Have you ever called a company only to hang up in frustration because, instead of getting to talk to someone, you’re subjected to minutes of irritating beeps, uninterrupted tinny muzak, or worse – complete silence, wondering if you’ve been cut off?

If this sounds like YOUR business phone system, how many prospective customers could you be losing to your competitors simply by not keeping their interest whilst they’re put on hold? If you’re going to reduce caller abandonment and possibly gain more business from the people who call you, you need to do two things:

• Let them speak to a real, live person as quickly as possible.
• Make the time they spend on hold as useful and engaging as you can.

The first isn’t always easy. You can only employ a certain number of telephone staff, and there are going to be busy periods when they have to deal with a substantial backlog of calls. It’s in the second area – giving your callers something interesting to listen to and focus on while they wait – that you have the power to make a difference.

You’ll find that relevant, interesting and informative on-hold messages are really effective at keeping callers on the line by minimising their perception of waiting time. As well as giving callers something relevant to listen to, it reassures them that you value their enquiry and will keep their wait to a minimum.

Statistics show that an effective on-hold message recording results in a 45% increase in caller retention – in other words, far fewer callers getting frustrated and hanging up. According to research published in Teleconnect magazine, 88% of callers preferred to listen to an on-hold message rather than background music alone, and 16-20% of callers made a purchasing decision based on the recorded information they heard while on hold. When you look at it this way, the time you have your callers on hold becomes an opportunity rather than an inconvenience. You don’t want to make it any longer than necessary, but you can make the most of it.

Effective on-hold messages

So if you’re writing and recording on-hold messages for your phone system, what strategies should you have in mind?

• Short, clear messages work best. It’s not a good idea to give your listeners a very long message to listen to, for a couple of reasons. First, you might not keep their full attention – a clear and crisp message is more likely to sink in than a long, rambling one. Second, if they are listening to a long message they might think that they have to listen to the whole thing before they actually get to talk to somebody, which can add to their uncertainty and frustration.
• A better tactic is to intersperse short, useful messages with sections of music. Alternating ten second bursts of music with fifteen second recorded messages works well. A strategy like this gives your customers useful information and/or a sales message as well as the clear impression that they are in line for someone to take their call.
• Reassurance is good: as well as telling waiting callers about your products, services and special offers, remind them that their call will be answered soon and – most importantly – that their business really does matter to you.
• You can also use an on-hold message to reduce the burden on your phone system by suggesting to customers that they visit your website.
• When choosing the background music make sure you choose a soundtrack that suits your main audience. You might be a huge fan of thrash metal, but if your business is targeting the over-60 age group it’s unlikely to go down very well with the majority of callers.
• On the subject of music, watch out for licensing fees! If you want to use most popular music tracks for your on-hold message recording, you’ll need to get permission from the copyright holder and pay a substantial fee. However, excellent quality royalty free music tracks are readily available at a fraction of the cost.

Finally, remember that quality counts. You want to promote your business as a professional enterprise, so it’s really important that your on-hold messages are recorded in a clear, professional way. It’s always best to use a commercial voice over production studio that has a good track record in this specialist field.

Clocktower Creative voice over studios have more than a decade of expertise in producing high quality on-hold recordings for a wide range of businesses, and can also advise on issues such as music licensing and effective scriptwriting. Why not get in touch with the team at Clocktower to find out how they can maximise your on-hold marketing potential!

For more information and contact details go to clocktowercreative.co.uk

The first thing to do is understand that writing for a voiceover is very different from writing for the printed page. When you’re reading a book, magazine or web page you can go at your own pace, and even skip back and re-read bits that aren’t clear. Audio is different. When you write a voiceover script, you need to remember that your listeners have to understand your words the first (and maybe the only) time they hear them.

So your number one priority is to write English that is clear and simple.
That sounds easy, but it isn’t. If you aim for simplicity, the big danger is that your voiceover ends up sounding like a reception teacher talking to a classroom of four-year-olds. That’s patronising, and the last thing you want to do is patronise your listeners, especially if you’re trying to sell them something.

The trick is to aim for a conversational effect. That doesn’t mean you have to be chatty or informal. It means using the style and tone of voice you would use if you were having a direct, honest, face-to-face conversation.

The best way to do that is to be as concrete and direct as possible, starting with the words you use. The difference between a good voiceover script and a bad one often comes down to word choice. Keep your words simple, preferring short ones to long ones. Avoid business and marketing jargon. Above all, use concrete words rather than abstract ones.

That means steering clear of words like cost-effective, efficient, impact, focussed, competent and cutting-edge. They are difficult for readers to grasp right away, and you’ll be making life hard for the voice over artist who has to get his or her mouth round them. Choose words that are easy to listen to, and easy to say: fast, low-cost, free, now, great.

You also need to limit the length of your sentences. In general, short is good, but if every sentence in your voice over script is short, you’ll find the whole thing sounds stilted and a bit weird. Aim for variation: one good technique is to use a relatively long sentence followed by a very short one:

Come to Dave’s Garage for Manchester’s best prices on tyres. Best prices guaranteed!

When you’re writing your voice over script, the best tool available to you is reading aloud. Write a draft, then read it out. Don’t whisper or mumble – blast it out in a good, strong, clear voice. When you’re doing dry runs like these, take care to enunciate clearly, just like a voice over artist would. That means making all the syllables of a word stand out crisply and clearly, while still maintaining a relatively natural tone of voice. If you’re doing it properly, you should find that you’re using your teeth and the muscles in the lower part of your face and jaw more than you would in normal conversation.

You could even record yourself on a Dictaphone or by using one of the simple freeware audio applications on the market.

Ask yourself: how does this sound? Are there any parts of the script that seem jumbled or untidy, even if they make perfect grammatical sense on the page? More important, did you find yourself tripping up or struggling to say particular words of phrases clearly? Those are the danger points in your script that you need to revisit and perhaps rewrite. If you have to work hard to say something clearly, the audience for your eventual voiceover – whether it’s part of a radio ad, an e-learning tutorial or a podcast – might have a hard time understanding it.

In summary:

1. Always remember that your audience only gets one shot at understanding your voiceover – listening to recorded speech isn’t like reading from the printed page.
2. Make sure everything is clear and simple without being patronising. Use clear, direct language and varied sentence lengths. (Avoid sentences that are too long – anything more than 20-25 words may need to be cut in two, and you should aim for an average length somewhere in the region of 8-15 words.)
3. Remember that reading aloud is your most valuable tool. Write an initial draft, read it aloud, spot the problems and rewrite accordingly. Keep going through this process. If possible, get other people to read it aloud and listen to it, too – they might spot problems you miss.

If you’re struggling with your voiceover scripts, feel free to get in touch with the experts at Clocktower Creative studios. They have more than a decade of experience in the writing, recording and production of voice over narrative for business – from radio commercials to on-hold marketing. They’ll be happy to offer advice or take over the writing work for you.

For more information and contact details go to clocktowercreative.co.uk