Legal Village

Don't you just love conference calls?

Posted 16/05/2007 by Christoph von Teichman

Why is it that normally well-behaved people forget all their manners and start acting in the most inconsiderate fashion when it comes to taking part in a conference call?

Conference calls are a great thing when handled properly, but most of the time they make for a painful experience. Here are a few reasons why.

Lack of punctuality. More often than not, the first 15 minutes of any call are spent waiting for other participants to join, trying to contact them by email or on another line. What a colossal waste to have perhaps a dozen highly-paid people (many of them charging on the basis of time spent) sit around doing nothing but play solitaire on their computers!

Violation of roll call etiquette. Every conference call has a host and it is up to that host to call the roll and make sure everyone is on; it is quite unnecessary for individuals to announce their presence as soon as they join (especially if they are late) and embarrassing if they then start chatting with each other in the mistaken belief that just because everyone else is keeping quiet until asked to speak they are still alone.

Semi-private conversations. When many people are on a conference call, it is quite rude to waste everyone else's time by engaging in long discussions about a topic that is of interest to only one or two, instead of taking this off-line and pursuing it in a different setting.

Poor enunciation. Even with today's technical facilities, it is often a challenge to understand all that is being said on a conference call with multiple participants. People should therefore speak loud and clear, directly into the microphone or handset. Instead, all too often you get soft, inarticulate mumbles or a sound as if the person were speaking from within an empty whisky barrel.

Background noise. Many people do not seem to realise that their mobile phones can be put on mute (this is a feature that has been around for years - maybe they should get their 10-year old kids to explain it to them) and thus entertain everyone else on the call with flight announcements, traffic noise, dogs barking and the like. By the way, it is a good idea to put stationary phones on mute as well if not speaking - many conference call services have a voice-activated function that will cut everyone else off if one person is speaking - or shuffling papers or pouring coffee.

BlackBerrys. These, left near the phone, will produce a weird electronic noise every time a signal is received or sent by them. Everyone knows this from experience, and yet rare is the conference call where it does not happen.

My absolute favourite: "Hold" music or announcements. While on a conference call you get an urgent message to call someone else, so you put the conference on hold and make your call on a second line. If your telephone system provides callers on hold with music or announcements ("we will be right with you" - preferably in three different languages) - something I find hateful even in ordinary circumstances - this will now be broadcast to everyone in the conference, bringing the proceedings to a halt until you come back in or forcing people to hang up and dial again.

Shall I go on? And then there are the conference call service providers that require you to work your way through six or seven levels of a ridiculous voice menu before you are admitted to the call, in the process recording your name, which is then announced to everyone on joining as well as on leaving: "XYZ has joined the conference" - "XYZ has left the conference".

With many participants this can be hugely disruptive, especially if people are late in joining (as is invariably the case) or keep being cut off and dialling back because they are in a car or on a train. Enough to drive you nuts.

A bit more discipline, please. A bit more consideration for the fact that you are not the only person on the call!