At times, it seems that conference calls take a low priority with the people you've invited. Here are some sure-fire ways to make them WANT to join you at your next conference call! Make use of Guest Speakers Invite a special guest or high-ranking member of your organization to the meeting. Ask your guest to say a few words or field a few questions as an opener before you get down to regular business. This strategy will provide a great jump-start to the discussion that follows. Make sure to tell all your invitees about this special opportunity to speak with your guest so they won't miss it!

If you're having trouble getting your callers to participate freely during conference calls, try these tips: Open up your meeting with a roll call. This gets your participants talking from the very beginning, and helps them to learn each other's voices. A good strategy is to ask a question before you begin calling the roll, and ask each person to respond with their answer when their name is called. This can be something relevant to the topic (such as this week's progress towards a goal), or something to relax everyone and create a more personable atmosphere (such as what everyone did over the weekend).

In order for conference participants to reach our service, each one must call a telephone number. For Reservationless Standard and Web-Scheduled Standard conferences this number may be local or long distance, depending on their location. The only costs for these type of conference calls are whatever long distance rates are charged by each individual conference participant's long distance carrier (Sprint, MCI, AT&T, etc.). We do not require the use of any specific carrier, nor do we know what rates you pay on your calling plan.

No. There are absolutely no surcharges. For Reservationless Standard and Web-Scheduled Standard conferences nothing extra will appear on your bill other than the call itself, billed at your normal long distance rate. For Web-Scheduled Premium 800 conference calls nothing will appear on your phone bill whatsoever. Instead, we will bill your credit card for the total amount of time each participant is present in the conference call, at the rate of $0.10 per minute per caller.

Many of our users want to host conference calls for their clients or guests and don't want their participants to have to pay long distance charges to access the conference. Also, it may be more convenient to put the cost of the conference call onto a single credit card bill rather than paying via separate long distance bills for each caller. Many people have found our low per minute rate to be even cheaper than the rates they would pay for regular long distance.

Web-Scheduled Standard is a free telephone conferencing service† that can be used immediately after signing up for a user account. Our step-by-step online interface allows you to schedule and manage telephone conference calls from any Web browser at your convenience, without the assistance of an operator.

Most often, this happens when the person using our Web site doesn't complete the process of reserving the conference by selecting "confirm this conference". It is very important to follow the prompts all the way through the process until our system reads "confirmed conference". Please visit the Conference Manager page of our site well in advance of your scheduled conference time and verify that the upcoming conference is displayed there. Also, you may wish to take advantage of our e-mail invitations and confirmations feature to gain a measure of confidence that the conference is truly reserved on our server.

There is no specific limit on how many conferences you can schedule or when they can occur. Each conference is associated with a phone number to call and a unique Participant Access Code. Our software makes sure each conference is unique and private. Thus, you cannot have two or more conferences taking place simultaneously.

In any conference call, no matter what conference bridge or provider you use, the clarity will decrease somewhat as you add more Participants. The more conference Participants, the more likely the use of cell phones, cordless phones, speakerphones, headsets, background noise, and other low-quality transmission problems. Also, there is more chance of someone putting the call 'on hold' without remembering to mute their phone and broadcasting their 'hold music' or radio station to the remainder of the conference.

We do not offer telephone support for non-emergency problems of users of our free services. We do, however, offer toll-free customer support for our Web-Scheduled Premium 800 service. The toll-free customer support number, along with a support authorization number required when calling customer support, is displayed on the confirmation page and e-mail once a Web-Scheduled Premium 800 call is scheduled.