1) Understanding taxes and surcharges on your bill make that calculus test you failed in 12th grade look easy.

Sometimes, I look at my bills and sigh because I can’t figure out why I am being charged $1.36 for some fee I have never heard of. And the bills are usually 4 pages long. You almost need a code breaker to figure these things out. Makes me think that they are trying to hide something from me.

2) You ask for call center functionality and they give you something called “Centrex“.

Centrex is an old PBX technology that was prevalent in the UK in the 1960s and it is still being used albeit not frequently. If someone tries to sell Centrex… run away!

3) Their tech support doesn’t answer calls at night. In fact, they’re not open at night.

Are all of your clients located in your time zone? No? Then why would you want your telecom carrier to only work during your business hours?

4) You ask for new extensions to your office phone system and you wait and wait and wait.

After adjusting your schedule to be available for an appointment with a five-hour window, you have to wait for the technician to arrive. Fingers crossed he doesn’t get stuck in traffic and force a rescheduled appointment on another day

5) You’re still dialing into your office line to retrieve voicemails… I mean, really?

Why are you still calling your office phone to listen to your messages? That is so 1990s and a real pain. You should be able to get your messages from anywhere.

Conclusion

If any of these points ring true for you, then it is time for you to consider a new telecom partner for your business needs.

Why it pays to have test voice-mail

Back in 2005, I was working for a start-up that had a traditional punch-key PBX system. It wasn’t the fault of the start-up, it was just the phone system that the commercial office space they occupied came with. The manual for the phone system that the previous tenant (another start-up) had left behind looked like a mini-yellow pages. It became the IT Director’s new part-time job to figure out the new branches and extensions for each employee, as well as set up voicemail boxes for each. And one could commonly hear, “how do you transfer a call again?” or “I’m going to try and transfer you, but if I lose you then call….” Visual voice-mail was considered an exotic luxury back then.

But like most start-ups, we were short on time and patience, and we went ahead and used our phones as was, accepting the small shortcomings of our punch-key system as just tiny nuisances in the daily grind of business.

One day as the marketing manager, I got the bright (OK, obvious) idea to try calling our support and sales numbers individually at night, just to see how quickly each got back to me. I called the numbers listed on our website (our support had a local DID number; our sales line had a toll free) and waited to see what happened.

Support got back to me the next day, sales never did. A couple of attempts later and I realized that voice-mail messages left for the sales team after-hours were not being received by anyone. Speaking with the IT Director (who liked dealing with the phone system as much as a hernia), he explained to me that daytime calls to our inbound toll free number had a “PBX hunt-group” effect instead of more intelligent call routing, so it would just rotate inbound calls from desk to desk until someone picked up the call. After a number of rings it would default to a voice-mail box, but no one thought to check that voice-mail box, because none of the sales reps knew it existed. And none had thought to ask themselves (or the IT Director) what happened if someone called after hours.

When we figured out which voicemail box the after-hours messages to our sales department were going to, we discovered over 200 messages by potential customers going back as far as 3 months. These people never got called back, and most of them never entered our sales pipeline. In the era where most businesses cannot afford to lose potential customers, it’s a mystery to me why more people don’t check this phone function more routinely. All one needs to do is call the numbers listed publicly for the company and say, “This is _____ conducting an internal test on our phone systems. Can the person that gets this voicemail message e-mail me at _____ or call me at ____? Thanks!”

You never know what you’re going to discover.

Photo by Glen Bowman

Most offices have voicemail, but not all of them have given their voicemail a makeover. That may sound strange, but think about it from the customer point of view.

If this is the first time a potential client has contacted you and it goes straight to voicemail, you have a very small window to make an impression upon them. You could have a generic voice mail that is blasé and mechanical. It won’t have any kind of branding and be complicated to use. Is this what you want to use to entice prospects to buy your product?

Voicemail is one more place to reinforce your brand and it is highly underutilized throughout the business world. Some of the things you can use in your voicemail greetings are:

1.) Company Name
2.) Company Motto
3.) Company Jingle
4.) Notices of Recent Awards
5.) Metrics
6.) Personalized Greetings including Holidays

Voice Actors

Some companies are worried that setting up their voicemail system means that they have to hire voice actors which will greatly increase their budget, but this is not true. Most actors are used to low paychecks and there are even options if you find that too steep. Approach the drama department at a nearby college. Tell them that you would like to hire a couple of students to do voice acting and you can’t pay much, but you would be happy to give them a letter of recommendation. These students need the work to build their portfolio and a recommendation is as good as money this early in their career.

You might not even have to leave the building to find someone. When I was working in Georgetown, TX, they always came to me for the voicemail recordings. I have worked in theatre and understand how to speak in a manner that is clear and professional without sounding boring. See if anybody in your company has done theatre work. They will probably enjoy the chance to do something different for a little while and find it fun.

When you are ready to start recording, make sure you have a clearly written script and give it to the voice actor beforehand so they can practice especially if some of the names are unusual.

Awards & Metrics

There is no reason why you can’t add special announcements after your initial intro. Compare the two messages below:

“Welcome to RingCentral.”

vs.

“Welcome to RingCentral ­ Winner of the 2008 Communications Solutions Product of the Year Award.”

Which one would you prefer? You could also have:

“Welcome to RingCentral ­ servicing over 567,000 companies worldwide.”

This gives you a chance to add your most impressive statistic to your greeting. It may seem small, but clients will remember it.

Personalized Greetings

Another trick that lends personalization to your greeting is to get certain members of your staff to record a friendly message and rotate them out.

Instead of…

“Welcome to RingCentral.”

You could have…

“Hello, this is Steven Gabelhauser, Director of Sales at RingCentral. We are so glad you have called. If you aren’t sure who to talk to, please dial my extension 12345 at any time and I will be happy to assist you.”

Not only does this add the personal touch, but it helps your callers who are lost. Of course, several people will just call Sherry at the beginning, so you will need to showcase people who don’t mind getting calls and who are also friendly on the phone.

Holidays and Closures

Many businesses do not use their voicemail system to give a holiday greeting. Most services allow you to record several greetings and save them to be used when you need them. When the Christmas season rolls around, you could turn on the one that says:

“Welcome to RingCentral ­ reminding you that our offices may be closed for the holidays December 20-January 2, but our online help system is always open.”

or

“Welcome to RingCentral ­ servicing over 567,000 companies worldwide and we want to wish every one of them a wonderful holiday season.”

Sometimes, you may have closures due to weather conditions. This is another greeting that you could set up.

“Welcome to RingCentral ­ servicing over 567,000 companies. Currently our offices are closed due to inclement weather, but please send us an e-mail so that we can get back to you as soon as possible.”

Personal Words

Please remember to use words in your greetings that are warm and personal. Notice that I didn’t write “please send your sales representative an e-mail”. I suggested “please send us an e-mail.” This makes your company sound like a family and you welcome e-mails to readily assist them.

Consider the phrase “our online help system is always open”. I could have used “our online office is open 24/7″, but this sounds like marketing speak and isn’t welcoming. “Online help system” is more inviting and “always open” kind of reminds you of the small town diners that you go to on a long drive during a family vacation. It creates the family atmosphere again.

Conclusion

Voicemail is a great way to further cement your brand in your potential and current clients and it is greatly underutilized by many firms. Setting up a great voicemail system with personalized rather than mechanical greetings gives you a chance to be more warm and welcoming and get a leg up on your competitors who are sticking with the generic voicemail options.

Spend a little time today listening to your voicemail service. Does it need a makeover?

Photos by Lady Fabulous, parkcaptech and Saquan Stimpson/monstershaq2000