Telephone Town Hall Meeting

Our Telephone Town Hall Meeting program puts issue campaigns, associations, community groups, municipalities, elected officials and others instantly in live contact with hundreds, thousands – perhaps hundreds of thousands – of households in one evening.

How does it work?

Think of Telephone Town Hall Meetings as one part town hall meeting, one part live radio talk show.

We dial out to a list of households you submit or we obtain for you.  Every person who answers will hear your pre-recorded invitation to remain on the line to participate in your town hall meeting.  Participants will be automatically connected to your live event in progress.

If a participant wants to ask a question, they can press “zero” on their phone keypad.  Your staff can screen each question.  When ready, the meeting presenter will use their web browser to allow a questioner to go live with their question.

Most meetings last about one hour.

Valuable After Meeting Data

After every event, your data is returned to you along with a list of the meeting’s participants and non-participants and phone numbers answered by answering machines, fax machines or busy signals.

You will receive a meeting report showing how long each household remained on the phone, if the household wished to ask a question, and how the household responded to any poll questions during the meeting.

Results can be used in planning future meetings.  For example, you can tailor an event for “only households that have accepted a call in at least one of the last five meetings” or “all households that received your pre-recorded answering machine message” or “all households that have remained on the phone for more than five minutes during a meeting.”

Special Features

Live Polling Questions – You may configure an unlimited number of poll questions that you can ask participants during your meeting.  Participants respond through their phone keypad.  Responses are collected and displayed in real time on the presenter’s computer and are available the next day in your detailed meeting report.

Invite Guest Speakers – Enhance your audience’s experience by inviting guest speakers, star personalities, or experts in a particular field from practically anywhere in the world to join your meeting.

Transfer to Live Operator – Allow participants to transfer themselves instantly from the conference to a specialized department, a district office, or a live call center by pressing a button on their phone keypads.  Use this feature to collect e-mail addresses, fundraise and accept donations, or to answer participants’ individual case questions too personal to be heard by the entire audience.

Live Audio Web Broadcast – Give members of your audience the ability to listen to, and participate in, your meeting via an interactive live audio web broadcast of your event.

Pre-Screen Questions – You have the option of having your staff act as call screeners during your event.  Screeners will use a separate web interface to screen questions before they are posed live in the meeting.  This enables you to approve the content of questions and diversify the subject matter discussed during your meeting.

Transfer to Voicemail – At the conclusion of your event, you have the ability to send those participants who did not have an opportunity to ask their questions during the meeting to a voicemail center where they can leave a personal message.  These digitally recorded files are e-mailed to you with the participant’s name, address, and phone number.

Toll Free Inbound Calling – In addition to calling households, we can setup a toll free number that may be distributed before an event so that people can dial in to participate in your meeting.

Staff Chat – Members of your staff can communicate in real time via a chat feature built into the system’s computer interface.

Digital Event Recording – All meetings are digitally recorded for quality assurance purposes and available for download without charge after each event.  You can use this file to review the event or make it available for download through your website.  Some clients turn this recording into a podcast.

Listen-Only Line – Every event is assigned a phone number and extension to allow staff members, press and others to listen to the event.

Instant Reporting – After each meeting, you will receive an easy-to-read, detailed report that includes the individual statistics for every household dialed and aggregated statistics for the entire meeting.

Town Hall Gram – Send a personalized follow-up mailing the next day to your meeting’s participants.

How to Setup a Telephone Town Hall Meeting

List Submission – Before your meeting you’ll be asked to submit a list of households to be contacted and invited to your live meeting.  You may choose to use an internal contact list, work with a list vendor, or we can obtain records for you from several national list vendors.

You may choose to target your list and design your meeting to appeal to certain households.  For example, you can sort your list and tailor your meeting to households within specific zip codes, cities or counties or households with certain age characteristics.

Pre-Record Messages – Before your event your presenter will call our automated prompt line to record two messages.  The first message — the introductory prompt — is played when a live person answers the phone, and invites the person to remain on the line to participate in the meeting.  The second message — the answering machine prompt — is played when an answering machine receives the call.  We can provide sample scripts for these messages and you are free to customize them as you choose.

Schedule an Event – Contact us to schedule a date and time for your event, and we will find a time that works best for you.  Multiple dialing centers across the country, each capable of conducting several events simultaneously, enables us a great degree of scheduling flexibility.

Training – A variety of tools ensures that you and your staff feel comfortable operating the meeting web interface before your event.