Another often overlooked chance to share information with your customers is the on-hold portion of your phones. Why have a captive audience member waiting on hold listening to cheesy music? Worse yet many companies use radio stations which at first thought sounds good but that station might be promoting your competitions product on it. Imagine you own a sandwich shop and a customer calls to place an order. You're really busy taking orders and ask them to hold for a minute. You're playing the radio on your on-hold system and they hear a spot for a nearby restaurant that does delivery and they figure it must be meant to be, so they hang up and order from the other joint. Nice work! You just sent the customer away. You have them on-hold, they probably aren't happy about it so at least give them some information about YOU and a reason to stay.
Ok. You hopefully now agree with me so you are going to record your on-hold message and answering machine yourself. WAIT! Before you do that you need to ask yourself a few things.
#1-Do I speak clearly?
#2-How do I sound to other people? (Happy, mean, grumpy, unintelligent, funny)
#3-When I speak can I get to the point quickly?
Of course there are lots of other questions you could ask yourself such as "Is there life on other planets?", "Does this shirt make me look fat?" or "Can your tongue REALLY freeze to a flagpole in winter?" but those are irrelevant to this conversation. It's just that...well... these are three I want to talk about. By the way the answers are "Yes","No comment", and "Try it out and see what happens".
We'll go over each one (of the real questions).
#1 Do I speak clearly?
When you record your message, the person on the other end needs to understand what you are saying. If you have a speech impediment, mumble, or speak to softly you need to re-think doing the message yourself. No offense, but this is business and people should not have to tolerate being forced to listen to a message that they have to work to understand. Make it easy for them and speak clearly.
#2 How do I sound to other people?
Do you have a pleasant voice or do small children run in all directions every-time you talk? Your message needs to sound welcoming. Your customer is your friend (even the ones you don't like). Let's face it... some people just sound like they have a bad attitude and this is exactly what you DO NOT WANT on your phone system
#3 When I speak can I get to the point quickly?
You have 60 seconds tops on an answering machine. Get the facts out quickly without sounding rushed. Script it out if you must. Don't record your message with ANY "Ummms" as if you are thinking of what to say next. If it's an on-hold message, script out a bunch of little snippets such as your hours, your website, specials, and talk about products you sell or services you offer.
Bottom line: Be clear, friendly and concise!
If you have no-one that sounds good in your home or office consider hiring someone to professionally record it for you. (Hint, hint). It should have some production music mixed under to make it sound more professional. Don't forget to keep it fresh by up-dating information such as sales and employee's names as they come and go.
Remember...Your phone system is truly a "Silent Salesman". You chose whether it sits in silence or gets to work making you money!
Need more help? Contact me with any questions at:
forrisday@yahoo.com.
I'd love to answer any questions you have about setting up and maintaining your phone system's messaging.
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