8 mins read
The first experiences your customers have with your business are the deciding factor when it comes to customer retention. Your contact center plays a pivotal role in creating these experiences.
When a customer contacts you for the first time, their buyer journey––starting from the greeting till the call is disconnected––reflects the credibility and professionalism of your brand. Therefore, you need to craft the most contextual and seamless experiences with every call, thereby earning more customers.
The importance of a voicemail greeting
A welcoming and professional voicemail greeting can ensure that you have satisfied and returning patrons, and not disgruntled one-time customers.
Pleasant voicemail greetings help facilitate an effortless customer experience. However, unfriendly ones, especially if they have excessive IVR prompts, can confuse callers. Such greetings ruin a client’s mood who is then bound to have a bad experience even if they connect to an efficient agent.
Having said that, we have consolidated a list of dos and don’ts that should be considered when designing your voicemail greetings. Check them out right away!
1. Do keep it simple
Your voicemail greeting is simply to welcome the caller—not to resolve concerns. Keep it simple with a welcome message and a little more about what to expect.
The optimal length of a voicemail greeting is considered 20 to 30 seconds. So, try to fit the information you’d like to impart within this timeframe.
Ensure that you do not include too much marketing jargon in your greeting. Keep it straightforward for better understanding.
2. Don’t sound overwhelmed
The tone of your voicemail makes a huge difference during the call. Though the greeting should be welcoming, it shouldn’t lean towards sounding overenthusiastic or overwhelmed. This may drive away customers with a negative image of your brand.
Maintain a balanced tone to accommodate customers with varying concerns. By ensuring neutrality, you can offer a decent experience to happy, confused, or angry clients alike. Remember, this is not a platform to promote your services—your representatives will do that job once the call has been connected.
3. Do keep consistency
Callers don’t find it appealing when voicemail messages sound different across different levels of the menu or every time they call. Imagine looking at a website that goes from red to blue to orange with each click. Not an appealing thought, right?
Similarly, a change in pitch, tone, or volume each time is jarring, to say the least. Not only does this showcase a lack of professionalism on your part, but it also gives the impression that you were careless while designing your voicemail greetings.
Thus, ensure that you use the same tone, volume, and pitch for all your voicemail greetings and throughout the multi-level menu.
4. Do reflect your brand
Branding guidelines play an important role in creating a unique identity among your target audience. When customers call your contact center, they’ll like to see and feel the reflection of your brand.
Maintain a consistent message that is conveyed across all your marketing and branding mediums. Make sure that the material that you use in your voicemail and calls fit the tone of your brand.
For example, if your products are for kids, you have to maintain a child-friendly, light, and fun tone in your greetings––whether it’s in your greetings, your calls, or your marketing collaterals. And if instead, you end up sounding stuffy or distant, you’re bound to confuse your callers and leave them feeling unhappy about your interaction.
5. Don’t overload callers with information
Your voicemail is simply meant to establish a connection and make your customers feel comfortable during the call. Remember, your voicemail helps create an image for your brand, it is not a sales pitch.
Keep it clean—only include basic information rather than stuffing the recording with your history, offers, and values. This is counterintuitive and may make the customer feel irrelevant.
6. Do update your greetings
The world is dynamic, so why shouldn’t your business keep evolving as well? Try to change your voicemail regularly. This will give a fresh perspective to your brand and show your callers that your business is alive. It’s also a good idea to incorporate the latest trends and address important happenings.
For example, when a customer is associated with your brand for a prolonged period, they may feel bored and indifferent to the same voicemail that’s played every time. Eventually, they’ll stop paying attention and get sick of waiting while listening to the same message.
Changing the voicemail greeting with varying tactics will show your versatility in dealing with clients along with creating a positive image among the target audience.
7. Do inform the customer about call status
The best voicemail greeting is one that is short yet informative. Ensure that you provide all the necessary information to your customer during the call. Cutting down on cardinal information in an attempt to shorten the call ends up wasting more time in the long run.
For example, as the call connects, introduce your brand, department reached as well as the average call waiting time. The caller can make sure they’ve reached the right place and determine if they’d rather shift to a different medium of contact.
8. Do give appropriate options
Self-service is the trend in the call center ecosystem. Ideally, present-day call centers implement a multi-tiered IVR system. This enables customers to resolve simple queries themselves, eliminating the need to connect with a live agent for all concerns.
To begin with, provide the customers with information about your working hours and agent availability. Give updates on holidays and specific phone line numbers.
Moreover, you need to tell them how to reach these multi-tiered IVR systems. Details on how you have categorised your departments and how your customers can reach their desired department will help customers navigate easily.
Make sure your customers know just how they can connect to live agents—or find resolution elsewhere. If their query can be solved from your FAQ base, don’t waste their time with an agent and simply direct them to the knowledge base.
This allows you to keep your call queues and waiting time in control and allow smooth call flows in your contact centers.
Wrap up
Voicemails are important when it comes to kickstarting the right type of conversations with your customers. You should draft simple, easy-to-understand, and friendly voicemail greetings to strike the right chord among your target audience.
Hopefully, the aforementioned do’s and don’ts of creating voicemails will help you create the best-suited voicemail for your brand.
Learn more about cloud-based communication services to boost your brand today. Call 1888-859-0450 or send an email to [email protected] to get started.
