Event by LoopUp’s Danielle Homer manages hundreds of event calls every month. Here she advises how best to address large remote audiences in response to the Covid -19 outbreak.
Togetherness is key
We’re seeing many organisations using our operator assisted event call service to run large conference calls (typically for more than 150 people) to communicate their Covid-19 policy to large groups of employees.
We’re also running regular “all hands” cross company large conference calls to generate a feeling of togetherness, with so many people working from home. They’re vital to keep up morale and motivation in such difficult times.
The size of these calls can vary, depending on the size of the company. Business leaders may need to address audiences from 150 people to as many as 8,000 attendees in one meeting.
I thought it might be useful to share some thoughts with you as I know many people are currently looking for the best way of addressing large audiences.
Selecting the right option
With so many options available, a lot of people are not sure what solution or vendor to choose.
Should you run a webcast? What about a webinar? Would a large conference call do the job? Is an operator assisted call (sometimes called an operator managed call) the best option?
Many are pushing “free” offers during the Covid-19 crisis. While this might seem appealing, there are things to look out for, that if ignored, could result in a poor experience.”
Ensuring audio quality
One such thing is how the audio element of a large conference call is carried. It directly affects the quality of the audio.
The recent surge in online meeting volumes, due to so many people working from home, has stress tested even the biggest IP based providers of remote meetings, webinars and webcasts.
Many have experienced outages and poor quality audio at peak times. That’s because a lot of VOIP based remote meeting solutions have been designed for the majority of people to be using these services on a company managed network, with just a small amount of remote usage.
When most people are working from home, the reverse is true. This results in choke points which could affect audio quality.
Services such as ours – Event by LoopUp, our operator assisted large conference call service, uses regular phone lines to deliver its audio – it doesn’t rely on the IP network. This ensures 100% reliability at peak and all other times. Vital when effective communication is so important.
Other things to consider
There are other aspects that are also important:
Having a skilled operator to set up and manage the call for you can help and means you’re free to focus on getting your message across.
Having the right tools to engage with your audience (slides, Q&A and polling) can make all the difference to the delivery, clarity and receptivity of your message.
Operator assisted event calls can be set up in hours. Other types of remote meetings – webcasts, webinars etc can take days to organise and invite people. By which time events may have rendered the original content out of date.
There are other aspects that are also important:
Having a skilled operator to set up and manage the call for you, means you’re free to focus on getting your message across.
Having the right tools to engage with your audience (slides, Q&A and polling) can make all the difference to the delivery and receptivity of your message.
If we can be of help…
We successfully run hundreds of operator assisted calls every month for global clients.
If you feel we could be of help to you, find out more about Event by LoopUp, or please get in touch with me at danielle.homer@loopup.com.
About the author and LoopUp
More than 5,000 firms around the world trust LoopUp with their important remote meetings, from day-to-day conference calls to high profile event calls. Danielle Homer manages the team at Event by LoopUp in the UK.
