• Prepare a list with all participants.
• Fix the date with the participants and inform everybody abot the planned duration of the conference. Pay attention to possible time differences in case of interantional audio conferences.
• Prepare an agenda with the main subjects, which need to be discussed during the conference.
• Predefine the language for the conference. Audio conferences with international participants are generally in English.
• Check all technical tequirements: obtail all necessary data like dial-in number and PINs. Make sure, if the audio conference should be recorded and check for special seurity features. Possible security options for your audio conference you will find here:
• Define the role for each participant: who should moderate the meeting, who will be an active speaker, who should only listen?
• Check for necessary documents (contracts, manuals, abstracts,...).
• Check, if you need visualisationfor the participants or not. You can send the documents to all participants beforte the meeting starts, so everybody can look at them during the audio conference. Compared with the face-to-face meeting the participants don´t see, which documents you refer to at the moment. Everytime you explain a specify part of the documents, you have to name it exactly. If a visualisation is useful, you can do this with an integrated web conference. So you can show your participants all documents via your screen.
• Arrange all this information (date, participant PIN, agenda, language, roles, necessary documents) in one final e-mail, which you should be sent to the participants at the right time.

from home

• If you dial in from home, make sure that you are undisturbed.
• The kitchen should not be the first choice. Noise from e. g. running water are easy to hear and disturb the conference.
• Try to keep pets outside the room to avoid disturbance.
• Mute your line while not speaking.

with mobile phone

• Try to stay on spot while a conference to avoid connection losses.
• Keep in mind that mobile phone are less secure than communication via landline.

• Make sure you make discussion notes to be able to reproduce the content discussed afterwards.
• Generally, the principle is: in an audio conference speak more clearly and more slowly than you would do in a face-to-face meeting. You thus help to compensate for the reduced speech quality.
• Expect a speech delay especially where greater distances are involved and take suitably adequate pauses.
• Keep to the specified role allocation and to what the moderator says. Do not interrupt, but rather as a rule let speakers finish speaking.
• Please note that audio conference systems are very sensitive and register even the slightest sounds, even typing on a keyboard. Hence, you should keep your microphone muted to *6 on your telephone keypad when you are not speaking.

• The moderator should explain through comments lots of things that are visually conveyed in a meeting. This begins with him welcoming each individual participant and, each time that a new participant joins the audio conference, indicating who is already present. In this way, it becomes “apparent” to all the participants who is there at the audio conference.
• Begin with some small talk. This will create a pleasant atmosphere for discussion for all the participants beyond national and linguistic barriers.
• Participants can only recognize who is talking from the voice. Allow everyone the opportunity to say something at the start of the audio conference. In this way, you can check whether or not the participant can be well understood. If the participant is too quiet, ask them to draw nearer to the microphone. Please ask each participant in addition to say their name before making a contribution. Only then, when everyone recognizes each other’s voice, can this be dispensed with.
• In an audio conference you cannot see when a participant wishes to speak. If you conduct an audio conference, then always make a point of asking who would like to speak and then wait a few seconds for participants to respond.
• As the participants cannot see each other, they also fail to notice if two people begin to speak simultaneously. With items for which you expect several requests to speak, always ask who would like to speak and then hand over to each individual participant in turn.
• In Visual contact is absent from the audio conference. You must compensate for this by always addressing the participants by name if you refer directly to a contribution from this participant.
• Point out to all participants not to switch their telephone to “on hold” during any temporary absence – especially if this involves the playing of on-hold music. Otherwise all the conference participants will hear the music or other announcements.
• If you require assistance during your audio conference, please select “0#”. You will then be connected to our trained operator, who will be happy to help you further.
• Concentrate on listening to the discussion and recognizing any implicit rejection, resentment or problems. Misunderstandings will arise particularly in a foreign language. Respond to these if need be.
• Repeat preliminary results of the discussion. This has the same function as visualization in a meeting. What has been achieved is made clearly audible again for all the participants. Always recall everything that you and the other participants do not see, in contrast to a face-to-face meeting. Your job as facilitator of an audio conference is to translate this into words, in order to make it more authentic for everyone.
• Finally, summarize the interim and final results for everyone audibly, declaring the meeting over, and say goodbye.