Common Large Conference Call Difficulties and How to Prevent Them

Large-scale conference calls are harder to control than physical meetings. Since you are reading this, you have probably encountered intolerable ones yourself. Learn from your previous mistakes, or other’s, and thrive to improve the next ones you host using these tips and tricks for preventing typical large conference call difficulties:

Participants talking over each other

This is a common “sickness” with large conference calls as the high number of participants is harder to control than smaller groups. Lack of speaker coordination usually ends up in hodgepodge discussions, forming “sub-meetings” during the call.

Solution: Prevent this uncontrollable situation by automatically muting participants as they join the conference call and then using the live Q&A feature that allows participants to virtually raise their hand via a simple telephone key touch to be unmuted individually via an online live call manager.

Excessive background noise

People say “The more, the merrier” but in the case of large conference calls, a large volume of participants means more background noises are accumulated which deteriorates the effectivity and quality of the conference call. This instigates a lack of clarity and misinterpretations among participants.

Solution: This is another problem that can be prevented by a simple press of a mute key. Ask the respondents to mute their lines or do it yourself using an all-mute function. Also advise them to call in from a noiseless, echo-free location beforehand to ensure good audio quality.

Speakers forgetting to unmute when they talk

Leaving your participants on mute for a long period of time can lead to them forgetting that they are still on mute when they talk, which makes you miss potentially crucial information regarding the subject matter.

Solution: Be attentive and make sure everyone’s contributing to the meeting. Always put in the back of your mind that someone might be wasting their efforts because you’ve put them on mute. When you feel someone has been silent for quite a while, especially if the topic is specific to them, don’t hesitate to call out names to make sure their line is unmuted.

Divided attention

Large conference calls enable participants to multitask without you knowing. Multitasking divides their attention and hinders full participation. The presence of many active participants sometimes causes others to become bystanders who assume everything is being handled already. “Bystanders” refer to unproductive callers caught up with unrelated work while on-call.

Solution: Utilize a large event conferencing provider such as www.largeconferencecall.com that supports web-based presentations where you can showcase impactful materials helpful for increasing audience interest and interaction rates.

Note-taking

The more participants, the more insights you have to take note of. It is a difficult task when you are moderating and tracking the agenda at the same time. Note-taking turns into a cumbersome task in situations like these. Attempting to do it by yourself may result in false, incomplete information.

Solution: Recording is a lifesaver to anyone hosting a large conference call, especially to those responsible for taking meeting notes. Prevent misinformation by audio recording the whole conversation and requesting a conference call transcript afterward.

These situations often give large conference call hosts a hard time which may result to wasted, unproductive meetings. Prevent all possible difficulties by using a fool-proof large event conferencing provider equipped with useful features geared towards providing flawless large conference calls.

Check out these useful tips on effective conferencing for large groups. It’s our handy guide.