Short Voicemail Greetings

Voicemail is one area in business where most of us can do a whole lot better. It’s far too easy to come across as just another also ran.

However, even Short Voicemail Greetings provide an opportunity for you to stand out as fully professional and committed to your clients, suppliers and customers.

TAKE THE HIGH ROAD

It’s too easy to take the low road and just fill in the blanks. By that I mean adapting the template on the phone system by just inserting your name. Don’t just settle for the “Hello you’ve called (insert name). Leave your number and I’ll get back to you”.

The other temptation is to just use the one Voicemail as the all-purpose panacea. That means you are really missing a chance to demonstrate to callers that you are on top of every situation.

FOR EVERY GOOD REASON

You can have Short Voicemail Greetings to suit the different situations that happen. You might be attending to another call but will be available shortly. Let the caller know what’s occurring and reassure them you will return their call ASAP.

When you are out for the day. Away on vacation. It might be holiday season so you can include a best wishes for Xmas, Easter, the Lunar New Year or whatever.

If you’re away at an important industry conference, there is always good mileage in letting people know you are keeping abreast of changes.

Aside from not taking advantage of the situation to communicate, if you persist in using the template approach you reinforce the “I don’t give a s—t” attitude that ruins business relations.

The problem is made more acute because the message abruptly changes from that of a professional announcer to the sound of your “dropped-in” recording.

Welcome to “Amateurville”!

PUT ON A GOOD SHOW

People want to do business with well organised professional people. So maximise the impact you can make by having your Voicemail Greetings written and produced by experts using professional male and female voice over artists.

Media Group NZ are business audio specialists. You can brief them on what messages you would like to record and have their copywriters create the scripts.

Then listen to the online samples of the voice over artists available and select the voice or voices you want to be heard as representing you and your business.

You can take the same professional approach to all your telephone audio including Welcome Messages, On Hold Messages, Menu Prompts and more. It just takes a click or tap to get it happening. www.mediagroup.co.nz

Creative Voicemail Greetings

 The Voicemail Balancing Act

Sometimes business communications can be a tricky, touchy can of worms. Just like a line-out 10 meters from the try line. Do you get the ball down early and go for the push-over? Or whip it across the backline and head for the corner?

Decisions. What goes through the advertising Director’s mind when the Copywriter comes up with a brilliant but very controversial script for the TV commercial?

The Director is the one who has to weigh up the risk and responsibility. The risk of possibly offending the audience versus the responsibility to get the product noticed.

It’s a similar dilemma when deciding on Creative Voicemail Greetings. However usually with Voicemail, you stand a greater risk of stepping on sensitivities.

Avoiding Bombs

The telephone is a far more intimate way to communicate compared to running a TV campaign or scheduling a series of risqué radio ads. So the chances of you really getting up some noses can be very high.

You probably know from experience just how the script you thought was a harmless piece of fun can turn out to be the trigger for nuclear war.

Before you commit to any Creative Voicemail Greetings you need to take a deep breath and review the possibility of creating havoc at the switchboard.

It might be worth taking the script for the proposed greeting and running it past a few people around the office. If the budget allows, put it in front of a Focus Group.

Funny Isn’t Always Clever

The most important thing is to not appoint yourself as the sole judge. Always remember what you regard as humour might be totally offensive to others.

It’s equally bad if the so-called creative effort is not easily understood or so oblique it becomes a topic of conversation for its weirdness.

Again remember that if people don’t readily understand something they’ll either totally ignore it (bad) or start complaining (worse). You could wind up on the camera after the nightly news having to explain your way out of a self-inflicted scandal.

The best way to avoid any and all of this is to call on the expertise of Media Group NZ, the business audio specialists. www.mediagroup.co.nz