3 Simple Ways to Improve Your Phone Greetings
Phone greetings are often the first impression of your business that many customers will receive. And as we all know, first impressions are lasting impressions. With a well-designed phone greeting, you can provide your customers with valuable information and insight into your business’s personality.
Voicemail recordings and IVR menus are often the first impression that your customers will receive, so it is essential that they are carefully planned and implemented. A long and rambling phone greeting can leave callers feeling impatient. But, brief messages can sometimes leave customers with more questions than they had to start with.
Feeling overwhelmed by the task of creating a clear, informative phone greeting for your business? You’re not alone. In this quick guide, we’ll share three simple tips for improving the quality of your phone greetings and making life easier for both you and your customers.
Make clarity and brevity your top priorities.
Let’s face it: your customers don’t have the time to listen to a long and detailed recording every time they contact your business. But, as a business, you want to make sure that your customers have all the information they need to make informed decisions and get in contact with the right person or department.
It can be difficult to keep your phone greeting brief and informative. But, by placing your IVR routing options as early in the recorded message as possible, you can save both you and your customers a lot of time in the long run. That way, your customers won’t have to listen to a long message that includes store hours, directions, and other basic information when they just want to check on an invoice or the status of an order.
You’ll want to follow this same guideline for voicemail, too. Don’t make your customers sit through unnecessary details when they just need to leave a message.
The bottom line: put your customers’ most common needs and questions first. Don’t assume that every caller needs to hear the same information each time they call your business.
Use professional recording equipment.
Phone greetings are often the first impression of your business that a new customer will receive. Because of this, it is important that the recordings themselves are professionally done.
Professional recording programs and equipment often allow you to minimize background noise and ensure that your phone greetings have crisp, clear sound quality. Regardless of what your actual script says, a high quality recording will help demonstrate your business’s commitment to professionalism.
Don’t have the time to record your own phone greetings, or the budget to purchase professional recording equipment? Ask your hosted business phone system provider about pre-recorded or customized IVR recording options.
Test, test, and test again.
So, you’ve written out a new phone greeting and IVR script, recorded it with professional equipment, and now you are ready to implement it. But, there’s just one more step you need to take before you can go live with your new phone greeting: testing.
It’s always a good idea to test new customer-facing aspects of your business before implementing them; but, it’s especially important if you are planning to use a new IVR menu. You want to make sure that all of your menu options are being routed to the right person or department, and that your menu is clear, concise, and free of redundancies.
One of the best ways to test a new phone greeting or IVR menu is to ask 2 – 3 employees were not involved in the planning process to to test the system. Give each employee a separate task to complete, such as checking the status of an order, or contacting the sales department. Ask your testers to complete their task without giving them any hints. This will help you identify any potential areas for improvement and prevent confusion for your customers.
Improving the Quality of Your Phone Greetings
Designing an effective phone greeting and IVR menu can seem like a daunting task. But, the real key to success is simple: listen to your customers. As you learn more about the intent of callers who contact your business, you can optimize your phone greetings to meet their needs.
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