One of the most popular techniques businesses and organizations communicate these days is by using phone conference calling – also known as audio conferencing, or teleconferencing. It’s easy, simple, convenient, and the fastest way to get colleagues, associates and customers on the same page.
There are other collaborative systems and techniques that come with more bells and whistles — things such as web and video conferencing — but the backbone of today’s business office is simple phone conferencing. Everyone just picks up the phone wherever they are, dials in, punches in the PIN code, and they’re on their way .
Toll free pay-as-you-go conferencing is also a straightforward and standard billing model that has proven to be popular with businesses and non-profits. The reasons: there are no long term commitments, no monthly minimums, no set up fees, and best of all, you just pay for what you use — no more or less. Moreover, you don’t have to pay anything until after you use the conference bridge . While there are conferencing plans that enable you to pay in advance by purchasing a certain number of minutes, similar to monthly cell phone plans, pay-as-you-go is preferred by those who only want to pay for what they use — no more, or less. It is an ideal way to automatically reduce expenses during slow months or period of time when conference is seldom or just occasionally used. If conference calls spike, then it would indicate that business is on an upswing and conferencing costs are in line with company revenues.
Also available is non-toll free conferencing, mostly used for internal company calls when having a toll free number is not necessary for the convenience of customers or prospects. You can also pay-as-you-go for non-toll free on a per minute basis, or get a “flat” or “fixed” rate account that provides you unlimited usage.
So why is toll free, pay-as-you-go, phone conference calling winning over so many customers ? First and foremost, it presents your customers or prospects a successful image of your company and shows that you are serious enough to provide them a toll free number, at your expense, to speak with them about your products and services. Second, competitive rates have made it very affordable and you can get toll free for less than the price of a long distance call several years ago. And third, you only pay for what you use, after you use it. You are never in any risk forbuying minutes that are unused or can’t roll over.
All indications point to the continued popularity of per-minute toll free phone conferencing throughout America and Canada. Large, medium and small organizations will advance their missions by discovering new ways to apply conferencing to their business models in an effort to save resources in an ever competitive world.