Poor sound quality can be a significant distraction for your conference calls. If participants sound far away, have crackling associated with their line, or cut in and out, it’s hard for attendees to focus on what’s actually being said. With meeting productivity in thin air—you don’t need any other issues.

Strategies to fix the mess

The good news is, you can fix this. Use the strategies below to address sound quality issues. Ultimately, you’ll create a better, more productive meeting experience for your team and your customers. Andc this is important because conference calls still rock in business!

1. Choose a reliable audio conferencing provider

Some phone companies may provide audio conferencing, but if it’s not what they specialize in, or just one of a dozen offerings, your call quality may suffer.

To fix this issue, work with a communications provider that uses a platform with advanced conference call features and functionality. By using VoipNow for example, our service provider partners offer a wide range of communication services including conference calls. And they enable their customers to achieve the call quality these need.

Our system is easy for employees to use, minimizing training and onboarding time. And it provides the clear call quality you expect in an audio conferencing service.

2. Dial in with Wi-Fi

Companies often associate conference calls with phone lines and don’t yet realize that the most are hosted digitally. As such, one of the best ways to get better sound quality on your conference calls is to ensure everyone is hooked up to a reliable internet connection. You might be surprised by how much better your team members sound when they call over WiFi instead of through their cell-phone provider.

This need for WiFi-supported call systems was highlighted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Not all remote employees work in areas with quality cell service. This includes both employees in rural areas and urban employees who live in order cement buildings where cell service struggles to break through.

You can make sure that every employee has clear call quality by making Wi-Fi a priority in their home office or your in-person workplace.

3. Encourage employees to call in from their computers

Good call quality requires a mixture of company support and employee best practices. When possible, encourage your employees to call in through their desktop computers, using the computer audio to connect.

One cause of poor call quality could be employees using their smartphones to dial in and then walking around during the call and have a significant amount of background noise.

Establish a set of best practices in your organization to promote good call quality so employees can help create the best possible audio experience. Include some tips on where to call in, how to use the mute button or how to speak clearly into the microphone.

4. Establish who speaks and when

The larger your audio conferences, the greater your chances of confusion and sensory overload. Too many people may try to talk at once. They will cause some to talk over each other and spend more time vying to be heard than actually listening.

Ahead of medium to large meetings, name a facilitator who can manage the conference call. This person is not leading the meeting, they’re facilitating who talks and when. They give the floor to presenters and create queues with questions and comments from employees. The facilitator will also stick to the agenda, so one topic doesn’t overtake the entire meeting.

By allowing a facilitator to guide the meeting, the leader can focus on the content of the meeting and attendees can hear better.

Time to improve sound quality in your conference calls

Taking extra steps to establish call etiquette and mediation helps you create more enjoyable call experiences. In turn, that will lead to more productive meetings.

Your team should be focused on solutions and collaboration, don’t let them get distracted by poor call quality. With great conference calls comes better productivity and less frustration. Ask us more and we’ll recommend our service provider partners that can help your company achieve that!