ConferTel, a Civicom CompanyReviews of confertel.net

Easy to use there were no technical issues on our end or the end of the people calling in.

First, I love that ConferTel offers the ability to have each participant login with their own 'unique' passkey due to the added security which my company requires. The ease with which the calls can be recorded is excellent. I also learned (after a painstaking experience hiring a freelance transcriber on the heels of our first ConferTel conference call) that you actually offer transcription services of the call recordings - I have yet to utilize the service but I am so thankful it exists. Maybe more important, KaraLee is amazing and her customer service team is professional, efficient and well-trained. The areas that have frustrated me are minor, but very important to the customer experience. I will put them in list format: 1. I discovered in a not so good way, that the BODY of your "reminder" email is actually NOT a "reminder" email, but just a re-issue of the 'Secure Conference Invitation' email including "Your participation is requested" right at the top of the body of the email. The ONLY change is that the subject line morphs from 'Secure Conference Invitation' to 'Secure Conference Reminder'. So, when I chose 24 Hrs advance reminder for our first ConferTel call, several of the participants emailed me in a panic and/or huff to tell me they'd already confirmed with me - NOT GOOD. Of course, I knew what was about to happen because I myself received the "reminder" and saw that the email was in no way altered from the initial invite email. Under these circumstances, you must go the extra mile to create multiple email letters that clearly differentiate WHY the email is being sent. 2. In the same vein, I had also wanted to send a reminder 1Hr prior to the meeting beginning. I was informed by KaraLee that the only way I could do that was wait until the 24 Hr reminder was issued, then at that point, log back in and change my reminder time choice to 1Hr. Unfortunately, making that change re-sent emails to all the participants that ONLY noted in the subject line '(REVISED) Secure Conference Invitation' - once again with absolutely NO CHANGE to the wording in the body of the email. Now an entire group of participants are reading an email trying to discern where the revision to the upcoming conference call was made. That really chapped my hide. There SHOULD be a way to request at least 2 reminder emails be sent at 2 different times without this technological hiccup. An email should only say REVISED if I TRULY revise the time and/or date of the call. 3. I dislike that I cannot choose WHEN to send out the invitations. In other words, I must be prepared with every bit of information about the call (except for needing to know every participant) prior to inputting any information into your calendar system. Why? Because, as you know, once I hit the 'save' button - BOOM - all participants are hit with their invite email. I am a person who tends to prepare for things as soon as I know they will be taking place - a conference call is one of those things you know about but do not necessarily have all the elements in place until later. It would be nice to be able to "set up" the call and save all the information prior to being ready to email the participants. 4. Lastly, during my second conference call using ConferTel, I discovered a big problem with the individual passkey setup - yes, the same thing I feel is one of your greatest strengths. This is (in hindsight) an obvious area where difficulty could easily arise as the call begins, but there needs to be a better solution. Both when a participant CANNOT LOCATE THEIR ORIGINAL INVITE EMAIL WHICH INCLUDES THEIR UNIQUE PASSKEY and/or when the decision is made to invite ADDITIONAL PARTICIPANTS- LITERALLY AT THE POINT OF DIAL IN - I obviously have no passkeys to give them access to the call. I must phone KaraLee or the tech support line and ask them to reset passkey for existing participant or setup one for a newly added participant. This timeframe feels interminable when you have several high level executives waiting for the ability to access the call! It was incredibly stressful. It would be fantastic if there were another way, perhaps a #number set up where unique passkeys could be issued to me instantly via phone to expedite the process. I don't know what the answer is, but I do know, prior to dial in, I will want to have extra 'unique' passkeys on hand from here on out.

Good service. Has a staticy connection every now & then but overall works great.

Only thing holding back from 5 star rating is your billing conditions. We would prefer to have invoice terms of Net30 instead of billing to a credit card