I was recently talking to one of my friends who is in the midst of starting her own home-based cookie business. While she wants to have a separate phone number for her business, she isn’t at the point of needing a full virtual PBX system, nor is she at the point of getting a ton of calls. What she would like to have is a business phone number & voicemail that she can pay for only when she uses it.
Did you know you can do this with Grasshopper?
Despite the fact that we are a full featured phone system, at our core, we enable customers to have a phone number and voicemail for their business that they can access from anywhere. Plus we have a pay as you grow plan that you only pay for when you use it!
Why are you pitching me Grasshopper?
Well, sometimes we get caught up talking about all the great features we have and we forget that for many of our new customers, you don’t need all of them just yet!
If you are looking to start a home-based business or already have one, here are some tips on getting your business phone number & voicemail system set up:
Posted in Voicemail | Tagged voice mail | Leave a comment
In an ideal world, you wouldn’t need voicemail. You’d have time to answer each and every customer call as it came in–with a smile in your voice, of course. In the real world, that’s just not possible. Even if you put in a 60 hour workweek, you have to get up and use the bathroom or grab a snack eventually.
Luckily for you, there’s a convenient little thing called voicemail. Voicemail is great for your business, because it allows customers to contact you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Voicemail is also great for potential customers, because it gives them a sneak peak at your personality–and yes, they’re judging you when they call.
So what should you say in your voicemail? How long should your recording be? What type of voicemail makes a potential customer want to do business with you, and what makes them hang up before you even finish your recorded greeting?
Try these tips for recording a great voicemail greeting:
1. Smile
You might be shaking your head right now, saying, “But they can’t see me through the phone…why should I smile?”. Customers are smart. A study by the University of Portsmouth shows that people can tell when you’re happy to hear from them, despite the fact that they can’t see your facial expressions or body language. The Headquarters, Department of the Army (HQDA) has specific rules pertaining to office etiquette, including recording voicemails with a smile. If you don’t think smiling makes a difference, record two different voicemails: one where you’re smiling and one where you’re not. Which one sounds better?
2. Identify Yourself
This might seem like a no-brainer, but many businesses fail to state their name in their voicemail. This confuses customers and makes them hesitant to leave a message. Many of them worry they’ve reached the wrong company and hang up, and they don’t always call back.
3. Speak Clearly
“Hi, this is momeroumgsljl and I’m ahaljfoufofoirold”. Don’t mumble in your voicemail. If you are a chronic mumbler, have somebody else record your voicemail for you.
4. Be Creative
Your callers have done this before. They know that you are unavailable, they know this is a voicemail, and they know to leave a name and number so that you can “get back with them as soon as you can”. There’s no need to tell them what they already know, so be creative. Incorporate a fun fact or statistic into your message, such as “A Duke University study found that many voicemails were not heard within 7 days, but don’t worry, we listen to all messages within 24 hours”.
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By now you’ve all probably heard the extremely long and embarrassing voicemail from a very intoxicated girl named Dominic to her new pal Ryan, where she teaches him how to spell eBay and tells him just how cute he is. The voicemail has been making its rounds on the internet and radio shows across the country, leading to this response video by Ryan himself.
The voicemail is actually a bit hard to listen to but let’s be honest; we’ve all been there. You go to check your messages and there it is, the longest voicemail ever. You can’t wait for it to be over!
In the spirit of bad voicemails, we’ve put together “The 10 Worst Types of Voicemails“:
1. The Longest Ever
Instead of giving you a brief summary of why they called, the person proceeds to give you every single detail. Need to know who, what, where and why? No. Well too bad because they just told you. Oh, except they forgot the ‘when’ so I guess you’ll have to call them back.
2. The Loudest Ever
You know this one. You check your message and it sounds like you’re in rush hour traffic. Cars are honking, music’s playing, the wind’s blowing, the stealth bomber is flying directly above you. If you are going to leave a voicemail, please make sure I can hear it.
3. The Pocket
Even with the latest Smartphone technology, pocket dials are still a real thing. The sweet sound of rustling pants or the car radio is delightful to listen to for seven minutes. Good thing I wasn’t close on my minutes this month.
4. The Super-Sonic
Unlike the long voicemail leavers, these people make sure you don’t go over your minutes checking voicemail.
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This past week MTV teamed up with Justin Bieber for a campaign against digital abuse. The prize? A trip to MTV studios and a personalized voicemail greeting from the Biebs himself.
For our Grasshopper blog readers, a voicemail greeting from a 16-year old pop star probably isn’t your ideal prize but it did get me thinking…
If you could have any celebrity record your voicemail greeting, who would it be?
Personally, I think Mr. T answering my phone would be pretty sweet. Here at Grasshopper, we had Gary Busey record some hilarious videos for us but not our voicemail greeting. We decided to leave that to our voice studio professionals.
So who would it be?
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With the launch of Google Voice there has been a lot of talk about visual voicemail, voicemail transcription, voice to text, voicemail to email, etc. There are so many different terms it can be confusing!
Here at Grasshopper we offer a feature to our customers called ‘Read Your Voicemail‘. When a customer subscribes to this feature, they are emailed a transcription (and an MP3) of their voicemail immediately after receiving it (we offer human transcription at no extra charge for better accuracy). They can then read the voicemail on their computer or Smartphone.
However, one of the questions we often get is, ‘Do you offer visual voicemail?’ The answer to that is, it depends.
Here is how others describe ‘visual voicemail’:
Verizon
“Visual Voice Mail allows customers to see a list of all of their voice mail messages with important information, such as date and time of receipt, as well as message duration, in order to prioritize and efficiently manage their voice mail messages directly from their phones.”
Posted in Voicemail | Tagged read your voicemail, voice mail | Leave a comment ← Older posts
