Like many companies we use GoToMeeting for doing remote demonstrations and training for clients and prospects.
One issue we have encountered a couple of times from attendees is the fact that they need to make a long distance call to join the conference call.
After talking with GoToMeeting support and liasing with their support team on twitter, it seems that the number provided for conference calls with GoToMeeting is provided randomnly and there isn't anything you can do to specify what numbers you would like associated to your meeting.
This seems to be a lazy feature that can cause problems. For example, if you are based in a city, like Brisbane, and all your attendees are based in Brisbane, it is likely that GoToMeeting will present a phone number for another state such as NSW. So all attendees and the presenter are making a long distance call.
This has come to the attention to some of our clients, who have then brought it to our attention with comments like: 'You mean we paid for the training and now each of my 10 staff are all on a long distance phone call for the next 2 hours - who's paying for that?!" Ouch & thanks GoToMeeting (not).
Now, as GoToMeeting rightly pointed out when I brought this to their attention, there is no charge for the VOIP option. Well, that is true, but we aren't always presenting to early adopters that have a speaker and microphone. And if they did, they've probably not used it before. The last thing we need to be doing with hot prospects or multiple attendeeds is troubleshooting audio issues. Having a convenient conference call they can join via their phone (not computer) is a feature many business like ourselves need.
If GoToMeeting want their platform to be more widely adopted they need to be thinking about functional improvements that will make it easier for the early majority to attend, and for the sake of GoToMeeting, possibly host webinars in the futre.
But since they don't appear to provide any channel for feature requests we need a work-around. I can't claim credit for figuring this out, but in the course of complaining about this problem to someone they told me this simple solution.
What is it?
Well, as it turns out, it doesn't matter what phone number GoToMeeting gives you when it creates your meeting, you can dial any of their numbers and it will allow attendees to join the conference call in your meeting.
This means you could provide the local number for your attendees and they can call in on that number at a local call rate. This should also work if you have attendees in different locales, you can still give them their local number.
At this stage, I only have 2 numbers, but please feel free to use the comments to provide the local numbers for your area.
Australia
Brisbane: 07 3123 6030
Sydney: 02 8014 4934
6 comments:
Hi Darren, I appreciate the points you made in this post and would like to mention that you can send us feedback through our website http://support.gotomeeting.com, also your comments when we talked on Twitter were passed on. As I mentioned we randomize the numbers as a way of balancing the load, this is to ensure the highest quality possible. As we deploy more bridges in Australia you will find this issue will resolve itself.
Thanks,
Glenn Dobson | Community Leader, Social Media
Citrix Online Division http://www.citrixonline.com/ Citrix Systems, Inc.
On Twitter @GlennDCitrix
Thanks Glenn, appreciate you posting. I had a look at the www.support.gotomeeting.com and there doesn't appear to be a feature request section. We consult on ACT! Software and have seen benefit from Sage's www.community.act.com website where there is a dedicated feature request thread http://community.act.com/t5/Share-Your-Ideas/idb-p/ideas . This thread allows users to vote up feature requests and discuss them. It also gives the person posting them some feedback as to whether the feature request is something that has popular support. I see this sort of community interaction as being important for software vendors to foster. I understand Sage are benefiting from this and they claim that they use it for informing future product development.
I think the current method of randomising numbers for load balancing compromises on the user experience and should be improved. A simple suggestion would be to provide a randomised number but also provide a link to a webpage that contains all available numbers that a user can call. I would expect if most people are happy with how GTM works now, they would call the number suggested, but the other clients that would prefer a local number could easily find the most approriate. I wouldn't expect that would effect your load balance too much.
Just had this Sydney number: 02 6108 4655
A Melbourne number is (03) 9008 6827
HI there,
I found a heap of numbers on this site- can't tell if these are private or not?
I am having the same problem and will certainly try your suggested Melbourne number.
http://ihe-australia.wikispaces.com/Teleconference+%26+Webconference+details
Heather
Hi Heather, I don't think the numbers listed on that site for each state are for GTM.
One thing I have noticed is that when selecting a number all users have to dial in on that number. You can't seem to have one user dial in on the 02 number and another on an 07. For some reason it seems they create their own unique conference call. A bit of a pain really.
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