Everyone’s a Winner

Well dear readers and other interested parties Chorus Call’s – ‘win an IPad for your best travel story’ has delivered overwhelming responses and It has taken our judges much deliberation until finally they agreed on the best story.

It is with pleasure that I announce the winner – Ruth Patching from the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons. Next week we will publish the story and provide pictures of the happy winner (and she is extremely happy) along with a recorded interview to share Ruth’s thoughts and feelings.

As that old 70’s band, Hot Chocolate sang – ‘everyone’s a winner babe, that’s the truth’ and Ruth certainly is as we believe our customers are too! The last line in the song is ‘you never fail to satisfy (satisfy)’ and that is what is dynamic about Chorus Call as an organisation and its people.

We always endeavour to deliver superior customer service with our product offerings and strive very hard to solve any problems that may surface and this comes at competitive pricing, innovation and promptness. We do not sell and run, we back up and believe in this as a successful recipe for success ensuring indeed that everyone is a winner.

NEWSFLASH
Chorus Call will be launching an new service unique to teleconferencing in Australia, stay tuned as the launch will be next week on our website. That’s all I am going to say at the moment but we are certain this service is a winner and will become integral in many of our clients business’

…stay tuned…

Ash and disaster readiness

What do you do with the airlines grounded and it looking like it will affect travel for days, if not weeks? Companies need to assess their readiness for no travel.

Do you have emergency audio conferencing accounts ready? 
Do you have access to video rooms for high profile events? 
What happens if a key employee is stranded?

During the Asian flu crisis there were conferencing companies charging huge premiums to companies that were unprepared and needed last minute assistance. Video rooms in Sydney were being charged out at 3 and 4 times the usual rate.

Chorus Call Australia will activate accounts in minutes. Ash or no ash business needs to continue and video, data and voice conferencing can be the answer!

www.choruscall.com.au

Sun Tzu

My last blog touched upon leadership in the modern world and as we know that new technology challenges many of us; people have remained similar, emotionally, for eons.

Regard your soldiers as your children, and they will follow you into the deepest valleys; look on them as your own beloved sons, and they will stand by you even unto death.
Sun Tzu

And therein lies the secret of true leadership and yet many supposed leaders rely on rhetoric, spin, fear and bullying.

The market place can be likened sometimes to a battleground and fiscally the global environment is struggling, perhaps parts of Europe on the brink of hemorrhaging much more than before.
Two paced economy in Australia masks the true position as the mining industry continues to boom and other industry struggles as the delivery costs for goods and services continue to rise.

Interesting the cost of teleconferencing has proved to be in the reverse as competition has driven the price down over the last few years, sometimes at the cost of reduced or no service.
Chorus Call still offers competitive pricing aligned to true account management where we provide solutions to our clients needs thereby offering a true-value service.

That surely must be the value proposition we all seek. The next quote from Sun Tzu can be re-interpreted as corporate leadership and translated into seeking new boundaries, higher performance by delivering on the above-mentioned value proposition.

The general who advances without coveting fame and retreats without fearing disgrace, whose only thought is to protect his country and do good service for his sovereign, is the jewel of the kingdom.
Sun Tzu

‘the times they are a changin’

“Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’”

Courtesy of Bob Dylan’s timeless classic

iPad, iPhone, iPod -  iwots next! 

Soon the phone and the pad will replace the laptop or notebook computer – surely not? Has its lifecycle shot thru like lightning in the sky? It seems like yesterday when they were introduced and have become cumbersome and somewhat clunky in a flash! (The good news is that one of our customers won an iPad at the recent conference in Adelaide and more on this next week.)

 The National Broadband Network is being implemented promising ever faster internet speeds for all and this will no doubt help deliver more innovation and these innovations will need to be understood and delivered to business and community with speed, precision and effect.

Australians seem to embrace change relatively well and are very early adopters of new technology and we at Chorus Call are continuously looking at ways to improve our business and provide better more efficient service to our clientele. Soon we will have more telephonic capacity than all our competitors thereby delivering an Australian solution to Australians in Australia!

Many organisations are also doing the same as we continue to shine a light over the world in terms of economy, safety and efficiency. Leadership is important and perhaps its best summed up by another verse from the same song….

“Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside and it is ragin’
It’ll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’’

Continuing Education Technology

This past weekend I spent 2 or 3 hours with a client of ours, ESSA, at one of their annual conventions. ESSA is Exercise and Sports Science Australia. The vision promoted by ESSA is that they will “enhance the health and performance of all Australians through the support of exercise and sports science professionals”. A very noble vision. The group I spent time with was the continuing education group that had representatives from each state and territory in Australia. Even in the brief time I spent with this group the focus I saw on providing better outcomes to their constituents was really great. Most impressive was the great demographics they had. Almost 90% of their growing membership was under 40 years old. To my mind this bodes well for the growth of their profession and organisation. More importantly, I think it bodes well for the adoption of technology to deliver continuing education programs to their members.

ESSA is focused on many of the problems that many similar organisations face. How often do we run events? How can we provide better value to all out members? How do we reach out to our regional and remote members more effectively? I spent about an hour running through some options for using Chorus Call’s services to better reach their constituents. Chorus Call supports many organisations in the delivery of continuing education. The improved penetration of broadband, coupled with the decreasing cost of technology has allowed many of our customers to deliver high quality video tutorials, with slides, live and archived on demand. The ability to control content delivery and access across geographic divides and allowing the end user to participate at a time convenient to them, is a game changer in the CE industry. As video becomes more and more cost effective we will begin to see organisations of all sizes using this high impact medium to provide value to their clients. Other mediums that have been used for years are the voice conferencing and more recently data sharing or web conferencing.

My belief has always been that you need to mix the delivery between the use of technology and face to face. Video does not replace the need for live tutorials, it supplements it. Having a 45 minute voice conference at lunch once a week does not mean that you don’t need the full day workshop once a quarter. These communication tools allows your clients to learn at their pace and take advantage of the medium(s) that are best for their personal situation and learning style.

Teleconferencing’s Unique Diversity

At the RACS Conference in Adelaide

Recently I returned from a week long stint in Adelaide where I attended the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons (RACS) annual conference.

How does a teleconference specialist find herself at a medical convention in Adelaide you ask?

Well, they happen to be a wonderful customer of ours and we wanted to take time out to visit with them and show our support for what they do.

I mention this trip because I still find it amazing the variety of clients we work with here at Chorus Call Australia. One minute I might be connecting Fortune 500 companies from Sydney, and the next farmers from Fremantle. In my time connecting teleconferences and managed events from our headquarters in Brisbane; I have had the opportunity to speak to people from over 50 countries with professional backgrounds too numerous to estimate.

At Chorus Call Australia we believe that conferencing is not only Green, but an extraordinarily beneficial tool. Our services are available 24/7, 365 days a year and are very easy to use.  All you need is a phone for audio conferencing and/or a computer with internet access to use our state of the art DataShare ®. Whether a global corporation, national government entity or a small business, immediate increased productivity can be achieved by saving travel time and maximizing resources.

I’d like to thank the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons for an engaging 80^th conference and look forward to seeing you again next year.

‘Tangled up in Blue’

Recently I was at a conference in Adelaide supporting a long term client group who do some amazing work and contribute first class teaching and training to ensure the future is bright and the legacy of their work continues to save lives and enhance quality of life with new break skills and techniques.

The work they do is world class and well recognised internationally and while the individuals are well rewarded the importance of their ongoing engagement cannot be understated. They have been clients of Chorus Call for more than 6 years and we have learned just how hard and how many additional hours these people work to ensure their practices remain at the elite level.

One of their General Managers was telling me how a council in an eastern seaboard was frustrating their attempts to build a world class training facility on their old site.

Blue tape, delays, legal issues have ensued and as Bob Dylan sang in his song ‘Tangled up in Blue’ ,“ Lord knows I’ve paid some dues gettin’ through, Tangled up in blue”

So while the council delays the facility is now many months overdue and not a lot of light at the end of the tunnel creating once again roadblocks in our fields of commerce.

Bob Dylan may just have summed it up with the last verse of the same song,
“We always did feel the same
We just saw it from a different point of view
 Tangled up in blue”