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Connecting Conference Call Attendees from Multiple International Locations
By: michael framer | Posted: 03rd May 2011
With a domestic teleconference, you simply tell participants the phone
number, access code, and time and everything falls into place. With an
international conference call, you could have dozens of separate phone
numbers, multiple time zones, and varying per minute rates.
In order to ensure a smooth conference call, international
teleconference hosts need to plan in advance. Start by identifying the
countries that will be involved in the conference. For example, if
you're hosting a U.S.-based international conference call involving
managers from your regional offices in China, Norway, New Zealand,
Italy, South Africa, and Canada, you know that your attendees in these
countries will need to dial a U.S. phone number in order to connect to
the teleconference, right?
Not so fast. Sure, you could set up the call that way. However, this
would mean that each attendee would need to dial out of their country
using an unfamiliar "country code" and pay long distance rates out of
pocket. If you use a toll free 800 number, that number may not support
callers from outside the U.S. which would make the conference
inaccessible to your international callers.
International conference calls don't need to be this challenging. In
fact, conference call international plans exist to overcome these
challenges. Instead of providing your callers with a foreign phone
number, use an international conference call service provider and issue
local toll free phone numbers for your global participants.
Depending on your billing preferences, you can host toll free
international conference calls where you pay all toll charges or you
could issue local toll numbers. Either way, your callers in China,
Norway, New Zealand, Italy, South Africa, Canada, and other countries
would dial phone numbers local to their countries.
After identifying the countries involved and finding a reliable
conference call international service provider, check the per minute
rates for each country involved so that you can budget accordingly.
Rates vary dramatically. For example, Canadian rates are as low as 4
cents per minute while you'll pay over 40 cents per minute for your
Chinese callers if they dial the China Toll Free number.
When examining the different per minute rates, you may find that for
some countries, it's less expensive to dial out than it is to have
those callers dial in. For example, where your mainland Chinese callers
may pay over 40 cents per minute to dial directly, you may pay less
than 10 cents per minute to dial-out to them. If you're ultimately
paying the bill either way and the difference is significant, it's
worth preprogramming the teleconference to automatically dial out to
attendees in those countries. It takes a little work to enter the phone
numbers in advance but once it's done, the conference call
international service automatically handles the dialing when the
conference time arrives.
You'll need to let your participants know the details of the call
including the local Toll Free access phone number, the international
conference call PIN number, and the local time and date of the call.
You can approach announcing your international conference calls in
several ways. You could send out one email to all attendees listing the
teleconference phone numbers and local times by country or you could
send individual emails to attendees detailing their specific
instructions. Let the size of the group and your knowledge of the
callers' locations guide you. In general, the easier you can make it on
your attendees, the better. Instead of relying on individuals to
convert the time and date of the call and risking inaction or mistakes,
convert the international conference call's start time to local time
for your callers. They'll know exactly when to call into the conference
call international and your call can begin.
Connecting callers from multiple countries into your international
conference calls does take some advanced planning by your moderator.
However, with the right international conference call service plan in
place, the process is easy. If you hold regular international
teleconferences with the same global attendees, you can even preprogram
the entire group for automatic dial out. This makes future
international conference calls a breeze!
www.aitelephone.com offers
href="http://www.aitelephone.com/">international calling service
plan to large and small customers worldwide
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Tags: country code, dozens, attendee, south africa, toll free phone, attendees, time zones, teleconference, access code, free phone numbers, toll free phone numbers, regional offices, conference call service