Reevaluate Your Audio – Practical Considerations

One simple reason why it might be worth revisiting your customer-facing audio during the holiday season is really quite obvious: Your company or store’s hours of operation might be different, especially during the weeks of Christmas and New Year’s. There may be days where the office is opening or closing later or earlier than usual, or operating with small staff with limited availability, not to mention those days when the office is fully shut down in observance of the holiday.

Having this updated information readily available whenever someone calls and gets an onhold message or an auto attendant greeting helps customers and partners plan their communication in advance, and it’s also one less thing to worry about during your own holiday season. You don’t have to concern yourself with customers sitting on hold all day or all evening.

Also, if you live in an area that gets a lot of winter weather, the holiday season marks the start of a period where snow and storms and bitter cold may start to impact hours and availability. It is a good idea to have audio at the ready that you can deploy to let anyone who calls know that the office is closing early or working short-staffed.

Season’s Greetings

Beyond these practical concerns, giving your customer-facing recordings a seasonal touch-up is a great way to connect with customers. Update the music to something Christmas-themed, throw some “Ho Ho Ho”s into your script. This is a time of year when we are all encouraged to spread good cheer and embrace feelings of warmth and community, and even something as simple as an onhold message can be a part of that.
And if you have year-end deals and offers, these holiday messages are a great way to promote them to your existing client base. Why expend effort on email or online campaigns when you can just update your messages so that anyone who calls in for any reason can hear what you’re offering to close out 2022.

Act Now!

The holiday season doesn’t last long, and before you know it 2023 will be in full swing.

If you want to reevaluate your audio and give things a festive spin, or an end-of-year update, now is the time to act.

Give us a ring or shoot us an email, and Marketing Messages will be happy to do our part in making sure 2022 ends on a good note.

The post Make Your Voice Messages Merry This Holiday Season appeared first on Marketing Messages.

Passing Praise Around

But we did not come here to brag…

Well, not entirely. But we’ll brag just a little bit. Compliments like the one this customer provided mean a great deal to us here at Marketing Messages, as we really do prize the customer’s satisfaction, above all else. This praise really speaks to the whole organization, from the accurate and timely script, to the proofing and validating process, through to the great audio editing, and the overall administrative efficiency and accuracy. And, most obviously, it speaks to the skill and efforts brought to bear by the wonderful voiceover talent who turn in such exemplary work, day after day.

What Your Recordings Say About You

But we’re not here to brag! No, instead let’s talk about the other major element of this customer’s comment: That in doing surveys of their brand, they discovered that their customer-facing voiceover recordings were a surprisingly large factor, and the excellence of those recordings (fine, we’re bragging a little bit more) had a major influence on their customers.

We’re always trying to impress this point upon our clients and prospective clients, and this customer’s survey results serve as an affirmation to that point.

And you don’t have to take it from us. A recent Forbes article states, “Through a set brand voice and tone, your audience can get to know and understand your brand, as you create a dialogue.”

That article goes on to state: “It is the chance for business leaders to express their brands’ unique persona and seamlessly build up relationships with the audience… Particularly during the introduction stage, customers instinctively recognize the way they are addressed and spoken to, which then significantly impacts their entire view of a brand.”

Communicating Company Identity – What You Want Others to Hear

The question now becomes, how do you determine what voice will go well with the brand you are trying to communicate to your customers?

A 2016 study by the Norman Nielsen Group determined that, “there are indeed measurable effects of tone of voice on users, specifically on users’ impressions of an organization’s friendliness, trustworthiness, and desirability.”

So, what tone are you trying to strike with your onhold messages or other customer-facing recordings? Do you wish to be seen as youthful, friendly, and energetic? Or are you looking to be viewed as authoritative and experienced? Do you wish to excite your callers, or reassure them? Are you looking to educate your audience, or keep them entertained while they wait?

These are all totally valid approaches, and we’ve seen companies across dozens of fields take different attitudes towards what they want their professional voice recordings to do. There’s not necessarily a wrong way to go about communicating a company’s identity as long as you know what identity it is you want to communicate.

Let’s Hear from You

We’ll be happy to help you determine what voice goes best with the message you are trying to send. We have dozens of voice talents to choose from, so feel free to check out our library containing audio samples alongside descriptions of each talent’s immediate qualities.

Get in touch with us today, and let’s start the conversation about how you can use professional voice recordings to truly tell people who you are.

The post The Best Voice for the Best Brand appeared first on Marketing Messages.

“Diacritical markings” are the accent marks attached to letters within a word that tell you how that letter should be pronounced. As an easy example, the dash above the “e” in the café tells you that the “e” should be read like “ay”, rather than being silent. Purée, flambé, pièce de resistance, déjà vu, these are all examples of diacritical marks and how they impact the pronunciation of a word. Also, a super-fun list of words to read aloud whilst doing an only somewhat offensive French accent. But now that we have a working understanding of what diacritical marks are, let’s talk about why professional voice talents love them and how to use them.

Pronunciation

It should go without saying that in the industry of professional voice recordings, it’s generally important to pronounce things correctly. It is in fact, arguably, the most important part of any professional voice recording.

We’ve spoken in the past about the various strategies we deploy to capture or represent difficult names that customers need to read in their voice prompts. While effective, these strategies can be time-consuming and do usually require a great deal of back and forth with the client to make sure that every syllable is written out exactly as it needs to be said. This process becomes exponentially more complicated when dealing with larger multi-language orders, as different languages have different relationships to letters and grammar.

Something that makes perfect sense to an English speaker may be completely baffling to a non-English speaker, and vice versa. Try as we might, there is no one all-purpose perfect way to guarantee that a voiceover talent will say every single word and name exactly right on the first try every time. But there are some simple tricks that can be a great deal of help.

This is where the word of the day comes in handy.

Professional Voice Talents Love Diacriticals

In episode three of our Voices Carry podcast, excellent voice artist Liz explains that diacritical markings are a huge help to her when she is looking at a pronouncer for a name or word she doesn’t immediately know.

This is especially true for bilingual voice talents who might be called in to complete a recording in French or a recording in Spanish along with their standard English work. While diacritical markings are not very common in English, they are regular features of Spanish and French and as such go a long way towards clarifying how a name should be read.

In Liz’s experience, using diacritical markings is a good, simple trick to ascertain the correct pronunciation of a particular name, and with her years voicing for both English and French across numerous industries, she’s certainly something of an expert.

The Easiest Way

But in Liz’s expert opinion (and in our own experience as well) the easiest, fastest, and most foolproof way to get across the correct pronunciation isn’t diacritical markings or exhaustive breakdowns of written-out syllables or any of our other tricks and processes.

Nope, the best and easiest way to go about it is for a customer to take out their phone, record themselves saying the name or word in question, and then simply email that short audio file to us so we can then provide it to the voice talent. With a direct, primary source to replicate, the professional voice talents now know exactly what is required of them and can get right to work recording.

Getting It Right

Whether you are putting together longer projects like onhold messages or voice narration, or shorter items like IVR prompts, your recordings are a major part of the identity that your company shows to the world, and it’s important to get them right. We take any number of approaches and strategies to verify the pronunciation of unfamiliar names and words, but ultimately there’s no substitute for simply taking ten seconds to record yourself and sending that audio down the line to the professionals.

If you’ve got a recording that you need to be crafted, contact us today!

The post Professional Voice Talents Love This One Simple Trick! (Hint, the Word Is Diacritical) appeared first on Marketing Messages.

As we’ve argued many times, it is always a good idea to use professional voiceover talent for your voice prompts, rather than trying to assemble your own recordings with amateurs who happen to be available. But once you commit to looking for a professional, how do you go about identifying which voice is going to match your brand identity?

Know Your Own Brand

When looking for a voice, whether for longer onhold messages or for shorter call center recordings that will address customers with active questions and concerns and direct them where they need to go, you first have to decide what kind of personality you want to present to your customers.

Do you want to communicate steady, unwavering professionalism? Or is it in your brand interest to convey more energy, more pep?

We’ve seen a marked rise in customers who want their call center greetings and onhold messages to feel more off-the-cuff versus monotonous and atonal. Businesses increasingly optimize creating a friendly atmosphere, and customers increasingly want to feel human connections even when navigating through a phone tree or sitting on hold.

Professional voiceover talent can hit whatever tonal target you desire, but first, you need to be clear on where they need to aim.

Make Smart Use of Demos

Once you have a clear idea of what sort of voice you are looking for, you can approach a firm like Marketing Messages and get a sense of the voiceover talent that is available. For instance, you can find short audio samples of all our voice talents.

A professional firm will have many voices available to you as options, and you may find that there are multiple voice artists who fit the idea you have for what you want. Or, you may find that there is a voice that seems to fit, but you have a particular speed, cadence, or personality that you want them to be able to hit, and you’d like to know that this is the right person for that job before you commit to a recording project.

A good way to troubleshoot these uncertainties is to ask for a demo of your script before recording the entire project. You could, for instance, ask for a couple of IVR prompts or a paragraph from your onhold messages script. In this way, you can dial in on exactly what you are looking for. Trained, professional voice artists can provide a range of performances, and then replicate the speed and energy that is asked of them across an entire project.

Represent Your Brand

Whether a caller is waiting on hold or speaking to pre-programmed call center voices, these greetings and messages are a major part of your company’s brand. Your voice artist represents your brand. So your objective should not just be finding a professional voiceover talent to record your voice prompts and messages. Your objective has to be finding the correct talent, the one that reflects the image you are trying to convey to your customers, your partners, and even your own employees.

If you establish a clear vision for what you’re looking for (or, listening for, should we say) and then partner with established professionals who will work with you to establish the right tempo and attitude, there is no reason why your audio can’t embody all the best qualities of your business that you are trying to put forth.

Contact us today and we’ll be happy to discuss your audio needs, and pair you with the right voice artist to get your message across.

The post Find the Right Voice Artist to Represent Your Brand appeared first on Marketing Messages.

Auto-attendant greeting or voicemail greeting? Auto attendant voicemail!

What should you record? But first, how many voice mailboxes do you have? How do they differ? It’s unlikely that you need the same voice recordings on each, as each voicemail greeting is unique to the line. Perhaps you have a personal voicemail at home. Another voicemail for your mobile phone. Yet another voicemail for work, and perhaps even more beyond that. Btw, for an in-depth dive into Auto-attendants, read my previous post here.

Hold the phone, look at it, think about your messaging.

All these voicemail recordings should have some common elements such as an identifier (where you’ve reached, who’s mailbox this is, a name, a department, etc.) as well as simple instructions. Beyond that, think of the goal, what information is needed from the caller.

Focus first, benefit later. Concentrated messaging means less listening time.

When scripting your voicemail greeting it’s important to consider both the question of what information you require from your callers and the information they need as well.

If you need a business name, phone number or anything else, ask for it in your greeting. You should mention who you are or the name of your business, and an alternative contact if that’s available. This information lets the caller know they’ve reached the right mailbox, and this increases the likelihood of them leaving a useful message.

What are examples of good content you should record to your voicemail.

These would work equally well for a personal voicemail box or as auto attendant prompts.

“Thank you for calling [Company Name]. This is [Name] and I’m unable to take your call now. Please leave your name and phone number and I’ll return you call as soon as I’m available.”

“Hi, thanks for calling [Company Name/Name]. Please leave a short message and I’ll respond as soon as possible. Have a nice day!”

But those examples are dull and boring! Yes, and they’re predictable too. That’s actually very good, as people needn’t be surprised when they’ve taken the time to call your business. They should be welcomed in a friendly, informative way.

By the way, you can hear a smile, so be sure to smile when you record your voicemail messages.

If you don’t believe me, please listen to several of our voice talent demos where they read auto attendant prompts or other content such as professional IVR prompts. We have many US English speaking talents, as well as a wealth of foreign language voice talents as well. If you need a recording in Spanish, French, Navajo, or Turkish, we have a talent we’ve worked with for years who can’t wait to smile as the voice your script.

We’ve composed voicemail greetings in as many as 9 languages so that virtually any caller will be greeted with a smile and a voice they understand. If you’d like to have someone else do the ‘heavy-lifting’ when it comes to recording pleasant sounding greetings for your voicemail, auto attendant prompts, outbound IVR voice prompts, or any other type of professional voice recordings please contact us at info@marketingmessages.com.

We talk about voicemail like most folks talk about sports if you know what I mean. We live voicemail, we breath auto-attendant, we dream in IVR prompts and we concatenate in our sleep. We are the voice professionals, and we’d love to be your voice too.

The post What Should You Record on Your Voicemail? appeared first on Marketing Messages.

Reporting the Numbers

Even as America has become an increasingly more diverse country, the healthcare industry has remained stubbornly resistant to similar change. In an article dated from March 2021, the University of St. Augustine for Health Sciences found that 64% of physicians are male and 56% are white. The majority of nurse practitioners, physical therapists, and occupational therapists are female, but only 25% are non-white.

According to the St. Augustine article, referencing data from the most recent U.S. Census, only 6% of physicians identify as Hispanic, despite Hispanics representing 19% of the population. Only 5% of physicians identify as Black or African-American, despite 13% of the population being Black.

“People who are part of gender, racial, religious, and sexual minority groups may face obstacles in the healthcare workforce, including discrimination, fewer job offers, and uneven promotion opportunities—as well as challenges accessing the quality education they need to enter the field in the first place,” the article states.

Effects of COVID

The COVID pandemic has only exacerbated this preexisting reality, as communities of color have suffered from the effects of the pandemic at a much more pronounced and costly (in every sense of the word) than White communities.

“Given this harrowing reality, combined with the positive energy of current social movements around correcting systemic iniquities, it’s a particularly important time for health administrators to develop cultural competency,” the St. Augustine editorial states.

Diverse Voices

Professional voice recordings are part of that cultural competency. They are the first public face that is presented to someone contacting your organization for the first time. The auto attendant prompts that a caller will navigate are the guide they need to use to get whatever services, medicines, or appointments they will need.

And oftentimes, the caller will be in the midst of either a sudden or long-term health problem while making these calls. That was already the case before the COVID-19 pandemic, but now there are added layers of stress and discomfort on top of virtually every personal and professional interaction, especially as concerns hospitals, clinics, pharmacies, etc.

There is no way to calculate the psychological and emotional burdens that can be eased for a caller when that voice on the phone sounds like themselves, or like someone they might know, rather than a clipped, mechanical recitation from a voice that has no connection to this person or to anyone in the surrounding neighborhoods and communities.

Doesn’t that make a hospital seem that much more imposing? That much more stressful an institution to have to spend time dealing with? Doesn’t it make more sense for a healthcare provider to try and make itself feel at home among the people it will serve, and the culture into which it will exist?

Putting in the Work

In an article by Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford, “The Importance of Diversity and Inclusion in the Healthcare Workforce”, Dr. Stanford writes that the first, critical step to increasing diversity is simply making the choice to make it a priority.

It’s an effort that we at Marketing Messages have also been making, with a recent push to recruit more African-American professional voice performers. We’ve already seen enthusiasm from some of our regular customers for more diverse voice selections, and it’s an effort we will continue to make.

So make the choice to put in the work. We live in a global world, and all share in beautiful and diverse communities. Having professional voice recordings that reflect those communities should be a priority for any company existing in this modern age, but voice diversity in healthcare is especially critical.

The post Why There’s a Need for Voice Diversity in Healthcare appeared first on Marketing Messages.

Name That Cable! Epic Pandemic Move-Out Party Leaves A Mess Of Wires

Why was a asked to “name that cable”? When we recently moved our office, there were a lot of miscellaneous cables kicking around. When you have been producing professionally recorded audio for over 30 years you accumulate a lot of extra wires, cables, and whatnots. Since I’ve helped move the equipment through three different offices and set up countless digital audio workstations for audio editing, and since I’ve built and equipped multiple recording booths, as well as being a life-long fan of audio gear, electronics, and microphones, I have thorough knowledge regarding each terminal type.

However, I’ve been told that not everyone knows one cable from another. Someone decided I should write up descriptions for each. So I asked him to send me some images such that I could detail what each cable is, what it’s used for, and whether or not it was worth keeping.

Where Oh Where Do All These Wires Go?

Being a self-admitted audio geek, I err on the side of caution and personally keep several backup cables for any type I might require. For some of you more space-constrained individuals, allow this blog post to educate you about that funny bundle of wires hiding in the corner of your closet, maybe in a shopping bag, a shoebox, or another container.

I happen to have an old mini pretzels jar full of phone wires just 8 feet from my desk.

Wires? Cables? Cords?

Back to the topic at hand. Name that cable, another cable, and more cables!

Here our model shows us a coaxial cable end. This was good for routing the signal from the wall jack to the back of the cable box when I was a kid. (That means it’s really old!)

In this image, a keen observer will recognize this is an HDMI cable, very useful for connecting high-definition multimedia interfacially. OK, so the other end is somewhat obscured, but it appears to be also HDMI Mini, so likely it can connect a laptop or smartphone to a large display.

Another find! This mono male-to-male RCA cable is great for transmitting an unbalanced signal from one analog component to another. TS, tip-sleeve is another way to describe it.

This little gem comes in really handy when you have two shorter cables but need one longer one. It can connect RCA cables. This one’s shy and hides in the corner so we call it ‘Sneak’, but you can call it an RCA female coupler if you’re seeking one for yourself.

Older PCs and monitors all used these to connect, it’s a male-to-male, SVGA video cable.

Don’t see this special cable too often, when I have it’s for power-hungry hard drives. This is a USB Micro B (aka USB-B Micro Superspeed) cable which connected one of our external hard drives to a PC.

One of the most recognizable, formerly rare, and now exceedingly common in everyone’s household, I present to you the USB Micro. I often have one plugged in handy to charge my headphones, my cordless mouse, or the bike lights.

Finally, to round out the post, one of the first USB cable types I ever saw, if not the first, USB type B, great for connecting a printer to any PC.

I suppose it’s worth mentioning the other end of the USB cables for all of them is USB type A, which plugs into the port on the PC end of things.

If you have a cable you’re wondering about, chances are if you send me a photo I’ll be able to let you know what type it is and several good uses for it. If you’d like to hear more about setting up an editing workstation for producing auto attendant prompts, IVR prompts, professional voice narration or simply to listen to over 80 different language samples from our website you can email me about that too. I’ve been producing audio for Marketing Messages since 1998 so I know a thing or two about cables and more.

Ciao for now my cable-loving amigos.

Dan

What’s This, We’re Not Done Playing, “Name That Cable, Dan!”?

That’s right friends, it’s time for the bonus round. Answers can be submitted to me via email using the link above.

1. Which cable type is most likely used when producing an onhold message for playback on a USB Digital Announcer?
2. Which cable type was most prominently featured in our Holiday YouTube video?
3. Which cable type is the newest?
4. Which cable type would you recommend for reviewing an auto attendant prompt prior to loading?

The post And Now It’s Time to Play, “Name That Cable, Dan!” appeared first on Marketing Messages.

If you are doing business in North America, French should be included in your repertoire of languages covered by your professional voice recordings. Along with numerous French speakers in the United States, French is the official language (along with English) at the federal level, in Canada. In the province of Quebec, French is the only official language, and 95% of Quebec residents speak French as either their first or second language. So if you are expecting to do any kind of business with Canada, it becomes a necessity to have least one recording in French available in your system.

And in Europe, French has proliferated to an even greater degree. French is the third most widely spoken language in Europe, with 20% of the European Union speaking it fluently. It is an official language everywhere from Belgium to Switzerland to Monaco. Also France, but that would seem to go without saying.

European or Canadian French Recording – Which One Do You Need?

So, let’s say you have gauged your company’s needs and have determined that you do indeed have a need to have some voiceover recordings prepared for French-speaking customers, partners, etc. Can you just run your script through translation software and ask the guy in HR who took a few years in French in high school to voice it and offer that as a professional voice message?

No. For starters, as we have often said, it is always best practice to utilize a professional voice talent and a professional translator for your script translation in order to ensure the best possible final product. But even setting aside the matter of sound quality, French is a tricky language that varies wildly depending on where it is spoken.

Canadian French has mutated in very distinct ways from the classic European original. Canada was settled by the French in 16th and 17th centuries, and those settlers were then cut off from the rest of the French-speaking world. As such, the language did not evolve and shift as France and Europe modernized, leaving Canadian French pronunciations and grammar more archaic than the version of the language spoken in Europe. So even if the voice translation for a Canadian and European speaker contained the exact same wording, you would still end up with two extremely different recordings because they would pronounce individual words in ways totally unique from one another.

Messy Translations

But also, the wording would probably not be the same, not if a script has been properly translated to the needs of a specific version. Canadian French may be rooted in a more archaic version than exists in modern France, but it has evolved as well. Canadian French includes more Anglican words and phrases and has also expanded to include words and phrases derived from First Nations people. For example, in European French the word for “sandals” is “les sandales”. In Canada, the same item is referred to as “les babiches”.

And then there are the grammatical differences. Like the other Romance languages, French has both formal and informal forms. Canadian French speakers tend to use the more informal version of the language, whereas European speakers defer to the more formal incarnation.

A native French speaker will most likely be able to decipher your meaning even if you are speaking to them in a dialect different from their own. But “decipher” is probably not a word you want associated with the experience someone will have when listening to your auto attendant prompts or trying to navigate your IVR prompts. Clarity is key.

Whether you need a European or Canadian French recording depends on your location, your clientele, your partners, and a number of other factors unique to your business. So ask yourself the important questions and then engage professionals to help you craft the exact right message for the exact right audience.

The post Will Your French Recording Be Heard by a European Audience or a Canadian One? appeared first on Marketing Messages.

Quick history lesson! Portuguese spread worldwide in the 15th and 16th century as a result of Portugal creating a colonial and commercial empire that lasted up until 1975. Because of this, Portuguese took root in many places, especially South America, and became the dominant tongue. Brazil accounts for over 50% of the population of South America, and Portuguese is the native language for 99.9% of the Brazilian population.

And for how widespread Portuguese already is, it is also continuously expanding in usage. African nations are increasingly adopting Portuguese, and it is expected that tens of millions of more speakers are going to be added yearly.

So let’s say that you are interested in having at least one recording in Portuguese in order to address and direct clientele for whom that is their native language. But the decision-making process does not end there. Before prepping any kind of voice message or looking for any kind of voice translation, you should determine which version of Portuguese is the one you want.

Portuguese Recording, Brazilian & European – What’s the Difference?

There are two major variants that you might encounter: Brazilian Portuguese, and European Portuguese. As their names no doubt describe, European Portuguese is the original mother-tongue from Portugal, while Brazilian Portuguese is the version that evolved in Brazil and is now the dominant incarnation of the language across South America.

European Portuguese is the more formal of the two languages, whereas “Brazilian Portuguese has a unique rhythm that makes it stand out as soon as you hear it. It is very musical and quite clear. European Portuguese, in contrast, is rather fast. Actually, many learners claim that this is one of the reason why Brazilian Portuguese is much easier to follow.”

As we discussed in our Mandarin vs. Cantonese blog, the Brazilian and European versions of the Portuguese language are largely similar, with much of the distinction between them coming from the differences in pronunciation, stress, and speaking rhythms. A Brazilian Portuguese speaker will be able to understand a European Portuguese speaker, and vice versa, but the accents and delivery will make for an awkward and strained delivery.

And there are cultural differences separating the languages as well, the kind of thing that a word-for-word system like Google Translate would not know to catch. There are nouns and verbs that are shared by both versions of Portuguese but that mean entirely different things.

As one particularly drastic example, “rapariga” in European Portuguese is an innocent word that means “girl”. In Brazilian Portuguese, “rapariga” means prostitute. So. You’re going to want to be careful with these things.

Making Decisions

So are you going to want your Portuguese recording in Brazilian or European? The answer lies in what audience you are expecting to utilize the IVR prompts or listen to the Auto Attendant prompts in question. If you are in North America, you will most likely need to tailor your voice recordings to Brazilian Portuguese, especially if you are based out of California or Massachusetts, as these states are each home to hundreds of thousands of Brazilian Portuguese speakers.

But if you’re anticipating an overseas audience, then European Portuguese will probably be the better fit.

And there are other variations and dialects of the language beyond what we have described here. There’s Cape Verdean Portuguese, Macanese Portuguese… In India they have Damanese Portuguese and Goan Portuguese, etc., etc.

The important thing is to consider the audience your voice recordings are intended for, and to make educated choices based on what will best serve your needs. And once you have made your decision, engage with knowledgeable and experienced professionals for both the translation and the recording, to make sure your customers and partners are getting the best experience possible.

The post Will Your Portuguese Recording Be Played for Brazilian or European Markets? appeared first on Marketing Messages.

Not too long ago we received a call from a somewhat confused individual with a lot of complaints he wanted register as to the quality of the on hold messages and menus he had to interact with when he called into various companies. Believing that Marketing Messages was responsible for his long hold times, annoying music, and confusing menus that prove impossible to navigate, this caller thought he had a bone to pick with our company. Nothing could be further from the truth, so we thought this was a great reason to explain some services we perform vs. those that fall outside the scope of our control.

Have your phone call answered by a professional voice!

To answer this caller’s concerns, we explained that we ensure all our clients have a professional voice answer their phone calls. We remove the breaths and pauses and other background noises from the speech so that the professionally recorded greetings are clear and succinct. We allow the IVR systems and auto attendants to sound more natural and easier to understand. We have a large library of enjoyable music that has been carefully cultivated to weed out the annoying tunes.

Marketing Messages provides professional audio of virtually any kind that you can imagine. You need some messages on hold? We can record that. You need hold music? We provide that too. If you are a small business who only needs to record a few auto attendant prompts that will inform customers about store hours and closures, we can take care of that no problem.

Or maybe you have much more involved needs, like IVR prompts. These are piecemeal audio clips that will smoothly mesh based on customer responses, guiding the caller through various interactions. When we create those pieces for you, they will fit together seamlessly.

We have decades of experience scripting, recording, and editing the short phrases. Our talented roster of Voice Artists knows how to inflect the speech such that when concatenated it all sounds fluid and conversational. Ideally, your customer experiences a phone call with professional voice and optimal routing. In other words, nothing like the poor customer interaction experienced by our bedraggled caller.

All that without getting into the more specialized, industry-specific professional voice recordings that we create… We’ve done large-scale translations for the World Health Organization, captured lengthy voice narration for use by medical professionals in their public presentations, and cultivated a repository of audio prompts for hearing aids in 24 different languages. We’ve worked with banks to create their call center recording which takes a customer through labyrinthine departments and processes to get to where they need to be.

In every case, the final product is so much better having utilized a professional voice talent, professional translators, and professional audio engineers, all working together to deliver crisp, clear audio that also captures the intention and tone desired by a customer, whether that’s unaffected monotone or something warmer and more personalized.

Here’s the bad part.

But what we don’t do is program the call flow on behalf of the customers. We can create the best audio imaginable (and not to toot our own horn, but…well…we’re good at what we do), but how that audio is finally deployed is in the hands of the companies we are working for, and the telecommunications specialists that they are working with.

We can record IVR prompts in such a way that they flow seamlessly together, but if the customer does not program them properly, then nothing about the audio’s quality can make the process of trying to navigate those prompts any easier.

The same is true for on hold messages. The voice talent can deliver a terrific performance, and a customer can choose music that’s totally pleasant and relaxing…but if a company has extremely long hold times and you are left on the line for five, ten, fifteen, twenty minutes, any message is going to become excruciating regardless, again, of the sound quality.

Set Yourself Up for Success

Here at Marketing Messages, we work with our customers to get their scripts in the best shape possible, and then we work with the voice talents to make sure that the performance of that script is the best possible version, resulting in a phone call with professional voice. Ultimately the final deployment of that audio is in the hands of our customers. So, if you don’t want your own customers to become irate and give up on your services because just calling in proves to be too much of a hassle, be thoughtful and careful about how your voiceover recordings are being used, and what sort of experience a customer receives when you answer their call.

The post Improving the Phone Call Experience with Professional Voice Recordings appeared first on Marketing Messages.