4 Things You Should Be Doing After Your Conference Calls

There are a lot of conference call facilitation guidelines that you should keep in mind before and during your meeting but your responsibility as a host does not stop there – what happens after the call is as crucial as its beginning and middle. How you end a conference call and what you do afterward will impact the overall action plan and responsibilities of its attendees. Simply put, it doesn’t just end when you hang up the phone. You have to see to it that the deliverables discussed during the call will be worked on and accomplished within the discussed deadline.

Before you wrap up the call, check if every topic or issue on the agenda has been addressed. You can go over the key points and objectives really quick as a recap to make sure that everyone leaves with a clear understanding of their tasks.  Ask your attendees if there is anything that they want to add or share regarding the topics and if there are questions that need answers. Let them know when they can expect to receive a copy of the meeting summary. You can respectfully address each person on the call if it was a small meeting and just rely on the thank you note in the follow-up email if it was a large conference call. 

Best Practices to Do After Conducting a Conference Call:

Send a follow-up email 

The follow-up email should include the summary of the meeting which covers the key discussion points, the distribution of tasks, and depending on how often the conference call happens, the host may sometimes announce accomplishments or team wins for a bit of positive reinforcement,  the deadline, and the over-all goal. And don’t forget the thank them for joining the call. There are services providing summaries for conference calls so no one would have to worry as much in terms of note-taking. 

Call recording and materials

It would be helpful to send the slides presented during the conference call so that attendees can have something to go back to for reference. You may also send the direct link of the audio recording as an additional reference material to look back to in case attendees missed some of the important notes. 

Get feedback 

Asking the attendees what they think could be improved on the next call will give you a chance to really work on it and conduct a better conference call next time.  

Reach out to non-attendees

Cross-reference the attendance sheet and the list of invited people to pinpoint which ones weren’t able to attend the call. Reach out to them and politely check how they’re doing. Send them a copy of the summary too and assure them to ask questions if anything seemed confusing. Do let them know, however, that their presence in the upcoming calls would be beneficial on both ends. 

These are common practices that some people would’ve easily missed but are actually great reminders to consider for a successful post-conference call to take place. It wouldn’t hurt to take note of just a few until it becomes a habit and ultimately help you get better results after a conference call.