Enhancing Productivity Through… Pacing?

May 21st, 2009 by Sara Pilling Posted in Audio Best Practices, Audio Conferencing, Virtual Meetings, Web Conferencing

Does anyone work with a pacer? That guy or girl who wears a headset and roams around the office. At first glance, this person appears to be having a conversation with an imaginary friend, an odd occurrence for the workplace. At second glance they are gesturing wildly, perhaps trying out for the school play? You probably work with a pacer already – that special colleague who moves around while on a call to remain productive.

At PGi, we work with a group of conferencing users to obtain key insights that inform our marketing initiatives and product development. During one of these surveys a PGi conferencing user offered up the following wisdom, “When tethered to a land line, I feel completely trapped and end up watching the clock, counting the minutes until the call will be over. If I am on a cell phone I can get up and walk around… I find that the physcial activity of walking around lets me settle down and contentrate more.” Obviously, we’ve got a pacer in our user community.

Understanding how people meet at work or outside the office is an important consideration at PGi. After all, we want to be a part of any meeting, anywhere – when conferencing users are in the office or on the road.

We also asked the same user group about mobile conferencing access. More than 75% of those surveyed dial-into a conference call using their cell phones at least once a week. This isn’t a mind-bending stat. Having a cell phone is like having a social security number – after a certain age you just need one to function. Whenever I attend a conference call on my cell, I always notice one thing: I listen harder. I listen harder because there is more background noise, because I happen upon one of those dreaded dead zones or because I’m not multi-tasking at my computer.

On second thought, maybe there is something to this pacing thing after all.

How do you stay focused during a virtual meeting or conference call??

Meeting experts, meetings

Serve Yourself!

May 20th, 2009 by Trisha Zimmerman (@Trish_Zimmerman) Posted in Tips and Tricks

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From check out lines to airlines, we live in a self-serve society. Getting accustomed to the automated world has taken some time. When they first came out, I couldn’t imagine that self check-out lines at grocery stores would actually work. And now when I stand several people deep in a check-out line, I wonder why we don’t have more self-serve registers.

Conferencing is another industry with a lot of self-serve tools that have been slow to adopt. When participants join an operator-assisted conference, they’re accustomed to giving a live operator their name, email, phone number, and whatever else the moderator is requesting. But what if they entered this information online prior to the conference beginning? It certainly would provide the moderator more accurate information and eliminate the John vs. Jon and Sara vs. Sarah mistakes.

Premiere Global’s Click and Join is a new automatic dial-out option for PremiereCall Auditorium that does just that. Auditorium is an operator-assisted conference with instant passcode access for large-scale, listen-only calls. Here’s how it works with Click and Join:

Up to 15 minutes prior to the conference start time, participants access a web page to enter their contact information and receive a phone call placing them automatically into their conference. No phone number and passcode to remember, just a simple click of the web page. So, participants access their call without ever talking to an Operator, and the conference moderator has accurate attendee information on their post-conference participant list.

As a participant, would you prefer to serve yourself on an operator-assisted call with instant conference access or take your turn in line for an Operator?

As a moderator, would you want your participants to enter their own information for post conference reporting or provide it verbally to an Operator?

Get rid of annoying backround noise in your calls

May 8th, 2009 by admin Posted in Uncategorized

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Have you ever hosted a conference call, only to be distracted by shuffling papers, typing, or any other distracting sound- even a barking dog?

The fastest solution is to simply “Mute All Lines” by pressing *96. Individual users can press *6 to unmute their own lines if they need to talk.

If what you are hearing is not background noise but static or an echo, you might need to to figure out whose line is causing the problem. Simply have your participants unmute themselves one by one, until the problem line is identified. Once the line with the bad connection has been identified, ask that person to disconnect and dial back in to your meeting. You may want to suggest dialing in from a land line rather than a cell phone, turning off the speakerphone, or picking up the handset rather than using a hands-free device.

For more tips on ensuring call quality, watch this video tutorial. It’s just one of many videos tutorials available for you on PGiTV.

I’ll wrap up by sharing a story- I was on a call once where one participant was working from home. We were focused on the discussion, when all of sudden, we heard the man’s child call out loudly: “Daddy, get off the phone and come play with me!”

Have you encountered any unintended “background noise” that made everyone laugh (or blush)? I’d like to hear about it!

call quality, meetings

Favorite Things: Online Audio Host Controls

May 6th, 2009 by Jill Sciulli (@jillsciulli) Posted in Conferencing, Favorite Things

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My daughter and I regularly play the Favorites Game – What is your favorite color? What is your favorite food? What is your favorite animal? Using this simple kid’s game, we are able to share and connect easily, getting to know each other just a little better. I thought it would be interesting to apply this concept to the blog as a good way for us to get acquainted.

One of my favorite things is Premiere Global’s online audio host controls, which give you the ability to manage your audio conference from your computer. Not unlike using the star controls on your phone’s keypad, you can perform many functions with online audio controls, such as increasing/decreasing line volume, muting/un-muting the line and much more, except you don’t have to remember all those star codes or consult a cheat sheet. Instead you have the power to monitor and control your audio conference directly from the Web. I love how easy this tool is to use. I was able to learn it in a matter of minutes.

If you’ve never used online audio controls, I encourage you to give it a try. For information about accessing and using these controls, click here for a short video clip. To download an updated copy of the Audio Star Controls, click here. I’m sure online audio controls will be become one of your favorite things, too.

Do you want to play the Favorites Game? Email me at jill.sciulli@pgi.com and share some of your favorite audio conferencing features. Oh and by the way, my favorite color is blue.