Selecting a teleconference service provider

What kind of service do I need and what companies provide it?
Almost all teleseminars use an automated teleconference service. This is normally because it is the cheapest and easiest service to use.
Many teleseminars hosts have expectations of conference calls with hundreds of participants. In practice it is rare in Australia to see a teleseminar with more than 30 lines.

What is a good size to aim for?

A great size for a teleseminar is up to 30 lines because this makes it possible for the meeting to be interactive. If your meeting is not interactive it may be cheaper to simply put a recording on your website.

Large teleseminars

If you have a very large meeting you will probably need an operator assisted conference (these cost 3-5 times more).

If you think you may have a large number of attendees but need to control costs, an effective workaround is to invite perhaps 5-10 people to a small teleseminar and put the recording of this on your website.
If you make it so that the only way people can download the recording is to give you their email address, you now know how many people might have attended the teleseminar and also have added them to your database.

There are many service providers and finding a good one is not always easy. The key points to look for are:

Do they have the features you need?
Is the service reliable enough?
Do they understand teleseminars?

Start by looking at their website then call them. Ask to speak to someone that knows about teleseminars.

Teleseminar Features

The following features are commonly but not universally available – so don’t assume that all service providers will have them.
The presenters have a different PIN (security) code to the attendees		This allows for more control of the meeting
It is possible to have multiple presenters		Without this, if you need to reduce background noise by muting the audience, you will also mute the other presenters
Attendees can be muted by the moderator		This is absolutely vital to having good sound quality.
Attendees can mute their own lines		This is important because if you want to keep the meeting interactive but still control background noise, you will have to rely upon the participants muting themselves.
The following service will be a problem for many providers
Record the teleseminar		Few service providers are able to provide a good recording service and those that do are normally very expensive.
Start the recording when you want		This means that you only record the bits you want recorded, not all of the general “hi, how’s the weather” chat at the beginning
Download the recording immediately after the meeting		Allows you to put it on your website immediately or analyse how your presentation sounds. Many companies can only make the recording available by post or by telephone.
Allow people to download the recording without adding it to your website		If you aren’t able to easily add things to your website then sending a download link is the only way to make the recording easily available. Few companies provide this and may have a charge per download. Confirm the cost before using it.
Entry/exit tones can be turned off.		Normal conference calls have tones that indicate when people join or leave the meeting. These are very useful, however for a teleseminar they can be intrusive or embarrassing! If you have a lot of attendees the beeps become intrusive. For smaller numbers of attendees you do not necessarily want the audience knowing that your “massively oversubscribed” teleseminar only has 5 people.
Is help available within the meeting and what hours of cover are there?		If you need assistance it will be because something is going wrong and in a teleseminar this means that you will lose money and credibility. Being careful with your money is wise but be aware that sometimes this can have a high price.

Reliability

Getting people to attend a teleseminar can be expensive and you will only have one chance to get it right. All of the expensive service providers use the best equipment and telephone lines but in addition to being pricey it may hard to find someone that understands what you are trying to do.

The cheapest companies are generally cheaper because they have cut corners. This means that the service may not work at all or could have soud problems during your meetig

Looking at websites it is very hard to know whether a service provider is cutting corners but one useful measure is that if they are offering a service cheaper than you can make a long distance phone call, then that should ring some very loud alarm bells.

Do they understand Teleseminars?

This is an easy one to confirm. How much information on teleseminars is there on the website and assuming there is, when you call them (as you really should when organising something so important) can you speak to someone that knows more about it than you?

Testing my account

Once you have your account, don’t assume anything, test it for yourself.

If you have an issue, it will be a lot easier to either get it resolved or find another provider if you have plenty of time.

Checklist

Confirm that all of the following work:

Telephone numbers and PIN codes
Help – try requesting help at the time/day of week that you will hold your teleseminar to get a feel for how responsive the service provider is. A realistic expectation during business hours is 10-20 seconds. In the evenings this may be up to a minute. If it takes longer you should look for another provider. A minute can be a long time when you have 30 people waiting so this is very important.
More than one presenter. Dial into the conference from two phones with the moderator PIN to confirm that you can have more than one presenter.
Mute participants lines. Dial in from two phones, this time one is the presenter and one is a participant. Test the following: Mute the audiences lines. The code for this is often *6. Confirm that it works
Unmute the participants *6
Start Recording: *21. Confirm that a message is played saying the meeting is being recorded. Talk for a bit or turn the radio on so that you have something to record. Depending upon your service provider, you should receive an email in 5-10 minutes containing a link to download the meeting.
Download the meeting and listen to the sound quality
Forward the email to another email address and check you can also download it from there.
Disconnect all lines: ##

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