High-profile calls demand a particular type of person to run them
Whichever managed event call service provider you choose to work with, the quality and professionalism of their operators is an important factor in delivering a successful call.
These calls are often high-profile investor relations calls, large company announcements, earnings calls or new product launches – all of which can affect market valuation. The quality and reputation of the hosts, speakers, and organisations themselves are at stake.
This calls for a particular type of person to prepare and run calls with very senior presenters in large organisations.
Before we even think about training, there are personality traits we look out for when hiring new operators.
We look for confident, outgoing people. They need to be good listeners so they can fully understand and empathise with what customers are trying to achieve on their call.
They need to have excellent communication skills, be well organised and unflappable under pressure.
Our operators come from all walks of life and have worked in a range of different industries and job roles.
We put all our operators through a 10-week extensive training programme at the start of their employment. This covers everything required to deliver a flawless event call experience:
- Preparation: making sure nothing is missed in planning and execution
- Running the call: Role playing all the possible scenarios that could occur on a live call and providing the coaching and tools to deal with them
- Reporting: Post call evaluation to learn from the call, gain feedback from the customer and improve for the future
Only when they complete this rigorous training and pass the stringent tests we set are they able to graduate from the LoopUp Operator Academy and manage calls themselves.
Sharing and learning from each other is also key part of our culture. We have operators who have been with us for over 10 years. The average tenure is more than three years. We structure our teams so that the newer operators can learn from those with more experience.
Dealing with the unexpected
All the training in the world can’t cover all the eventualities that occur when running operator assisted event calls.
Operators have to think on their feet and act swiftly and decisively to ensure the quality of the call isn’t compromised.
In my experience, it’s often not the technology that’s the problem. Life and human error usually have a bigger part to play.
Here are a few examples of how our operators have responded to challenging situations:
“A well-known US civil rights activist accidentally hung up when addressing a large audience on one of our event calls. Immediately, I explained to the audience what had happened whilst simultaneously dialling back out to the speaker. In the end, we only had a 30-second delay and everyone stayed on the call.”
“The owner of an NFL team was addressing a large audience. Unfortunately, there was a fire alert in the building next door and suddenly the call was awash with the sounds of fire engine sirens drowning out the owner completely. I immediately muted his line, explained what was happening and we managed to dial back to the owner in a quieter part of the building.”
“There was a particular call, where one of the main speaker`s lines included a lot of background noise making it hard for everyone to hear the rest of the panel. To ensure the call ran smoothly I had to mute the speaker`s line while the main host and other panel members were speaking and unmute it anytime this speaker wanted to speak. Sounds like a simple task but proved to be tricky when managing a Q&A session simultaneously.”
If you’ve had any challenging experiences on your event calls, I’d love to hear about them! Please feel free to get in touch.
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 Event by LoopUp team in the UK.
Danielle Homer heads a team of operators who manage over 500 operator assisted event calls every month. In her latest blog, Danielle explains what makes a great operator and the vital role operators play in ensuring a smooth call – whatever the circumstances.
