To do or not to do? Is professionally recording your IVR worth it?
By M Nair
Do you sound professional enough to your callers?
Before we dive in to answer this question, let me just ask you one first: If you are a soccer coach in the final match that will determine the winner of the league cup, would you rely on your star goalkeeper to make the saves or would you send in a fresh new player to do the job? Likewise, the same can be said for the telephone – would you have a professional record the voice prompts or leave the task to an employee with a ‘sexy voice’? I can guarantee you that your message will not be delivered in the way that your brand should sound.
What does it mean to professionally record your IVR?
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Over the years I have met numerous clients who spend hundreds of thousands and sometimes millions on their technology platform and forget about the voice. Unfortunately when customers call your call centre or office they don’t care about how much the equipment cost, but they do get to experience the effort you have put into designing and recording a good telephone experience for them.
The ability to effectively project your voice and modulate the right tone for the message your brand is trying to deliver is a skill that is not easy to replicate. Having a ‘nice voice’ is not enough!
So here are some reasons as to why you should consider professionally recording your prompts:
- Your brand has a voice – professionals can capture that – amateurs cannot
- Professionally-recorded prompts in a studio can be cleaned up (edited) and the voice prepared for best projection over the telephone
- The employee with the “nice voice” may change jobs. This can leave you in a lurch, having to look for a similar-sounding voice as replacement. A professional partner will ensure continuity of the voice quality for your IVR platform.
- Professional voice talents are more efficient. They can do a read in one or two takes whereas an amateur will take many takes to get it right
- Peace of mind – a “quality guarantee” will come with your professional recording
So next time you are considering whether to do or not to do a professional recording please remember and think about the points mentioned above. Is cutting corners in your recording budget worth the damage to your brand experience?
February 5th, 2010 at 11:14 am
One of the most unforgettable recording I experienced was a when I followed the menu to press 1,2, or other corresponding keys and I was in so deep until I got lost! I couldnt get back to the main menu, and whenever I tried the * or # or ‘0′, I got a “you have entered an invalid selection” or it got me right back to the “Thank you for calling XYZ…” Maybe that’s how providers make money by making me stay on the line for 30 mins.. *sigh*
March 2nd, 2010 at 10:19 am
Keep working ,great job!
March 6th, 2010 at 3:50 pm
This blog is great. How did you come up witht he idea?
March 9th, 2010 at 1:45 pm
I was in in a in Guisborough and needed my debit card to be ‘unfreezed’. After going thru the entire tele-security-process, the IVR responded with ‘The system is currently under maintenance. Please call again later’. Wouldnt it be better to have mentioned that right at the begining?
The best IVR experience was with a VADS call centre which provided 4 language options (Malay, English, Chinese and Tamil). That was fun
March 9th, 2010 at 2:56 pm
Thanks for the comments, everyone.
March 9th, 2010 at 3:42 pm
Hi Naiker,
your Guisborough experience is a good example of why it’s important to have a good and clear flow design. Part of our scope of work is also to do an impact analysis in order to have an understanding of the structure of the prompts that you’d hear and to identify the best scripting approach.
Choosing which language to have for an IVR system needs to be in line with a company’s business vision. For example, a company that aims to have a strong presence in the Asia Pacific region would be seen as acting in harmony with that vision if they include a few main Asian languages or dialects on their IVR system like Mandarin, Hindi, Thai or Bahasa Indonesia, on top of the main language that could be English.
Cheers,
Faz
p.s. it’s been some time since someone told me they’ve been in Guisborough – the last time was some college friends who were traveling in England. Hope you had a good time there.
June 29th, 2010 at 10:12 am
Hello, really high quality blog. Many thanks for finding the time to come up with so many worthwhile blogposts
June 30th, 2010 at 11:34 am
We’re a work in progress, and so is our blog
Thanks! Faz