you should be able to avoid the problem companies and select a company that will provide you with an outstanding conferencing experience.