Thame, Oxon, UK: 23 November 2010: Employers’ Forum on Disability (EFD) is successfully deploying MeetingZone’s operator managed event call services, to conduct its regular telephone tutorials and interactive phone-ins which bring together remotely located EFD members and expert speakers. EFD is the employers' organisation focused on disability as it affects business.
EFD chose MeetingZone as its preferred audio conferencing supplier based on its extensive experience within the operator managed event call marketplace and the proven reliability and ease of use of its competitively priced solution, which could be tailored to exactly meet the EFD’s specific requirements.
“Telephone tutorials and interactive phone-ins have been a welcome addition to our training programme, which was previously delivered throughout the UK at face-to-face events. It became clear that it was increasingly difficult for members to take the necessary time away from their businesses to travel to and from these events,” explained Samantha Goldberg, Training and Events Manager for EFD. “Additionally, the cost associated with attending these events had become an issue, as the tough economic climate has resulted in cuts in travel budgets and allowances.”
EFD carries out a comprehensive programme of around 50 practical and solutions based training and events each year, designed to help raise awareness among its members of the business, legal and ethical cases for addressing disability. It was important that EFD continued to run these programmes in a format that easily allowed its members to participate.
“We realised that holding our events as one hour telephone tutorials and interactive phone-ins would be an ideal solution however, we were very conscious that managing events via audio conference was not our forte. We needed to run them, but did not want to have to worry or be concerned with the underlying technology,” added Goldberg. “We needed to find a service provider that would deliver a fully managed solution. That is exactly what MeetingZone do.”
EFD books all of the dates of its forthcoming training and events with its MeetingZone account manager detailing the name of the call, the time, the date, the name of the host, and whether there is a need to record or transcribe the event. MeetingZone then appoints an operator who manages the telephone tutorial or interactive phone-in event.
MeetingZone issues the EFD event management team with dial-in details for the event call which are given to members as they register to attend.
When the event call takes place, MeetingZone’s specialist event team handles all incoming calls from EFD members, and captures any specific information EFD requires which typically includes: participant name, organisation and location before placing the member into the call. A participant list is produced immediately the call is finished and passed to EFD’s event management team.
EFD’s event management team are also able to take advantage of one of the features of MeetingZone’s Conference Control, Participant View, which allows them to view in real-time the name of each participant as they join the event call.
During Q&A sessions held as part of telephone tutorials or interactive phone-ins, all questions from EFD members are put to the MeetingZone operator who then asks the question on behalf of the member. This ensures that Q&A sessions are efficiently and effectively managed.
If the event call is to be recorded, enabling members unable to participate to listen to the content when convenient, the MeetingZone operator handles this process. The recording is made available on MeetingZone’s Conferencing Portal and is also sent in MP3 format to the EFD within half an hour of the event finishing. If a transcript is required, the operator again puts this process in place. The transcript is sent to the EFD as a word document within 24 hours.
“The transition to telephone tutorials has been very smooth indeed, largely due to the extremely high levels of customer service and professionalism delivered by MeetingZone’s specialist event team,” concluded Goldberg. “We have received positive feedback from our members and participation has increased as members from all over the UK are now easily able to participate without having to leave their desks!”
