Do Conference Calls Need an Overhaul?

Does your company conduct prescheduled, companywide conference calls?

Do you send out email-based invitations that customers or employees can accept or decline? Do you work through an attendant, rather than simply dial in a passcode?

Is this concept broken?

Seems pretty straightforward to me, but here are three services (among many others) that feel this industry is in need of repair. Rondee, Foonz, and Calliflower are three relatively new services that offer a conference call/online service blend.

Rondee offers 100 participants per call, email invitations and tracking, free call recording, recurring call appointments, outlook integration, and participants can see a display of who’s talking at any given moment. All for free.

Foonz gets a little more clever. With its service, when you sign up, you enter those you anticipate conferencing with at some point. Then when you’re ready to start a conference, you call your Foonz number and the system invites participants by sending them a text message. Those individuals simply call the number in their text message.

Calliflower allows you to manage conference call invites, agendas and call notes. Call reminders can be sent out via text message to participants. A Web component is added to calls, allowing participants to do a number of things, including raising their hand with a question, or chatting with another before, during and after the call. And the call host can visually see who’s on the call and who’s not. All of this for no additional charge beyond the cost of the long distance call.

Calliflower stands out to me as the most intriguing of the bunch. Frankly, though, I’ve just never felt the conference calls I’ve been on or hosted have been lacking technical “features”, so to speak, so I can’t personally picture myself using these.

But if you need a little more oomph out of your calls — either in the planning or adding a dimension of engagement — these tools might be worth a look. Meanwhile, you can also take a look at our notes on conference call etiquette.