Modern business telephones have come a long way from where they started, both technologically and esthetically speaking. Looking at some of the previous offerings from days gone by, I am reminded that the business world is one of form over function. In other words, business phones are engineered to simply to work reliably and for long periods of time, not to look pretty. Still, there is very little charm, even from a nostalgic point of view, in older business telephone systems. Thankfully, the phones have changed over the last several years. Business phones are still designed to work and work well, but many manufacturers are beginning to understand that esthetics can be used as a selling point. The modern phones of today have a functionally "smart" look to them, as though they were destined to meet the futuristic expectations placed on them by movies and television shows from the seventies, such as "Star Trek" and "Star Wars". In fact, just about every business phone I've encountered lately seems to have had it's design parameters pulled directly off of Darth Vader's chest.
While these phones aren't exactly attractive, they also manage to stay out of the eyesore category, which is somewhat of an improvement. The biggest difference one encounters when comparing new to old business phones is the sheer heft and bulk that the old phones possess. Of course, technology has allowed modern manufacturers to produce phones that are miniscule by the standards of yesterday and the actual size and weight differences are astounding. It makes one wonder if quality was compromised in the loss of all that size and weight. It wouldn't surprise me. I know they don't make desks quite like they used to. I don't think my desk could hold one of the old style telephones without bowing, which is exactly what happened when I placed a CRT monitor in the middle of it. I suppose that phones, like all products, are susceptible to the old but true adage that they really don't make them like they used to, which reminds me of another popular saying.
Looks aren't everything.
The Look of Modern Business Telephones
Conference Calling – Meeting The Needs Of The Modern Business
These days it seems business is becoming more and more complex and globalized. We are doing business with people everywhere in the US and in many instances, people in other countries. Due to the wide use of the Internet, the words “foreign country” doesn’t even seem to apply anymore.
The Internet has brought us all closer together in one aspect, but how does that affect investor relations, sales pitches, meetings, and group sessions? A lot of people now work closer with their computers than they do with co-workers and because of the Internet, many companies have people working for them from different parts of the world who have never even met each other.
Never before has conference calling been a more popular solution to the communication needs of companies and individuals all over the world. Conference calls are becoming increasingly popular as a method of bringing people together for meetings and discussions.
In this article, I will do my best to explain the advantages of conference calling for your business communication needs. Whether you are talking about meetings with investors, conference calls with your employees, making your sales presentation to groups, or simply needing several people in on the same discussion, conference calling is the most useful tool there is.
Chat rooms and message boards just don’t cut it. Message boards are impersonal, not real-time, and tend to get filled with useless information that isn’t directly related to your topic. Chat rooms are just that, chatty. You type in messages in real-time so it is better than a message board, but it again lacks the personal touches and insights conference calling provides.
Voice inflection, as many of you know is a great way to tell how someone feels about what you are saying. Simple typed messages do not give you that same advantage. When we hear our counterparts speak, we can tell how enthusiastic, positive, negative, or apathetic they are about what you say.
Conference calling is relational, while message boards and chat rooms are merely informational. That is the great difference in those options. You don’t make sales through information alone. You make sales by creating relationships.
You don’t encourage or motivate your employees or partners through information alone, you do it by creating relationships. You don’t instill confidence to your investors through providing just information, you do it by letting them hear how enthusiastic and positive you are about your proposal.
Only conference calling can provide the relationship solution when working with people who are too far away to physically attend meetings.
A simple search on your favorite search engine or just following the links in the footer of this article can provide you with many options for your specific conference calling needs.
What are some of the things that separate good conference calling services and bad ones? That is the question I get asked the most when discussing this topic. Here are some of the features you should look for;
High sound quality; The last thing you want to do is try to hold an important meeting through static, interrupted service, and low quality sound. The sound quality of your conference calls is far more important than the price or other features. If they cannot hear you speak clearly and you cannot hear them clearly, what is the use of a conference call at all?
Operators: While an operator assisted call is not necessary, having someone from your conference call service provider greeting each person as they are connected is a valuable service. They can tell the participants what to expect better than your own staff can, since they are familiar with the conference call software and service. In addition to that, the operator can and should monitor the entire call to make sure the sound quality maintains a high level of clarity. They will know what to do to fix it if a problem arises.
Recordings and Copies: If your conference call provider has the ability to record and provide playback of your conference call sessions, then you will want to take advantage of that feature. Some conference call providers can even provide it to you on CD afterwards. This is enormously helpful for you to be able to review your conference call sessions later. It may also serve as a record of agreements made during the conference call session.
Price: Last, but certainly not least, you have to consider price. You may be able to choose a conference call provider that gives you all of the features I mentioned above and more, or you may be on a tight budget and have to settle for less service. Whichever conference call service you use, do not sacrifice sound quality for price. That is the one feature you cannot afford to do without, no matter what the cost.
I hope this article on conference calling has been helpful to you. It was my goal to share with you what features I consider the most helpful to me in my business meetings.
Conference Calls Aid Modern Businesses
The principal of the conference call is very simple. It lets you have a conference without squeezing all of the listeners and speakers into one cramped room. Communication is crucial to any successful business. If you are serious about achieving real growth than you need to look at having a way for your employees to easily communicate with each other and the management.
Some businesses will be lucky and have all of their people working from one convenient location, making the call aspect unnecessary. But then, not all business organizations are as fortunate in that respect. Moreover, any business that wants to expand and have more than just one location needs to consider how it will keep all of its employees in touch with each other.
For this process, there are few options better than a good conference call. For a relatively low price a business can now organize a full teleconference that will let anyone from anywhere link up and share their ideas.
In this same way management can easily discuss new policies and explain new business goals to all of its branches in one convenient sweep. This should be much more definitive than any long winded email that tries to explain every possible contingency or a bunch of ineffective memos.
Conference calls are also priceless when it comes to discussing something with your clients. An expanding business has to focus on reaching out into new areas. This means that you will gain clients from different states and different countries. Communication is going to be the most difficult hurdle in this process though.
Emails just aren't the same as a real discussion and they usually waste precious time. Anyone who has had to play email tag with a friend or client should know exactly what this feels like. A missed email to a person in another time zone can cost you an entire day. On the other hand, it would be careless to rely solely on expensive long distance calls to discuss all of your plans. Most projects will require collaboration from multiple people and will cause you to spend more time catching everyone up on the discussion than actually working out an idea.
A good conference call session would eliminate this problem. A convenient time can usually be work out for both sides except in the most extreme of time zone difference. This conference would then establish a clear idea of what needed to be done. Both sides could work out their ideas in real time and make sure that everything was understood.
A real business needs to have a good setup for communication. Employees across the country need to be on the same page and clients need to be able to have full meetings even if they live in a different time zone. The idea behind a conference call is simple. The conference call is just a virtual meeting for people who cannot have a physical meeting.
If a business lacks this, then it will be at a severe disadvantage and lose significant amounts of money and time due to unnecessary errors and missed messages.