Web Conference Calls Take Care of Business
by Rich Rojas
A challenge for many organizations is to adequately service geographically dispersed customers. One solution is the use of a conference call. In addition to traditional reserved-line conference calls, there is also web-conferencing and data-conferencing.
A web conference call, also known as teleconferencing, has many uses and benefits. Using a web conference call can improve your sales process and also helps to eliminate travel time and the expenses of travel. If you are selling goods or services, on-line web conferencing can improve your bottom line by boosting sales and lowering costs. A web conference is an excellent way to collaborate with others, provide product demonstrations or take customers on a tour of your web site.
The use of video in a web conference helps you put a face behind the voice. You can combine video conferencing, voice calls, instant messaging, file sharing and web co-browsing for richer on-line meetings with colleagues or customers. Using either web or telephone conferencing, companies and non-profit organizations are now able to hold many more meetings than ever before.
The Windows operating system has included NetMeeting, a desktop videoconferencing application, for many years. Today, web conferencing services are available. The most popular of these services is WebEx, which has 64.4 percent of the worldwide web conferencing services market, more than three times its nearest competitor.
Most web conferencing services are easy to use, and relatively inexpensive. The outbound conference call facility can be hosted by the organization using it or the services of a call service provider can be used. Typically, only the conference call initiator is billed.
Web conference calls are easy to use and generally interface with other applications without the need for any special hardware. During a web conference call, attendees can see what you are doing on your computer. Most web conference call solutions use a voice-over-IP technology that enables conference attendees to talk back and forth if they have microphones and speakers. Some even have web cam features so the web conference call is "face-to-face" so to speak.
Furthermore, through a web conference call, handouts can be provided electronically rather than being printed resulting in even more cost savings. The availability of free software (often as part of chat programs) has made software-based videoconferencing accessible to many.
Organizing a video conference is much the same as organizing a standard meeting. With a robust set of available features, a chairperson can conduct a conference and control the call without needing an advanced reservation. Many videoconferencing systems will also allow you to transfer files during a video conference
Do keep in mind however, that in order to achieve reasonably acceptable simultaneous live video and audio, you will need a decent amount of bandwidth. Bandwidth still limits the quality of the video that's often used with pre-recorded audio to fairly static material.
As technology continues to shift and evolve, the lines between phone, web, and even video conferencing are blurring. You can now conduct conference calls any time of day or night. As a result, web conferencing is rapidly becoming the choice or more and more businesses today for not only reducing costs, but also increasing collaboration amongst both employees and customers.