Having a bad day at work and tempted to tell callers exactly what’s on your mind? For many people, indulging in a spot of under-the-breath mumbling is enough to relieve tension, but for one school in Australia, their infuriation at pupil absences and lack of parental support was eloquently spat all over their answering machine. In fact, a whole auto attendant message was dedicated to making their feelings very clear!

Did I hear that correctly?

With no fewer than 10 auto attendant choices, parents were encouraged to press a number most suited to their enquiry – covering everything from lying about a child’s absence or inability to do their homework to swearing at staff and complaining about lunches. It certainly makes for an entertaining listen – check it out:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pwghabw4N80

Office on meltdown or just a clever hoax?

If this is a real recording, we’re led to believe that the message had disastrous consequences for the school.  Well, such a courageous (or stupid) message would! So make sure your day goes a little easier by keeping customers informed with clear, concise and direct On Hold Marketing and auto attendant messages. And if you’re feeling a little close to the edge, just write down an imaginary auto attendant list. It’ll make you feel better… and it’s much more amusing than counting to ten!

Business Voicemail is all part of the audio branding experience. It’s sometimes the first contact you’ll make with a customer, so it’s crucial you make the right impression every time.

Here at PH Audio, we’re passionate about getting it right for our customers, so we’ve put together a few tips on how to make the most of your Business Voicemail package.

No music, just message

Unlike your telephone On-Hold Marketing production, we advise that a Business Voicemail message shouldn’t have music in the background. The message on your voicemail production needs to have clarity and let the caller know why you can’t answer the phone. After all: they don’t want to listen to a voiceover production with music in the background — they just want to contact you personally.

Don’t use an answering machine

A caller can tell when they’re put through to an answering machine; the production quality isn’t anywhere near as good as a professionally recorded business voicemail greeting and the blandness of the message can put callers off. Much more can be done for you and your business with a personalised message.

Use a lasting message

It’s sometimes the case that employees want to show how organised they are by changing their message each day, and by displaying the date to their callers. But if you forget to change the message, it can easily have the opposite effect. We suggest you only change your message if it’s vital, i.e., if you’re away for a prolonged period of time or the message becomes outdated.

Keep it simple

If your callers struggle to get hold of you time and time again, there’s nothing worse than being caught up in long-winded voicemail greeting. Make it easy for your callers to leave a message and assure them you’ll contact them as soon as it’s convenient.

Keep on top of your mailbox

Don’t let your mailbox get full! Sounds obvious, but it does happen. Make sure you keep on top of the messages left in your inbox; mainly so there’s always room for someone to leave a message — you don’t want to miss any messages from clients.

Add a personal touch to your greeting

Callers are trying to contact you directly, so the likelihood that they know you is high. By adding a personal touch to your greeting, you can give your callers something to smile about and strengthen their views of you and your business. Add a greeting that says something about your character, and do it in a way that reflects well on your business.

Keep the greeting in line with both personal and company branding

Much like adding a personal touch to your greeting, it’s critical that you keep all communications in line with your personal and company branding. For example, corporate branding guidelines may state that you can only use a particular voiceover artist for your productions, or there might be certain words that have to be said when greeting callers.

Make use of a professional Voiceover Artist

Of course, there’s no reason why you can’t record the voicemail greeting yourself, but ask yourself: ‘What does that say about me and my company?’ More importantly, what does a professionally recorded greeting say about you and your company? A professionally produced and scripted greeting can have more impact on your callers and keep them happy even if they can’t get hold of you during your client meetings!

Companies spend a lot on symbols. On symbols that people associate with their name.

It’s kind of reductive, but in the simplest terms, advertising is about making an effective symbol that carries a full brand message. That’s why the Nike ‘Swoosh’ logo equals athletics. Equals running. Equals gold medals. Equals you running faster.

Advertising is about making a large concept into a picture. Reducing sentences and paragraphs into lines and squiggles.

It’s been about that for hundreds of years. About graphic identities carrying brands.

Now, of course, we’re producing much more than logos. We’ve got the internet, for one – we’ve got the viral videos and the microsites; the discussions across social media and becoming a company’s fan on Facebook. Now, businesses are creating fully branded ‘user experiences’.

But in the last century, we also got ways to produce better sounds, and faster. We have studios and microphones. And as this medium has grown and gone digital, so too have the agencies (we’re one!) who specialise almost exclusively in audio branding – not graphic-based branding. And on commercial radio, telly, the internet, businesses are using these agencies to compete for the most memorable sound.

With these developments – these new ways to reach an audience – there’s been a scramble. A scramble to see what business should sound like. A sound to define a brand.

Critical Noise – an excellent blog of essays on every aspect of sound – calls this scramble a ‘skirmish to package every experience with sound, from corporate messaging to personal ringtones.’

You’ll recognise some of these packages. There’s the Intel sonic logo, the Asda jingle, even the Coca-Cola adverts that herald the start of Christmas holidays.

But like anything that works, and seems to work well, the whole world has a go at it. That’s why for every plinky-plonky Nokia ringtone, there’s a Crazy Frog.

There’s a danger of information overload. Of too much noise, and not enough signal. You could even call it corporate noise pollution.

And now, just as Critical Noise goes on to point out, when you throw sound into the advertising mix, you’ve got to be wary of deafening your audience.

That’s why knowing when to be quiet, and knowing when to speak up, is critical.

On-hold – the right time to speak up

We all know being on hold isn’t ideal. In its worst format – silence or beeps – it exploits the kind of patience that few people have. The kind of patience that many are paying national rates for.

When people are on hold, or waiting to be transferred, they’re not really choosing to be. And that’s why your business can’t afford to make things worse.

It’s not the time for bad music, nor the time for meaningless platitudes about calls being important.

But it is an opportunity to deliver a message. To entertain and inform. It’s a chance to talk about something that’s relevant to your callers. It’s a chance to prove you really understand them. And by understanding exactly why people call your business, you’ll develop messaging on hold that caters to them. Their tastes. Their needs. Their reason for choosing your business over a competitor’s.

At PH Audio, we bang on a lot about the amount it costs to get a caller in the first place. Because if marketing is the distillation process, then this call is the fancy cocktail. That’s why you can’t go and mess it up.

On the phone, your business sounds like the call operator. Your brand sounds exactly like the silence or the beeps you’ve got on hold. There aren’t logos or videos or fancy slogans here – so if you’re going to play music on hold with on-hold messaging, you’ve got to do it properly if you want your brand to hold up.

In this case, signal is a lot more important than noise. Because, if silence says more elsewhere – elsewhere in this market of many, many noises and messages – on hold it says nothing.

Or, it says you don’t care.

Done right, on-hold messaging is a unique opportunity for a business. It doesn’t have to be another pile of noises to tune out from.

So how do you want your business to sound?

We’ve spoken before about the ways web audio adds more to your website.

For the most part, web audio works as a promotional tool; grabbing attention and anchoring the user’s interest. You might use it to introduce your business. You might use it to highlight your main products or services in a short burst of information; a summary of what you’re about. You might even use it as another way to say hello.

But more than an effective promotional tool, web audio can be functional, too – a way to direct your visitors to pages and, in turn, to the offers you really want them to see.

Aiding functionality

Design goes a long way, but it’s often said that the best websites are websites that are easy to use. Web audio can make browsing even easier.

If you have a quote form that visitors can fill out, helping you capture information, a web audio script can explain which buttons to press, or where to find it. If you have a site search tool – for specialist products, for instance – you could use web audio to tell visitors to enter keywords in the search box.

Helpful instructions save on frustrations, and allow your visitors to find the right functions in the shortest possible time. This way, web audio can really enhance the ‘experience’ people have on your website – and will come back next time knowing exactly where to look.

A stronger call to action

If you’re in a hurry, there’s nothing more frustrating than struggling to find something you really need. With websites, this is often the case with vital phone numbers or email addresses.

Web audio is another chance to put these details in front of the visitor, making it simpler for existing or potential customers to contact you. A scripted piece of web audio finished with a strong call to action, even if that’s simple directions to an enquiry form, is much more likely to yield a response. For an example of this in action, check out the web audio on Faroncrown PCVu’s website.

Signposting the good stuff

Web audio adds an audible dimension to your brand and online presence. And, in the same way On-Hold Marketing can drive awareness of products or services, web audio can help to channel visitors towards your latest offers, promotions or flagship services.

Combined with attractive imagery and some nifty headlines, you can make services and products really stand out with web audio – and direct people to exactly the things you’re looking to push.

What would email look like if it was invented today?

That’s what Google asked themselves and Google Wave is their answer. Their point is that email has been around for forty years, and even though it’s still the primary form of electronic communication today, it’s certainly not the only one. So, they set about creating a way to merge the best of email, social networking and instant messaging to create a super communication tool, namely Wave.

Wave is still a prototype. It’s currently available by invitation only so its usage is limited to a lucky few until all the bugs have been ironed out. Google Wave is perhaps most well known for being at best baffling, and at worst, completely unfathomable. We’re not one of the lucky Wave account holders at PH Audio Blog, but we’re taking on the challenge of demystifying the Wave using that fine resource – t’internet.

First we’ll go straight to the horse’s mouth for a great, concise introduction, to Google Wave:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6pgxLaDdQw

Google Wave’s top features

Wiki style -- as the conversation flows in a Wave, you can reply to other people comments individually throughout the conversation. Unlike email where you have the option to reply to all, or to a single person, in a Wave you can go back to any point and insert a response, as well as being able to reorganise the conversation to bring earlier points to the fore.

Playback - if someone joins a Wave at a later stage, they can watch a playback of the Wave as it has developed up to that point.

Drag and drop - attaching a file (like a photo or video) from your computer to an email takes time. With Wave, you can simply drag and drop any file from your computer into a Wave.

Embed a Wave - a Wave (the conversation) can be embedded into any website (though you can hide elements of it if you don’t want the entire ins and outs of your online chatting to be broadcast). In addition to publishing Waves that have already happened, you can start a  public Wave and have anyone join in and share ideas and media, which anyone else can look at (within the parameters of that Wave’s participant settings, e.g. employees in one organisation)

Extensions - these are like Facebook applications. As Wave is open source, any developer can create an extension that will add to every user’s experience.

The future of telephony with Wave

Extensions

Extensions are an exciting element of Google Wave. Because Wave is open source, anyone can create a gadget or robot to be used with it (similar to Facebook apps). Since Wave is still new, there aren’t heaps of them at the moment, but that will change! Having said that, those that are around are making waves among techies and social media experts.

As aficionados of all things audio here at the PH Audio blog, we’re going to look at Ribbit, an extension that integrates real time telephony and messaging into Google Wave. For a bit of background, Ribbit describe themselves as “Silicon Valley’s first phone company”. Combining telephony and computer expertise, they enable developers to integrate vocal communications into other applications.

With Ribbit, users can:

• Make calls
• Make conference calls
• Place callers on hold
• Send text messages
• Voicemail (with the added advantage of being able to read a transcription of their voicemail while they’re still on another call)

This all sounds rather familiar, I hear you say. Google Voice, Google’s own new communication tool, offers all these features too, including customisable voicemail so you can greet callers with personalised messages. For those who take up the option of a Google phone number, a host of other features are included too:

• One phone number
• Free text messaging
• Block calls
• Record calls
• Conference calls
• Screen calls (see who’s calling before you answer)
• Phone routing choose which phone rings depending on who’s called
• Check out these short videos about Google Voice features

Google Wave on hold

The word on Google Street is that Voice and Wave will be seamlessly integrated in the future. Here at the PH Audio Blog, we’re always looking for new ways to innovate and see Google Wave’s potential for transforming (dare we say revolutionising?) communications as having the potential to improve business communications and customer service. Imagine being able to target your voicemail message to callers? If the same were possible for on-hold messaging, callers would only ever hear messages that were absolutely relevant to them. The same goes for out of hours messaging and auto attendant messaging. This ability to channel calls will not only be better for business being called, but for the caller too.

Now we’ve looked at a few of the features Wave will offer, lets get back to the core question that spawned its inception: how can email be improved to suit the 21st century syle of surfing the web?

Wave v. Email: A scenario

I want to go to a Meatloaf gig in Las Vegas because I’m a huge fan. I’ve decided to invite my friend Martin because I know he loves music and gambling, so I think he’d really enjoy it. I send him an email, to which he replies: ‘Las Vegas sounds great, but who’s Meatloaf?’ I think, ‘Cripes Martin, he’s only a rock and roll legend, how can you not know who he is?’ In my reply to his email, I include a link to a YouTube video of one of the Loaf’s classic performances.

Martin is convinced and we set about looking for a hotel in Vegas. Our emails continue back and forth, littered with links to Google Maps, Trip Advisor, Flickr and a few more YouTube videos. It’s becoming hard to keep track, and then Martin remembers it’s our mutual friend Alice’s birthday on the very day of the concert, and Alice also loves music, so we decide to invite her too. Martin forwards our lengthy email exchange to Alice.

Alice is keen to join the fun in Vegas but tells us that our email exchange is too convoluted for her to follow easily and she now has a million tabs open in her browser (Alice tends to exaggerate but we know what she means). Can we just send her a summary of our plans? 

How about using Wave instead?

In this scenario, it’s easy to see how a conversation over email can get out of hand if we want to use all the other online resources that have become part of daily life. If Martin and I had discussed our Vegas plans in Wave, Alice could have caught up with our conversation by watching a playback of it, seeing the whole thing in one place.

Google Wave cinema: Good Will Hunting

This is why we love the web; here’s a glimpse of Google Wave’s potential. Genius!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VD0wzo_Gw4

With the prototype out, the next few months will see huge developments in Google Wave, as bugs are identified and (hopefully) fixed and more extensions are developed. At PH Audio Blog, we’re keeping a close eye on the opportunities for Wave and Voice, and we’ll keep you informed!

Want to ride Google Wave?

Request a Wave invite by clicking here.

Looking back and looking forward to OHM

It doesn’t feel like 13 years ago that we produced and installed our first production –  time flies.

Quarter of a million productions later and every aspect of our service bears little resemblance to the processes I’d dug out of the ground back then. Voicing, music, installation, playback equipment and service levels are in a different stratosphere to those bygone days.

But that’s business for you – necessity is the mother – and these advances mean we’ve consistently evolved and improved. What was quite good then is quite brilliant today, which leads me nicely on to the aspect I think has changed the least noticeably but most significantly. That is: what the messages say or, as we say in the trade, the scripts.

The writers

At PH Media Group, we have a six-strong team of copywriters who create the words for the voiceovers to orate.

They write a lot of copy. A very lot. Our messages play to people around the world for over 15 million hours a year. Obviously their attention to detail has to be spot on; we need to say the right thing at the right time on every production.

Why? Because every day people are being put on-hold or transferred – and with the phone next to their lughole, are going to eagerly listen to what’s being said. And that’s what has changed the most.

The messages

Most messages are still made on a similar principal, with 6-8 prompts, interspersed with music. But where we used to say, ‘please hold and your call will be answered shortly’ or ‘your patience is appreciated and your call is being transferred’ at the end of every other prompt (and still do, occasionally) what’s changed most are the prompts themselves.

The term ‘Less is more’ springs to mind. Our prompts now sound less intrusive but more inviting. We don’t force messages down people’s throat anymore; we seem to have learnt how to get a message across the ear piece by saying things a lot more quietly but with significantly more impact.

On-hold time shouldn’t be used for the hard sell; it should transmit a message that reflects the brand and draw the caller’s attention to areas that will be of interest and benefit.

And that’s exactly what our lovelies do. Our scripting has evolved in a subtle, progressive and pleasant manner, and long may it continue.

Grant Reed | Managing Director

Writing for voiceovers

Something we wrestle with on the PH Media copywriting team is how things are said. Not so much pronounced – although the odd company name might throw us – but written to be said. We write scripts for our professional voiceovers to read aloud, which means thinking about more than the rhythm of speech and the balance of a sentence.

And, because the difference between what’s on paper and what’s spoken can often be larger than we realise, we know a few things about what works – and what doesn’t.

Say what?

In practice, the considerations are simple. The first one is exactly that. If we keep it simple, the message is easily understood. Keep it snappy, and we keep it sharp. Ramble away, and the message is garbled; the audience is lost.

Every prompt carries its own message – information about an aspect of a business or the sales line for a product. So are you more likely to read a prompt that wings its way around the point – or one that’s on the button?

Here’s one we made earlier

Here’s an example. I’ve invented a company. They’re called Gumguardian, they’ve made a new kind of dental floss product and they want PH Audio to deliver a targeted music on hold service that ties in with their print advertising campaign. They’ve briefed us about the product, so we know what it does, and now they want their on-hold messaging to reflect their printed message.

Here’s what we could say:

Utilising the latest innovations in dental technology, Gumguardian has been developing a revolution in dental flossing – Gum-champ!

Sounds quite impressive, doesn’t it?

Now read it aloud.

When did you last utilise anything? Maybe in an essay. You’d certainly never say you were off to utilise the toilet. And that bit about Gumguardian doing something in the past – it’s almost old news; it doesn’t sound fresh.

This is where simplicity wins through. Utilise means use, which has only one syllable, so it’s simply written and simpler to say. And, by putting things in the active, present tense, the sentence develops an urgency you can’t help but listen to.

Here’s the same message with these things considered:

Choose Gum-Champ from Gumguardian – the revolutionary dental floss you can actually use.

Direct, to-the-point, effective.

Next time, we’ll have a look at the importance of correct punctuation in an audio script – and how something as little as a misplaced comma can be disastrous when read aloud.

Photo: alexkerhead

“Call quietly or there will be… trouble.”

On the 1st of September 2009, the Federal Trade Commission of America banned automated sales calls.

An amendment to their Telemarket Sales Rules requires telemarketers to obtain written permission from American consumers to receive Robocalls.

If you’ve ever received a Fonejacker-style cold-call claiming you have won a holiday on a cruise ship, you’re probably received a Robocall at home before.

Don’t worry though, this form of direct marketing is already illegal in the UK if the calls are made without the implicit consent of consumers.

What are your thoughts on this use of audio technology?

Ladbrokes: A household name, Ladbrokes can trace its heritage back to 1886 and today is the UK’s leading bookmaker with 2600 owned and operated betting shops. While resisting the urge to make puns like ‘it’s a sure bet…’ when talking about this new media partnership, it’s safe to say that PH Audio’s responsive service is perfectly suited to Ladbrokes. The Cheltenham Festival and the Grand National called for bespoke productions – and these regular updates also serve to keep the company’s audio branding fresh and relevant.

Village Hotel Group: PH Audio has enjoyed a media partnership with the Village Hotels Group for more than five years and we’re delighted to continue the relationship with the implementation of audio branding in every Village Hotel in the UK. The group has undergone a transformation, with each of the 21 hotels given a vibe makeover – cool, contemporary interiors, widely praised restaurants and health clubs that would give any high-end gym a run for its money. To complement the new-look hotels, the Village Group has launched a new sophisticated and down-tempo audio branding campaign.

Korg Musical Instruments: Even if you haven’t heard the name before, you will have heard Korg’s products. Parent company to some of the world’s leading names in professional music and recording, Korg equipment is used in every genre from fire-starting dance music, jazz and rock, to can’t-get-it-out-of-your-head pop. The audio brand created by PH Audio for Korg draws together all facets of the group as well as publicising their philanthropic involvement in initiatives promoting access to music education. We look forward to a long media partnership with this global brand.