International Audio Conferencing

Do you work with several international clients, customers, business partners or colleagues? If you do, then you surely know the difficulties that come with organizing and holding meetings. It is important to have clear conversations with business partners and clients. We all want to feel as if our collaborative efforts are successful. Often times email communication just isn’t enough. Inflections and intentions get misinterpreted. This, in turn gets in the way of our ability to work quickly and efficiently. And, of course, this also causes frustration for all involved parties.

As a business owner in the international arena there are a few things that you can do to keep clients confident and happy and to create productive long-lasting partnerships. Often times this means scheduling visits. But, visits are expensive and few and far between, so International Audio Conference calling is crucial. At Conferenceshopper.com we offer a wide array of International Audio Conferencing plans and we work with all top tier providers. We know that quality and reliability are top priorities and well as availability and ease of use. We have an appropriate solution for your business and a well trained staff ready to help you determine just what plan is right for you.

You can keep your international clients happy by using a few common tactics on your international audio conferences. Please try to employ some of the following tactics on your next call:

• Schedule a set weekly or bimonthly call. This provides time to discuss lingering issue or bring up new ideas that may not fit in with other goal driven calls.
• Email visuals to go along with the call. If you have a new piece of marketing material or a website update for your client it can be helpful to look at it together over the phone rather than just review on your own and give feedback. This will generate a natural conversation and true collaborations will surface.
• Use your Audio Conferencing to talk to clients about last minute modifications or plans. When conversation is just a phone call away you do not need to wait until the next scheduled meeting to get their input.
  
  

Please call us today for a brief consultation about your International Audio Conferencing needs. Additionally we provide a wide array of other services in telecommunications – from video conferencing to DDoS Protection services to T1 Internet connections. We look forward to working with you.

Source:http://www.conferenceshopper.com/international-audio-conferencing

Audio Conferencing Services for Small and Mid-Sized Businesses

Let’s face it, business travel is expensive, time consuming, and rarely fun. Not only do you have to deal with the hassle of getting to the airport/train station on time and passing through security, but you also have to purchase increasingly expensive travel tickets, hotel rooms, rental cars, etc., and spend a great deal of time away from your friends and family.

Add to that the fact that businesses of all sizes are tightening their budgets in order to stay competitive, and it’s easy to see why so many of today’s companies are looking for an alternative solution to meeting in-person.

Small and mid-sized businesses face an even greater challenge, as many typically lack the capital that large enterprises have to meet and connect with their geographically dispersed customers, colleagues and partners. One way to work around these issues, however, is to employ an audio conferencing service.

Audio conferencing keeps your team connected, increases your business’s productivity, and helps the environment – all while saving you money.

By cutting out even one form of transportation for you and/or your participants, you are shrinking your business’s carbon footprint and making a positive impact on the environment. Having said that, we have yet to see the genuine impact that audio conferencing services have made on the environment, simply because many businesses have yet to use them the way they could and should. When first introduced on the market, audio conferencing services were complicated and unpredictable, causing many to shy away from regular use.

Today’s audio conferencing services, however, are flexible, reliable, user friendly, and offer a comprehensive set of features to make your audio conference more powerful, engaging, and effective than ever before. Schedule meetings in advance or host them on the fly – whether you’re meeting with as few as 3 or as many as 3,000 participants – all from the comfort of your desk.

Today’s conferencing market is growing at an incredible rate. The global recession has caused businesses all over the world to reassess where and how they spend their money; and as a result, travel budgets are often one of the first to get hit with cuts. At the same time, audio, video and web conferencing solutions are becoming more powerful, economical, and reliable, and therefore, a more viable option for small and mid-sized businesses. If you’re thinking of employing an audio, web or video conferencing service for your business, give us a call today! We work with today’s leading providers of conferencing services and can help you find the ideal solution for your unique needs.

Audio Conferencing Service

Image Source: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Audio Conference Improvement Tips to Increase Participants Engagement

We’ve all been there before. You get the meeting invite, read it over, and cringe as you click the “accept” button while picturing what you – and many others – consider to be a waste of valuable time during your busy work day. Nevertheless when the scheduled time comes, you diligently dial-in ready and willing to collaborate.

Then just as you suspected (and is witnessed in the video), you struggle to stay awake as you listen to a lack-luster presentation and ultimately zone out until you are either called upon for a response or it ends… or both.

While it can provide a reliable, crystal clear connection on which your message can be delivered, even the most advanced audio conferencing service cannot present your material for you. The fact of the matter is that your participants are at the mercy of their presenter(s). As a result, we’ve compiled a list of a few tips and tricks for increasing participant engagement in your next conference:

• Customize your participant entrances – many times hosts will try to begin a meeting, but are interrupted with a “so-and-so has entered the conference” greeting, causing them to start over. This is an easy adjustment, and the majority of today’s conferencing software permits the host or presenter to adjust the entrance greeting, allowing the meeting to start on time, every time
• Reach out – every audience is unique. By asking questions and getting feedback throughout your conference, you can tailor your material as you present it
• Summarize – open your presentation with a brief summary of what you plan on covering and what you hope to accomplish. If you plan on covering a lot of important information, consider distributing an outline via email along with your invitations or just before the start of your meeting
• Use multiple presenters – especially if you plan on passing the 30 minute mark. Nothing causes participants to lose interest faster than a dull, monotone voice, so if you have a presenter like the one in the video, it’s important to try and encourage them to liven up their voice to deliver a more animated presentation

Additional Information

If you are searching for the right audio or web conferencing service for your business, give us a call today! Our professional account managers will help your find the service you need with the features you want for the best available price.

For more information please visit: Audio Conference, Audio Conference Calling

The Future Of Audio Conferencing and Audio Conference Calls

Are audio-only conferences becoming a thing of the past?

Possibly; without the visuals and non-verbal queues that are easy to pick up in face-to-face conferences, it’s likely that your participants will find it easy to divert their attention elsewhere and multi-task while attending your audio conference. The challenge that many conferencing hosts face is trying to get their participants fully engaged and listening to the topic at hand.

This can be extremely difficult – mainly because an audio conference typically requires participants to sit at their desk and simply listen over the phone, creating an ideal environment for multi-tasking. Often participants will end up using that time to focus on whatever it is that is grabbing their attention at the moment.

In addition, with the large quantity of smartphones, tablets, laptops, and other portable devices, many of us have become accustomed to having multiple senses stimulated simultaneously, so participating in an audio-only conference call is much less engaging than many people’s day-to-day interactions with technology. In order to combat this, a large number of conferencing hosts are moving toward products that maximize their participant interactions in different ways, thereby allowing participants to multi-task on topic as opposed to having their attention drive away from the conversation they are having or the message being relayed.

One of the products and features that hosts employ to assuage these issues include an online registration page. This lets the host know who will be joining the conference before it starts, which allows them to tailor their message to their specific audience. Furthermore, by coupling an online registration page with a passcode/pin access number feature, you can decrease the wait time when starting a conference. Each participant can join the call using a unique passcode or pin number, eliminating the need for operator assistance. What’s more is that you actually save money because your participants are on the line for a shorter period of time since there is less waiting required at the start of the conference.

Another great way to engage your participants is by using tools that involve a visual or require interaction – the more interactive the better. Thankfully, today’s conferencing providers offer a comprehensive range of features and tools that allow you to share applications, desktops, stream Power Point presentations, chat with the host and/or participants, conduct polls, and hold Q&A sessions to increase your meeting’s productivity.

In short, the key to ending multi-tasking, and distractions is to provide a variety avenues for on-topic interaction. Engaging participants in a conference is not only smart, but vital, and by offering engaging tools and features like online voting/polling, online Q&A, etc. you provide a very tangible proof of engagement.

Source: Audio Conferencing Services

InterCall Provides Conferencing Services for Everyone – Even SMBs

From the beginning InterCall has designed services for companies of all sizes, although historically a large portion of their business has come from large organizations. Their strong world-encompassing customer base is a big part of what helps them continuously improve their offerings to keep their products and services evolving.

In the last couple years, however, InterCall has noticed the number of small and medium businesses rise. These new companies also want to take advantage of the benefits that conferencing services offer, provided they meet their unique and individual needs.

Packages

InterCall offers both dedicated audio conferencing and an audio web combination package. Both of these solutions provide you with your own virtual meeting room available 24/7.

Dedicated Audio Conferencing – schedule and plan your meeting ahead of time, or start one on-the-fly. Your dedicated conference code and dial-in number is ready to go every time. You also have access to instant operator assistance as well as project codes for client bill-back.

• Instant operator assistance
• Low flat rate for unlimited usage
• Dedicated conference code and dial-in number
• No reservations needed, access your conference at anytime

Audio/web combination package – don't just tell them what you're talking about, show them. InterCall's audio and web conferencing combination is tightly integrated, providing you with two services in one user-friendly online interface.

• Send polling questions
• One-click access to meetings
• Present product demonstrations online
• Schedule your conferences from Outlook
• Edit documents and collaborate in real-time
• Share your desktop, applications, and presentations

Quality of Service

InterCall believes that it's not the size of the business that matters – it's how professional you look and perform for your potential customers that matters. InterCall's conferencing services run on the same platform as their enterprise level web and audio conferencing services, so you receive the same uptime, reliability, and quality as their Fortune 100 customers.

Why Choose InterCall?

With a team of over 1500 call supervisors, customer service reps, operators, IT, marketing, and accounting professionals and more than 500 meeting consultants, InterCall is the largest provider of conferencing services in the world. As a whole, InterCall serves in excess of 40,000 companies worldwide, and more than 400,000 individual conference leaders.

Additional Resources

For more information on how InterCall audio and web conferencing services can help your business succeed, contact one of our professional account managers today!

Source: Conferencing Services

The World's Highest Conference Call

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to stand on top of the world's tallest mountain? Well now you can… from the comfort and convenience of your desk!

Tomorrow, Cisco engineer Brian Dickinson will be embarking on his final ascent to Mt. Everest's peak –  a whopping 29,035 feet above sea level – and thanks to WebEx technology you can join him on his exhausting emotional and physical expedition. From Base Camp (17,500ft) Brian will answer your questions, talk about his trainings and challenges taken to prepare for the climb, what is currently on his mind, as well as discuss his three previous climbs.

You read that right. Brian has previously climbed three other mountains (Mt. McKinley in Alaska in May of 2009, Mt. Kilimanjaro in north-eastern Tanzania in February 2010, and Mt. Elbrus in Russia in July of 2010) on his quest to scale The Seven Summits while raising money for HIV/AIDS research and bringing gifts to orphanages in each country he visits.

Born and raised in Southern Oregon, Brian is an extreme outdoorsman and athlete. For six years he was stationed in San Diego as a helicopter rescue swimmer for the Navy. It was there he met his wife, JoAnna, and they went on to have two beautiful children, Jordan and Emily. In addition to working with Cisco, Brian runs Extreme Adventures, an outreach program that teaches leadership and confidence via biking, hiking, and rappelling.

The Consequences of High Altitude
After experiencing a cold, massive headaches, and a quick scare with what was thought to be the on-set of High Altitude Cerebral Edema, (an increase of fluid in the brain that can cause coma and even death) Brian decided not to take any chances and hiked back down the mountain to a lower elevation in order to get acclimated. He spoke of his frustrations in his blog on Climbing.com, saying that "at this point I am a bit frustrated. It's not fair that less physically fit and less driven people are in a better position to climb the highest peak on earth. With something like HACE there's nothing I can do from a physiological standpoint."

Luckily, Brian fully recovered at a slightly lower elevation, refuses to let the hiccup slow him down. He has since returned to Base Camp, hiked to Base Camp II, (the penultimate step in the acclimatization process at 21,500ft) made it to Base Camp III, and will return to Base Camp for the conference on May 4^th.

What started as a personal journey has quickly become an amazing world-wide adventure reaching far beyond his expectations. All the while, Brian has maintained his sense of humor, letting his blog readers know that, "If someone could please drop ship either a carne asada burrito from Roberto's in San Diego or a double-double animal style from In-n-Out Burger I sure would appreciate it!"

To register for the May 4^th conference with  Brian, follow this link: http://www.webex.com/webinars/Meeting-Mt-Everest-Live-from-the-Climb

 

The Khumbu Ice Fall – treacherous and thrilling.

Brian at Camp I.
In late March, we met Brian Dickinson via WebEx before he left for his Mt Everest climb. In that session, we learned about Brian, his Navy background, his passion for extreme sports and his desire to climb The Seven Summits.

While pursuing his incredible goal, Brian turned his journey into a cause to raise money for AIDS Research and to connect with the children at orphanages in the countries he visits. Click here to watch "Before the Climb" with Brian Dickinson

There has been a ton of press around 3G Internet coverage at Everest basecamp. Not true. NCELL offers 3G coverage from a village a few miles down the Khumbu Valley, called Gorak Shep. The 3G towers are run by solar panels so in bad weather and at night they are shutdown. And they don't have the strength to send a 3G signal to basecamp. We get edge coverage, which works for cell phone calls and very poor quality Internet (almost unusable). To upload these blog entries, add pics to Facebook, Twitter, email, etc. I have to hike 30 minutes out of basecamp up on a ridge and climb a large boulder, which has direct line of sight to Gorak Shep. The view from the rock is the most amazing place I've ever been with views of the ice fall crawling up the mountain, the summit of Mount Everest and all of the surrounding Himalaya peaks. I'm sure NCELL will resolve the coverage in future years, but for now it's a lot of effort to stay connected.

What's next? On the 30th (tomorrow) we are heading directly up to Camp II (21,000'), where we'll sleep for 2 nights. We will then climb the Lhotse Face to Camp III (23,000') and descend back to Camp II. The following day we'll climb back to Camp III and sleep on oxygen. That will complete our acclimatization process for a summit bid, at which point we'll bring it all the way back to basecamp to wait for a weather window to make our attack on the summit!

You can keep track of Brian's progress via his blog on climbing.com

For those not able to watch the live conference, it will be recorded so you can listen in later.

Source: Conferencing Services

Improve your Conferences in 2 Steps

Both audio conferencing and web conferencing offer countless benefits – ranging all the way from cost savings to a smaller carbon footprint. However, in order to acquire the highest return on your conferencing services investment, it is crucial that every meeting you conduct is as productive and effective as possible. So far this month we’ve covered the top 5 most essential features for any web conference as well as the top 5 mistakes web conferencing hosts make. Now, I’m going to offer you a couple zealous suggestions for enhancing (and adding a little spice) to your conferences.

1. First and foremost, your conferences should be about, by and for your participants. They should feel encouraged to offer feedback and participate through multiple venues, for example, white boarding, chat, polling, and Q&A sessions. Thankfully, conferencing services offer multiple features that ensure participants are actively involved in meetings.
   For conferences with a large group of participants, a moderator is preferred to keep the conference on track and under control. Your moderator/MC should challenge, integrate, pull together, and basically act as the ambassador of your participants. That doesn’t mean you’re off the hook though, you need to be just as active in your conference as any moderator, MC, speaker or presenter – don’t just be a warm body!
2. In order to keep your audience interested and actively engaged in your conference, try restructuring it. Break away from the mundane ‘pick a theme, an opening and/or closing speaker, and in between the same old stuff’ that makes participants feel like they’re in a typical workday that their boss has scheduled for them. Instead, keep your audience fascinated by letting your conference tell a unique story. As with any good story, there are valleys of calm, rises of anticipation, and ultimately peaks of exhilaration and excitement – something light-years away from boredom and panic in perpetual alteration. That being said, your conference should also make sense from a linear start-to-finish point of view. That way your participants are more likely to retain the information they take in as opposed to feeling overwhelmed.

Additional Resources
At ConferenceShopper.com we provide our customers with private labeled audio and web conferencing services, IP transit, and private line services via a network of Tier One providers. Our winning combination of experienced account managers and unique relationships inside the telecommunications industry allow us to provide our customers with unbiased, carrier neutral suggestions as to how they should handle their communications services for the best prices available.

Video Phones in the Office?

The rise and fall of video phone providers and manufacturers have left today's companies with little to choose from the in way of reasonably priced solutions. And despite provider's pitches, company uptake has never approached vendor's prediction casts. This begs the question: will video phones ever make sense for business users?

Video Conferencing offers countless benefits, such as:

• Enhanced productivity and reduced costs – eliminating the need for business travel keeps your staff in-house, allowing  for more time to be spent on mission-critical issues, and less money spent on travel
• Better business relationships – the convenience of video conferencing allows you to meet with your customers, partners, and employees more frequently and effectively, with quality that rivals in-person meetings
• Instant feedback – meet and collaborate with your international branches and customers in remote areas

Thanks to vendor's aggressive marketing, video conferencing technology has made considerable headway into the corporate conference room over the past ten years. That being said however, the average employee's desktop continues to be devoid of this collaborative tool.

Despite multiple reports that show desktop video technology enhances employee productivity and offers a noteworthy return on investment, many companies today still seem apprehensive about utilize desktop video conferencing technologies. Perhaps it is due to misconceptions – either about bandwidth use or dependability – but more than likely the main concern that keeps customers from employing video phone technology is its cost.

In an attempt to ease customer apprehension and make video phones a more viable alternative to deskbound phones, providers are looking for ways to bring costs down, so they average similar to what you would pay for a VoIP handset. Unfortunately, compromises have to be made to make that a possibility. For instance, one cost-efficient video phone might be built to work only with a specific vendor's hosted VoIP service, while another uses public video conferencing services (like Skype). Others, still, work with a majority of the leading VoIP and video conferencing standards and provide comprehensive features, like H.323.  Skeptical vendors are opting to go for the more conventional video phone system that blends single-user video conferencing ability with multiline VoIP/SIP phones.

Here at ConferenceShopper.com, our partnership with the industry's leading providers allows us to offer you the most comprehensive and cost-efficient conferencing solutions available on the market.

Now we want to know what you think about video conferencing. Have you had any good/bad experiences with video conferencing? Do you think it'll become a 'thing of the past'?

Source: Conferencing Services

InterCall's Acquisition of Unisfair

InterCall's Acquisition of Unisfair – Keeping Pace with the Continuously Evolving Face of Domestic and International Business Communication Needs

In this day and age, it's a given that technology is constantly evolving. Businesses are looking to expand their reach and effectiveness while cutting costs – and conferencing services have the power to do just that. Not long ago, the ability for a business to host any virtual event was considered a luxury. Now however, conferencing services are quickly becoming a must-have tool as more and more businesses are looking to host large, engaging virtual events.

InterCall is the largest web conferencing service provider in the world and offers the broadest range of services to support the unique and changing needs of all businesses. That being said, much has changed during InterCall's 20+ years of existence. Back in 1991, operator assisted conferencing was the wave of the future; then came reservationless conferencing. Today, as a growing number of workers around the world are going mobile, InterCall continues to evolve as well offering the broadest range of services to support the shifting requirements of small and large businesses.

A little over a month ago, InterCall acquired one of the leading worldwide providers of business environments and virtual events, Unisfair, and has been working toward incorporating their services into InterCall's suite of event products. For over a decade, Unisfair has led the virtual events space and provided cloud applications to enable businesses to create interactive and branded virtual environments. Their environments are engaging, user-friendly, and permit a highly interactive experience via exhibition floors, networking areas, and speaking sessions. Furthermore, Unisfair delivers extraordinary marketing intelligence by tracking every participant's activities.

This acquisition is expected to mean great things for businesses that are already hosting remote, online events as well as those looking to employ those services. Both InterCall and Unisfair share a vision of providing top-quality technology to improve worldwide virtual collaboration and communication. As a result, InterCall is excited to now offer complete end-to-end solutions on a proprietary platform – from simple webcasts to immersive and comprehensive virtual presentations.

Here at ConferenceShopper.com, our close partnership with InterCall allows us to provide you with the top industry-leading conferencing services currently in the market for the best available price.

Now it's time to tell us what you think. What are your thoughts on InterCall's acquisition of Unisfair? How do you think it will impact the communications industry as a whole?

Source: Conferencing Services

March Madness Aftermath – How did your Business Fare?

Employers listen up: do you know where your staff was this March? Now, my intention of asking that question is not simply to sound like one of those old school commercials that calls-out bad parents for not knowing where their child is. The fact of the matter is this – decrease in employee productivity every March is a real issue for companies in all industries; so much so, that Challenger, Gray & Christmas, an outplacement consulting firm, conducts a yearly survey to assess the financial impact due to lost productivity. The survey, known as the Challenger March Madness Productivity Report, estimated the financial impact as a result of lost employee productivity to surpass a shocking $192 million.

To combat this, PGi and iMeet have created their own "final four" tips to help keep productivity high in the midst of March Madness:

1. Be on time – sounds pretty obvious, right? Every office seems to always have at least one person (Tom, Dick, Harry, or whatever other name you’ve chosen for him) who's habitually late. This can pose a problem when meeting with important or potential clients. If you need Tom in that meeting on time, shoot him a reminder email, text, or IM a few minutes before the start of the meeting to make sure he gets there on time.
2. Spice up your meetings – adding user friendly features to your meetings keeps participants actively engaged. Bland, boring meetings are easily tuned out, and seem to slow to a snail's pace. Implementing content such as videos, polling, and Q&A sessions and other unexpected content keeps your meetings moving forward and participants interested.
3. Be where you are – with the technology that’s out there today, it's easy to physically be in one place while your thoughts are somewhere else. Being actively present in your meetings is important; and you can start by putting the smartphone down (unless you're using it to access your meeting, of course). Yes that YouTube video of a squirrel waterskiing is out-of-this-world adorable, but save it for after-work hours.
4. Skip the strip search – avoid the hassle and invasion of privacy the TSA is famous for and hold virtual meetings as opposed to in-person ones. Sure, you might have participants watching NCAA games in another window, but on the bright side, at least you’ll be able to get updates as you wrap-up your calls.

PGi hopes these tips will help you beat the buzzer so you can get back to what matters this March: gloating about the status of your bracket to your coworkers and friends.

Source: Conferencing Services

One More Reason to Employ Conferencing Services

As if you didn’t have enough reasons to start using conferencing services already, I’ll give you one more – germs.

An estimated one of every five working businessmen and women travel for work roughly five times a year, with trip lengths averaging three nights. While there is nothing wrong with business travel, (aside from the fact that it is time-consuming, expensive, and at times quite inconvenient) the hotels that employees find themselves in can often be a greater magnet for germs than you are led to believe.

Hear me out, there is no reason to panic – but there are some things you should know and remember the next time you find yourself in a hotel room. For instance, hotel maids launder bed sheets regularly, but the bedspread is generally not washed unless requested by a guest. Doctor and TV daytime show host Dr. Oz suggests removing the bedspread immediately upon entering the room. According to him, it is “full of bacteria from prior clients,” and that removing the bedspread is a practical decision to make with no downside.

Next on the list of harmless looking germ traps is the remote control. That’s right, the number one tool many people make a beeline for once they find a little free time. Arguably the most used item in a hotel room, your remote control has likely never been cleaned. Fortunately, there is a quick and simple solution to this problem: a plastic bag. Slip your remote into a small sandwich bag, such as Ziploc, and it’s good to go (so long as you don’t go and rest it on the bedspread).

Moving on to the ice bucket. Unfortunate as it may be that those tiny in-room refrigerators usually do not have their own ice makers, it might not be worth the trip down the hall to the ice machine. Ice buckets have been known to be used as ash trays, and the even less appealing barf bucket. If ice is something you really can’t live without, ask the staff if they have a plastic bag – or five – to line the inside of the bucket.

Which leads us to our next item: the drinking glasses in the bar or bathroom. If the glasses you were provided are made of glass, chances are they have only been wiped clean with a towel as they are not often sent down to the dishwasher. If you don’t bring your own drinking container with you, you’re better off with individually wrapped plastic cups, or asking for a fresh one to be brought to your room.

Obviously audio and web conferencing eliminate all of these issues because they do away with the need for business traveling. But for those times when meeting in-person is a must, your choices are few and far between. You can take the above suggestions to heart, or you can opt to fork out more cash for a pricier hotel with the hopes that it will be cleaner – but that’s not always the case. As many of my OCD friends will tell you, antibacterial/disinfectant wipes are an absolute must have, and should be used on any surface you come into contact with (but keep in mind how they may react to some clothing, jewelry, and wood furniture. It’s best to read the manufacturer’s label before using). Good luck and stay clean!

Source: Conferencing Services