Conference calling services come in all shapes and sizes, but what makes a good conference calling service stand out from the others? What features make it worth the price you’re paying for it? While you don’t have to subscribe to a top-notch service to get some great features, there are a few standards you might want to consider before making your next purchase decision.
These important features should be standard with any successful conference calling service. If you’re in the market for a new service, read on!
Secure Connection
Above all else, security should be your top concern. The security of your calls is largely dictated by your own diligence; meaning you control who you invite to the call, and it’s up to you to verify that the right people are present. However, that doesn’t mean your conferencing service shouldn’t have its own security protocols to protect you from cyber threats. A secure connection can help keep out unwanted ears, which could potentially expose sensitive company info and put your entire organization at risk.
Whether you’re using an audio conferencing service or hosting video calls, security is one of the most important aspects of a successful and reliable conferencing tool. Don’t make the mistake of putting security last, or you’ll pay for it later tenfold. Breaches happen all the time, and you might be surprised by how much a person can learn from listening in on conference calls.
Reliability
Of course, even if your service is secure, it doesn’t matter much when it’s unreliable. You don’t want a service that gives you HD-quality calls one day and poor quality calls the next. In the same vein, you don’t want a service that can’t keep calls connected or fails to consistently update.
How frustrating is it to drop a call in the middle of a conversation? Now, put that into a work context. You’re about to close the biggest deal ever, and your conferencing service cuts out. You can’t get it to come back up, and the client is waiting. The service doesn’t come back for a few hours, and you’ve lost the client. There’s no reason your service shouldn’t be reliable enough to at least make it through important calls!
Call Control
Along with reliability and security, your calling service should allow for maximum control as the call host. This means being able to record the call, boot disruptive callers, mute everyone (including yourself), and more. The more control you have as the host, the more productive your calls can be. Imagine not being able to mute people who have a lot of background noise or are disruptive! It would make for a very uncomfortable (and unproductive) call.
These features are pretty much standard with just about every conference calling service out there, but it’s always good to check anyway. Some conference calling services still don’t offer call recording, even though the benefits of this feature are numerous. In fact, let’s look at that next.
Call Recording
If you’re looking for the total package of conference calling services, you need one with call recording, like Vast. Call recording is an excellent tool for not only improving your meetings, but for reviewing important information. Your recorded calls are usually saved to a cloud, so you don’t even have to make room on your personal hard drives for them.
Recording your calls can also help with training and to protect you or your employees from slander or false information. It’s always a good idea to record calls with new customers, or to record your first hosted meeting. Reviewing your meeting is the best way to make sure the next meeting doesn’t take two hours and leave everyone snoozing at their desks.
Accessibility
The best conferencing services are the ones that are accessible to everyone, despite their geographic location. This means no long-distance fees and international calling should be the standard for your next choice. A service that can support calls from all over the world removes some harmful limitations that otherwise may have kept you from expanding.
Affordability
Last, though certainly not least, your conferencing service should be affordable. Affordability is something we can’t forget in business, because everything operates on a budget. Don’t be afraid to put two or three services against each other, and compare the price of the service for what you’re getting out of it.
Most conferencing services won’t cost but a few dollars per month, and they rarely cost more than a few hundred per year. On the rare occasion that you find one that’s more expensive, be sure to thoroughly check out its features before making a commitment to buy.
The Bottom Line
A good conferencing service can improve your communication and productivity, but conferencing services should at least have these few standard features in order to be useful.
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