While people all over the world may have started adapting to video conferencing in the last few years, audio conferencing has been here for many years. The benefits that accompany using audio conferencing are to thank for the longevity of service. This article will highlight some of the benefits of using audio conferencing both for the business and its employees.
Audio conferencing helps improve the attendance of meetings. Look at it this way. Statistics from OwlLabs indicate that it often takes half of meeting attendants about 10 minutes to set up and start video conferencing calls.
This time is often spent fidgeting and adjusting the video and audio features of the attendee to match what is expected of them. People who are not very tech-savvy may need even more time to adjust. Additionally, it's not uncommon to see some people leaving and entering the video call and waiting to be let in by the host of the meeting, making attendance fluctuate.
An audio call closely resembles calling on your mobile phone and therefore does not have as much complexity. Attendees of the meeting need only to dial a central system, and it connects all of them. For that reason, audio calls can be easier to attend than video calls, therefore positively impacting attendance.
When compared to video calls, audio calls can be very flexible. When attending a video conference, you often have to make sure that you are ready for the meeting both in terms of how you look and the environment you are in. That means you may be unable to attend an impromptu video call if you are at a noisy beach or crowded bar.
With audio conferencing calls, you can attend your meeting from wherever you are as long as it is relatively quiet or you are using noise cancellation software. This means that it does not matter where you are or how you look; as long as you can hear and speak clearly, you can hold an audio conference call from anywhere.
If you have attended any video call where someone's network signal was not strong, then you may be familiar with audio or video latency issues. Latency refers to how long it takes to compress and decompress the video and audio and send it to a receiver. If the latency is high, you experience delays either in the speech or the video, which can significantly affect the conference call quality.
Because video calls require the transfer of both audio and video from endpoint to endpoint, the people attending the conference call often need a lot of network bandwidth to maintain a smooth conference call quality.
On the other hand, with audio conference calls, the only thing being transmitted is the audio file. This means that attendants can experience high-quality conference call conditions with a lower bandwidth than needed in video calls. What's more, many audio conferencing calls work to make the audio quality crisper with each call as that is the only thing being transmitted to receivers.
The technological requirements for audio conferencing are quite low. This holds whether you are using VoIP calls or if you are using basic telephone technology. In most cases, all you need is sound equipment and a clear telephone line in the case of telephone conference calls.
The audio conference call provider is responsible for connecting you to the other attendants. What happens is, it is pretty easy to attend audio conference calls even if you do not have the most advanced phones.
Compare this to attending video calls where besides needing sound equipment and high bandwidth, you also need a clear screen display and a good camera. This added aspect of video transmission often means that people with low-quality mobile devices cannot get away with attending meetings on their phones. This places a high technological burden on the attendance of a meeting.
Data from Global Workplace Analytics indicates that working from home has gone up by 216% between 2005 and 2019. Additionally, data from Fortunly indicates that 37% of accounting and IT tasks are outsourced. This increase in working with remote employees means that companies have to find effective communication techniques that are both effective and efficient.
Audio calls are effective because they can connect people from a wider audience in one call as long as they have enough bandwidth. Note that the bandwidth requirement will be lower than for video calls. This means that as long as the attendants have a decent internet connection and decent tech like a good phone, they can all attend audio calls easily and fulfill their agenda regardless of their location or time zone.
The height of the pandemic brought Zoom video calls to the limelight, and while it helped facilitate video conference calls, it came with its own set of challenges. One challenge faced by companies using zoom was zoom-bombing. Zoom-bombing refers to when uninvited members hijack a meeting and post disruptive or annoying content. Audio conference calls are more secure and less prone to hackers and hijackers.
Using audio calls saves the business and the attendants money on three fronts. First, they do not need a lot of bandwidth to attend a conference call. This means that attendants can save on data costs if they have more audio conference calls and fewer video calls.
Secondly, attendants of meetings can save on travel costs by attending audio conferences. Finally, audio conferencing software does not have to be expensive. In fact, there are some excellent audio-conferencing software’s that work well and are completely free.
One great audio conferencing call that delivers high-quality audio conference and premium features for free is Conference Hall. Try out a free instant conference call today.
ConferenceTown.com provides the highest quality, feature packed audio conferencing for free. There are no hidden fees. Our system can handle both small and large conference calls. When quality is what matters, there's just one choice.