Five Tips for Arranging Successful Teleconference Meetings

Most people don't give a lot of thought to participating on a teleconference call. Aside from putting it on your appointment calendar and making sure you have the information available for joining on-time, there's not much else to think about, right?

That's true if you are on the receiving end of the teleconference meeting as one of the attendees, however there are a few more things you should consider if you're the one responsible for arranging an online business meeting. After all, the purpose of a typical teleconference is to arrange a meeting of multiple individuals so that a specific business purpose is accomplished within a scheduled amount of time. Therefore, to achieve a successful online meeting on a teleconference call, it can be very helpful to consider the following concerns most good meeting arrangers would address when scheduling an in-person meeting or event:

1. Begin the scheduling process for the online meeting as soon as possible. Assuming you are able to schedule your teleconference meeting in advance (we'll discuss arranging a teleconference meeting for ad-hoc meetings in a future blog article) begin that process early enough to accommodate the back-and-forth communication that always occurs when comparing calendars and gaining agreement on a date and time with all of your attendees. And remember, the more meeting attendees you have, the more scheduling time you'll need.
2. Ensure all the attendees know where they are going for the online meeting and how to get there. Make it easy for meeting attendees to add the information they need to join your teleconference call directly to their appointment calendars so it's readily available when they need it. Don't make your meeting attendees search through their old emails to find that information in an email you sent them separately.
3. Provide an advance agenda that describes the purpose of the meeting and a list of discussion items. This may seem like a basic Meeting Planning 101 item, but it's frequently forgotten when scheduling online meetings. Including this information in the appointment calendar email sent to your online meeting attendees makes it easy for them to save it and access it.
4. Send an email reminder of the planned teleconference meeting to all attendees. This can be the day before, for AM meetings, or the same day, for PM meetings. Remember, your participants have a lot of things going on besides your online meeting and a reminder will help bring your meeting to their attention and avoid the problem of late or missing meeting attendees. An easy way to do this is to open the scheduled teleconference on your appointment calendar, add “Reminder...” in front of the subject line and hit resend.
5. When necessary, encourage participants to initiate the join process in advance of the start of the online meeting. If the web teleconference, or audio teleconference service you are using requires attendees to authorize themselves or complete an advance setup process, be sure to explain this to your attendees in the email invitation, or through a separate email instructions if necessary. Your attendees will appreciate instructions that help them avoid any delays and frustrations in joining your online meeting!

As a full service provider of teleconferencing, and web conferencing and video conferencing services, Two Rivers Conferencing offers services, such as Unified Meeting, that are designed to help online meeting arrangers schedule their online meetings quickly and easily, and ensure their meeting participants have a positive and production experience.