Stats show that 70% of people work remotely at least once a week.
One of the surprising side effects of remote working is the increase in conference calls. In fact, if you work remotely, you may have some personal experience with being on a conference call.
But while conference calls make use of modern technology, it doesn’t mean they’re exempt from the traditional rules of meetings. Thus, if you don’t know what these rules are, you risk offending the other people on the call.
Read on to learn more about the phone etiquette rules you need to follow if you’re hosting a conference call. If you’re worried about making a mistake, these tips will help you stay on the right side of things.
Let’s begin!
1. Be on Time
Perhaps one of the biggest blunders you can make in conference calls is to be late. Now, this is relatively easy to do if you’re someone that works remotely, as you can often just forget that you have a scheduled call.
To help you avoid a situation like this, you should think about setting up reminders, as soon as a call is arranged. You might do this by creating an alert on your phone, or you might create a task in your Google Calendar.
Another reason you might be late is because of a difference in time zones, and this is easy to do if you’re working with international clients.
You can overcome this issue by using websites that help you identify the local time zone of a client. Just make sure you find out the time zone of a client, well ahead of time.
2. Use a Reliable Service
If you’re the one that will be hosting the conference call, then it’s vital that you make use of a reliable service.
Otherwise, the connection might keep on dropping, and this will just frustrate everyone.
You’ll find that there are plenty of reliable companies that offer a free conference call service. Using their solution, you should be able to host a ‘glitch-free’ call, without having to spend a lot of money.
Now, if you really want to be cautious, spend some time testing out the various solutions on offer. Upon doing so, you should be able to go into a call, confident that the connection will not drop.
3. Invest in Good Equipment
If you don’t have good equipment, then there’s a chance that the other people on the call will struggle to hear you.
This is a problem because it can often extend the time of the call, as you have to repeat everything.
You can avoid this problem by investing in specialist headsets designed for conference calls. If you don’t like using a headset, you could buy a conference call speakerphone.
Will You Follow These Phone Etiquette Rules?
If you will host a conference call, it’s vital you follow the phone etiquette rules covered in this post.
Now, sometimes, you may make a mistake, no matter what you do. Your microphone may suddenly stop working, or your internet connection might drop.
Fortunately, it’s not that hard to recover, as most people appreciate the challenges that come with conference calls. They’ve probably had similar things happen to them!
So when something does go wrong, all you need to do is apologize, and take steps to ensure the issue doesn’t happen again.
Do you have any tips on conference call etiquette? If you do, please share your suggestions in the comments area.
