Professional Teleconferences: Impress with Operator Assistance

This article was sponsored by RollCall Business Conferencing Solutions, a proud supporter of OfficeArrow. You can also visit RollCall's community here on OfficeArrow.

Here's the situation: you're in charge of arranging a very important, very large, phone meeting for your company's investors. You've done teleconferencing before and you know it's a great way to facilitate a meeting for lots of people in different areas. However, you really want to make this one a little more impressive. You want it to have that added bit of professionalism that shows you and your company are the best of the best. Why not try operator assistance?

Teleconferencing operators are professionals who specialize in communicating necessary instructions and introductions to groups in phone conferences. An operator can help keep your conference on track, and using one adds an extra layer of professionalism.

When using an operator, the conference is not out of your control. RollCall's system allows you to actually view the operator's computer screen so you can see what she is doing and when. In addition, you can also communicate directly with her via an online chat system.

Let's look at an example of how all of this works:

Before your conference begins, you ask the operator to mute all the lines of the attendees. As people join the conference, the operator welcomes them, takes their names and notes them in her system. This way, she can see who is on what line. Since you can see her screen on yours, you have this same information so you know when everyone has arrived. In many systems, you can also see where each person is calling from. Once the operator has taken this information, she provides some brief instructions for how participants can get technical support if necessary and she informs them that all lines are muted until the Q and A session at the end of the call.

Once you've presented all of the necessary information, you ask the operator to open the lines for questions. The operator instructs participants to press *1 if they have a question. When a person does this, their name appears on screen for both you and the operator to see. You end up looking at a list of people, all of whom have questions. Since you know your participants, you decide that the "VIPs" should have first dibs at asking a question. So, you indicate to the operator to select specific people before others. You also recognize the name of a competitor in line to ask a question. To prevent any problems, you ask the operator not to accept his question.

When the call is over, the operator can send you a detailed report that shows the names of the attendees and the amount of time each person stayed on the line.

As you can see, the assistance of an operator allows for a much more "formal" teleconference. And you don't have to worry that you're giving up any control. It's a win-win!

For more information about operator assisted teleconferences, speak with a friendly, knowledgeable representative from RollCall Business Conferencing Solutions.