Making Conference Calls (A Little) Less Awful

More than 100 readers emailed responses to our Work & Family column on the frustrations of conference-call meetings, and many shared their own solutions to the problems.

Some said adding video and document-sharing to audio calls helps focus a group’s attention. Others use techniques such as text-based conferences conducted via Skype chat.

Shawn Wenzel tries to ensure that remote callers don’t feel like second-class citizens. When he holds a conference call, everyone must attend by phone at their desk—even when some participants are in the same place, and could hop into a meeting room instead. The rule is controversial among participants, says Mr. Wenzel, president of CaribTek, an information technology consulting firm with offices in Forest Hills, N.Y., Toronto, and Kingston, Jamaica. But “this way, either everyone can get the nonverbal cues (which make up over 70% of human communication) or nobody can, and the person who is out of town feels just as much a part of the team as the people in the same office.”

Matt Mirandi likes UberConference, a calling service that displays a picture of everyone on the call, marks who is talking and allows users to mute certain participants