Delivering healthcare services has become more competitive and demanding, with a strengthened focus on putting the overall patient experience at the center of the healthcare provider’s marketing and communication strategy. Here are some of the ways that professional voice recordings have evolved in support of these important shifts in healthcare priorities.

Transitioning Healthcare On Hold Messaging from Selling Services to Imparting Patient Care Information

Since the COVID pandemic, there has been a growing need for expanding the communication vehicles through which information is communicated to patients that help them to proactively protect and improve their health, especially patients who are older, are afflicted with chronic conditions, and/or live in marginalized communities.

During the height of the pandemic, we saw a huge number of our customers in the healthcare field, from large tertiary hospitals to medical practices ranging from dental clinics to medical specialty centers, come to us asking for new healthcare on hold messages that would help convey vital information in a succinct and comprehensible form.

With more people than ever needing medical information, and the very act of going outside and interacting with others posing a danger, the phone systems became a vital outlet for communicating such information to as many patients as possible.

Guidance and protocols for protecting against COVID were the central priority, but providers also accelerated a trend that pre-dated the pandemic by a few years: focusing less on selling medical services and more on helping the patient through critical and sometimes lifesaving information. Some examples of this practical advice include:

• Recognizing stroke symptoms and getting immediate help
• Preventing falls in the home
• Protecting adults from both tick and mosquito-borne illnesses (for ex. Lyme’s disease)
• Adequately preparing for medical appointments
• Getting vaccinated for COVID, flu, shingles, etc.
• Preventing tooth decay and loss
• Lowering blood pressure

Providing this kind of information serves a dual purpose: 1) keeping patients healthy, and 2) reinforcing the provider’s brand as empathic, caring, and patient-focused.

Keeping healthcare on hold messages current is critical to keeping patients informed.

To be effective in making your healthcare on hold messaging more effective, it is important to continually update the information to reflect new healthcare developments and knowledge and mirror evolving messaging projected by the provider’s other marketing and communications channels. Many challenges patients encounter are seasonal, so most of our healthcare clients update at least quarterly. Marketing programs and communications are often initiated or updated quarterly as well.
Using on hold messages to address the needs of diverse and underserved stakeholders.

As the American population becomes more diverse, and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs increasingly take hold, there has been a growing push within the healthcare community to focus on historically marginalized and underserved populations. Many neighborhoods across the country are home to ESL (English as a Second Language) patients, so more and more healthcare organizations are recording their on hold messages in a variety of languages and dialects, or at least including non-English paragraphs within their English Messages-On-Hold programs.

Doing so is a good idea for at least one practical reason. If you are servicing a community of predominantly Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, or Haitian Creole speakers, among others, then you need to offer assistance that has the best chance of being understood by your callers. It is entirely likely that your organization will have to be of help to a patient or patient’s family who does not speak English.

We have also seen firsthand how much more supported patients and their families feel when the voice on the other end of the phone sounds like them. Callers feel much more comforted if they hear a voice that is personalized and empathetic, even if the message is recorded vs. live.

Also, diverse voice talents and professional translators can lend perspective that English-only speakers do not have. They know how to vocalize concepts in a way that would resonate more with native speakers in underserved communities, ensuring that your messaging is heard, and heard 100% accurately.

In addition to offering over 80 languages, we offer English-speaking voices that would be recognized as People of Color. Click here to hear sample demos of our Black and Hispanic voices

Use One Consistent Voice Across Your On Hold Messaging and Auto Attendant/Call Center Systems

In creating a branded, personalized voice that people will associate with your organization, it is a good idea to make sure that the same professional voice artist who handles your on hold messages also voices any auto-attendant prompts or phone-tree recordings that you need. That way, your patients and other stakeholders will be treated to a unified, consistent caller experience that is both pleasant for the customer and brand-building for your organization. If you’d like to hear sample voices across both applications in a healthcare environment, visit our Healthcare Voice Services webpage.

Find Out More

Get in touch with us today and we’ll be happy to discuss the important shift in healthcare messaging that the industry is undergoing. We enjoy answering any questions you might have and developing the best possible on hold messages for your audience.

We’re here to help whenever you need with whatever you need.

Marketing Messages has also expanded into the podcasting field with our podcast division, ModPod. Podcasts are a great tool for spreading the word about your services, your industry, and your organization. If podcasting is something you have any interest in, feel free to schedule a consult with us today.

The post Putting Patients at The Center of Your Healthcare On Hold Messages appeared first on Marketing Messages.

Potential in Onhold Messages: Info Updates

Your business isn’t standing still, so why should your messages? From a purely pragmatic viewpoint, you should keep an eye on your onhold messages because there may come a point where the customer-facing information doesn’t actually match your company’s current status. Employees come and go, hours of operation shift, new branches and locations open, old products are discontinued while new products arrive.

We’ve had customers contact us after years of using a static message, to the point that even they have forgotten what they’ve previously recorded. When we crack open their existing script, they are horrified to realize that their message has been directing callers to customer service representatives who no longer work there, or are advertising products and deals that haven’t been offered for months, or even years.

So before we even begin to consider the matter of onhold messages being deployed more strategically, there’s the simple, practical concern of just making sure that the message you present to your clients and partners actually aligns with your company.

Competitive Concerns

Even if you are happy with your messages, you should keep in mind that your competitors are never standing still. Onhold message work as a cost-effective medium to announce products and product features, including those that are designed to counter competitive moves. If your competitor comes up with a feature that gives them an advantage, and you have a response, an update to your onhold messages is a fast, inexpensive way to get word out.

When you’re putting together your marketing budget, think about new product introductions, promotions, customer information requirements, and competitive activity when considering how often you plan to refresh your messages. If you only refresh once a year, if not even less, than you’re leaving a major resource untapped.

Holidays

There is one very simple reason to keep actively changing up your messages: Holidays. Holidays impact hours of operation; they trigger vacations that affect staffing; they incentivize new deals and major sales events.

Even setting that aside, holidays have a major impact on the mood of your callers. Holiday seasons, especially around the end of the year and Christmas, drive large spikes in phone usage. This makes them the perfect time to cross-promote different products and services.

Something as simple as changing your background music to a holiday theme can do wonders. Besides contributing to the general merry mood, playing holiday music is an audio cue that something is different, which will keep your customers paying attention and engaging longer. In our line of work we have found that Christmas music puts people in a happier mood, and happier people are known to spend more!

Stay Fresh

Whether you are making changes to the message itself, or just playing around with different music choices or a different voiceover talent, there is always potential in onhold messages to provide your customers and partners with a fresh experience. And keeping the experience fresh is an invaluable way of making sure customers and partners remain engaged and attentive.

Contact us today to learn more about setting up your own Messages-On-Hold. And if you’ve already created a message, maybe spend time playing around with our available music and voice talents, and you might just hit upon a new message for a new day.

The post The Value of Keeping Your Messages Fresh appeared first on Marketing Messages.

Your Brand, Your Voice – Personalized Feel in Your Audio

For starters, you will want to choose a voice that matches well with your company’s identity. Whether you need a voice 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?

The audio industry has been trending more towards personalization for a while now, and especially in the last couple of years, 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, but that’s not right for every organization, as we will discuss in just a moment.

Whatever works best for you and your organization, be sure to communicate those needs clearly before the recording takes place. Professional voiceover talent can hit whatever tonal target you desire, but first, you need to be clear on where they need to aim.

Make the Message Match

For many of the businesses that use our services, when they ask for more personalized sound, that means they are looking for a voice that is vibrant, energetic, with a youthful feel. Many of these messages and prompts are devoted to conveying enthusiasm and excitement. Even if the auto attendant greeting is one about a weather closure or regular hours, our clients want their clients to be met with a voice that is bright and endearing.

But that’s not always the case. We have other clients who instead wish to place the emphasis on their authority and longstanding reputation within a given field. These customers will ask for voices that skew older and possess a bit more gravitas. Many of our clients in the healthcare space prefer voices that are calming and project tranquility and ease.

This sort of specificity can be narrowed down not only from company to company but from message to message. The recording used to reassure a customer who has been on hold for an extended period of time should perhaps strike a different tenor than the one that is excitedly greeting a new caller.

One of our recurring customers for a number of years was a children’s hospital using voice recordings for announcements and notifications to patient families. The regular voice talent for this client always made a point of softening her voice as much as possible, with the intuitive understanding that anyone currently using the services of a children’s hospital can use all the comfort they can get.

Know Your Message

Your greetings and messages are a major part of your company’s brand, so your objective should not just be finding a professional voiceover talent to record your voice prompts and messages. Your objective should be to understand what message you wish to send, and craft an audio experience that reflects the image you are trying to convey to your customers, your partners, and your own employees.

If you establish a clear vision for what that message should be, and partner with established professionals who will work with you to get exactly the sound you envision, there is no reason why your audio can’t embody all the best qualities of your business.

Contact us today and we’ll be happy to discuss how we might better create a personalized feel in your audio.

The post Tailoring Your Audio’s Tone appeared first on Marketing Messages.

Why Now?

From a practical viewpoint, the middle of the year is a good time to take stock of what you’ve done so far and what changes might be made to get a stronger response. To narrow our focus to professional voice recordings, we often have customers who leave their Christmas and holiday-themed onhold messages playing well into the year. Even when it isn’t as drastic as playing “Jingle Bells” as background music, even when the thermometer is starting to hit the 70s and 80s, many companies will leave outdated information on their messages, advertising deals and products that are no longer available, or notifying callers about events that have come and gone.

It could be argued that even more than advertising information for new products and opportunities, it is imperative not to put out incorrect or expired information. If nothing else, leaving up out-of-date messaging tells customers right away that your company isn’t as attentive as it could be.

Spread Word Early and Often to Improve Your Marketing Performance

It’s never too early to start getting the word out about whatever deals, events, or opportunities your company will be featuring. We live in a time of information overload. There is always something happening somewhere that demands our time and attention, whether that’s the 24/7 news cycle or our phones providing a never-ending stream of content and distraction. If you think, “Haven’t we done enough to remind people?” the answer is probably, “No.”

There’s no such thing as too many reminders, and there’s no such thing as “too early” to get the word out. Have a major event happening in October? Then the only way to keep it in the forefront of people’s minds is to remind them repeatedly all the way into October, right up to the very day of your event.

That’s why spring is the perfect time to utilize your voice prompts and messages on hold to the cause. Summer is right around the corner, but if you can seed your major events and offerings for the rest of the year early, you can make a strong enough impression to stay in your audience’s attention until the time is right.

Embracing Changes

Whether you are overhauling the entire message, making a few minor tweaks, or simply swapping in a new voice, keeping your messages refreshed is a great way to communicate to your customers and partners that your company is active, alert, and energetic. From the smallest of changes to the biggest of swings, now is the time when your choices and actions can yield a major impact on the final overall performance of the year.

Contact us today at Marketing Messages and we’ll be happy to discuss the ways in which we can improve your marketing performance. And check out our roster of available voice talent and available music, and you just might find the one that will put a real spring into your spring.

The post Plant Your Marketing Seeds in May appeared first on Marketing Messages.

Did I mention the snowstorms? No, not yet. So there were snowstorms that dumped tons of the white stuff on our trees. So much so, and over so many days, that the branches started breaking. So many branches broke and fell that the powerlines were adversely affected. At 10:30 AM last Tuesday, the power went out. Well, back out actually, as it originally went out on Monday at 4:50 PM and stayed out until 8:30 AM on Tuesday. After such a long outage, once it returned I didn’t expect another issue. So when things blipped off at 10:30 AM, one of those things was the PC for the vocal booth.

But I had an on-hold message to record for one of our regular customers. I’ve been voicing Messages-On-Hold for them every month like clockwork for over 8 years, so I was determined to deliver when it was due that day. With no way to know when we’d have working electricity, I problem-solved and realized that my portable audio recording setup contained the solution. I used my 2-in-1 notebook PC as a fine, battery-powered substitute for most of the booth gear. I simply moved the USB connection from the desktop to the laptop and I was off to the races.

The session was flawless. My speech matched that of all my other recordings because it was recorded in the same space, on the same mic, and through the same digital audio converter. If anything, the noise floor of my powerless session was likely a little lower than normal since there wasn’t an appliance running anywhere for miles around! But you’d never know my speech was recorded during a power outage unless I told you it was possible. And now we all know how to make a professional voice recording during a power outage.

We have a great group of Voice Artists in addition to myself. Please listen to them all and think about which ones you’d like to use to represent your brand.

The post Professional Voice Recording During a Power Outage? Check! appeared first on Marketing Messages.

You.

All our audio efforts mean nothing if there is no one there to hear them. Working with our clients to produce the best professional voice recordings possible is not just our job, it’s our pleasure. There is nothing more satisfying than working hard at every stage from writing to recording to editing and being told by the customer that the final product sounded even better than they had imagined.

So, from the bottom of our collective heart, the staff at Marketing Messages wish to thank each and every one of our clients for a great year. Now I’m going to turn the mike over to some of the other staff members:

Josh Blood, Creative Director
One of my roles at Marketing Messages is Audio Editor. I deliver finished voice prompts and Messages-On-Hold productions that are loaded to our customers’ phone systems. After digital delivery, it’s always great to receive a thank you from our customers. Even better is a note back saying they’ve reviewed the audio and it all checks out. Taking time to slow down and verify the audio on their end conveys an engaged customer that cares about their part in the process and wants to do their best work.

On the rare occasion that there is an issue with a particular voice prompt or on-hold production, I always appreciate receiving that feedback soon after I deliver the job. That quick feedback tells me our customer anticipated the audio and chose to listen to it straight away. I take the feedback and immediately solve the issue – whether it requires an edit or a “pickup” request to the Marketing Messages Voice Artist.

I thank our customers for their conscientious audits and their quick feedback when it comes to our work. Here’s to 2023, a year filled with pristine audio, a tiny error rate percentage, and fast fixes for future voice recordings that require them.

Dan Nelson, Technical Director
Last year certainly had its ups and downs, but overall I feel overwhelmingly blessed to have had the opportunity to work with so many warm and wonderful customers.

We’ve all had numerous experiences with delays. In our case often a voice talent would be unable to record for a week or more due to illness. Everyone involved became agile and helpful. We’d find an alternative voice as a placeholder, get the job delivered on time and then loop back around later with a fresh recording when our voice talent was back in action.

Each encounter like that last year made me thankful for our clients enduring patience with the process. And we were able to adjust to meet their surprising needs as well.

With each natural disaster there are often utility outages. We record so many messages after these events, often expedited, and this leads me to my next bit of gratitude:

Thank you to all of our wonderful Voice Artists! (I know, first I write “talent,” then later “artist,” but that’s only because they’re all both. Our voices represent a cultivated set of talented artists. You’re a solid group of everyday heroes that make our lives easier through your professionalism, efficiency, accuracy, and timeliness. We couldn’t provide professionally recorded voice prompts, auto-attendant greetings, onhold messages, narration, and e-learning audio without each and every one of you. I’ve worked with some of you for 25 years now and dang it, y’all feel like family.

Goodbye 2022, hello 2023! Let’s see what we can do together this year.

Onwards and Upwards
None of us know precisely what 2023 will hold in store, but Marketing Messages is excited to face each fresh obstacle and opportunity alongside our clients, no matter what future voice recordings they will need.

Whether you’re a brand new client or an old friend who knows and trusts Marketing Messages implicitly, we’re so grateful to be of service for all your audio needs, last year, this year, and all the years to come.

The post A Thank You from Our Team appeared first on Marketing Messages.

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.

Why Change?

Look, if your company continues to do outstanding numbers and get positive reactions from the majority of your ever-expanding client base, then enjoy your success and keep on trucking.

But I think most companies, in any field, can look back on any given year and identify things they wish they’d done better, areas they wish to improve on, and opportunities they wish they had been able to seize. For companies seeking to continuously improve, change is an important element of growth.

The most obvious benefit to refreshing your brand with new material (whether that be on your website, your social media, or your onhold messages and other voice prompts) is tacitly proving to your customers that you still exist and are still active. Post-pandemic, numerous companies folded entirely or reduced their hours and capabilities.

I know that when I am looking up a client or partner, the first and most telling tip-off that they have gone out of business is if their customer-facing material is old and static. If a website looks like it hasn’t been updated in years, or if their recordings are of terrible quality or totally out-of-date (i.e., a message-on-hold detailing a company’s Christmas hours…still active in July), it communicates that either no one is around to make any changes…or no one actually cares.

What Major Role in Rebranding Efforts Should You Make?

To be clear, ‘rebranding’ doesn’t have to mean some huge expensive campaign during which you change everything about your business or how you operate. When it comes to voiceover recordings, ‘rebranding’ can simply mean choosing a new voiceover talent.

Have you previously used a male talent? Try a female one. Usually use a female talent? Try a male one.

Have you previously preferred a voice that sounds older and more authoritative? Maybe go with one that’s younger, with an emphasis on energy and enthusiasm.

The new year might be a great time to experiment with conversational scripting and create a more informal and personalized caller experience.

Beyond any one specific change, being creative and forward-thinking with changing up your branding reminds customers and partners alike that you are active, you are proactive, and you are not satisfied with staying put and getting stagnant.

Let Us Help

If you are looking to make some changes in the new year, voice prompts and onhold messages can play a major role in rebranding efforts. Conversational scripting is becoming more and more popular, so by all means get in touch with us today for a free guide in writing a more informal script.

With whatever audio effort you’re attempting, Marketing Messages is here to help this year, next year, or whenever you need.

The post Thinking About Rebranding in the New Year? 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.

That’s a lot of disjointed letters Dan, or so I imagine you’re telling me. It stands for a brilliant marketing strategy, Update Onhold Messages Often. Don’t be stale, don’t exude stagnation…instead be proactive about your business.

UOMO (Update Onhold Messages Often) man.

Have I always referred to it this way? Nah, sometimes I call it Messages-On-Hold or messages on hold or even just MOH for short. They all mean the same thing to me, targeted marketing messages for a select listening audience. By select, I mean people who have called your number and are waiting to talk with you. These folks aren’t going anywhere, they’re a captive audience and you already have them engaged.

Take advantage of this time; sell them a new product or idea. Spark a little interest; pique their curiosity with a tantalizing tidbit and make them ask for more. Offer them a limited time something or other; give them a discount, a free service, a bit of advice. Lend your knowledge and expertise to their cause; solve their problem; sell them the thing they need…all while they wait to talk with you.

Great for VoiceCentral Customers!

Are you a VoiceCentral Customer? If so, another fine reason to update is that you’ll be using the service you’ve already paid for. This isn’t costly, it’s ROI! Change the music to keep your callers engaged. Even if the messaging remains steadfast, you can change the music with the seasons just to add variety.

Chances are you have a website. Odds are good that your site has evolved, been updated, maybe you’re on your second or third fresh rebuild. Have you updated your onhold content as often as your online? If not, why not? The people browsing your site aren’t even as likely to buy as the ones calling you directly. Give your callers the respect they’re due. Give them current messaging in a casual, friendly style. Give them a reason to listen while they patiently wait to speak with you.

Let us do the work for you.

Chances are, if they like what they hear, they’ll ask you about it when you pick up that line. Let the hold time do some work for you; let it sell for you. Update your onhold messages more often. Allow onhold recordings from Marketing Messages’ professional voiceover talents to convey your thoughts, inspirations, and more to whomever reaches out to you today. Want a custom quote? Easy! Just email sales@marketingmessages.com and you’ll hear from us soon.

The post Why You Should Update Your Onhold Messages More Often appeared first on Marketing Messages.