Dealing with Rude and Disruptive Callers

There are few things more annoying than an uninvited, rude, disruptive guest on a conference call. But it can happen to everyone, even top-flight professional organizations like the NBA’s Portland Trailblazers, who had a problem on a recent call announcing Pau Gasol coming to the team. Hopefully you won’t have this experience on our system, but if you do, here are some things to keep in mind, and some actions you can take.

rude-person-on-confernce-callNCC is a public calling platform, but your specific conference codes are private. Until you share them. If you post your conference code, date and time, you are opening you and your group to uninvited guests. Consider minimizing this exposure by only sharing conference details via email with confirmed attendees, instead of posting details on a website, bulletin board, poster or other public facing area.

If you do have an uninvited guest who is being disruptive, here are some steps for dealing with the situation:

1) Avoid acknowledging them at all. Asking them to behave will recognize them, and they may thrive on the attention.

2) Ignore them, and their antics, while you work in the background to remove them.

3) Use NCC’s Web Control interface to mute them, or remove them from the conference
Go to NCC Web Control and log in
(Your email address is your ID. You were given a password when you signed up, even for the basic account)

web-control-in-conference-for-rude

4) Click on the active conference and you will see the list of phone numbers dialed in. You can determine the disruptive caller by muting all the participants and either unmuting them one by one, or asking them to unmute themselves by pressing *1. Once you have identified the caller you can kick them from the conference. You can then secure the conference to new callers at this time (lock icon, upper right), to prevent them calling back in from a different phone.

5) Additionally you can report the caller to us and we can block them from your conference calls. Please provide the listed phone number and your conference details.  You can send the information via email here »

To review the process, and other Web Control functions, click here »

Once you’ve got control over your conference call, you’re much less likely to face the hassle of unwanted, disruptive callers.