13130: Brand New IVR Rates From SAG-AFTRA

Raw transcript:

three simple letters i v r
what does it mean
do you do this as a voice Talent OR
actor
and what happened with sag-aftra and the
new raids I’ve got some really wonderful
news for you in this episode of the vo
Heroes podcast
[Music]
for those of you that are familiar with
my origin story one of the big parts of
it is that the biggest category of voice
over work that I worked in before I
started to expand into audiobooks and
and other things games and so on was ivr
and probably my biggest claim to fame is
that I was the voice of America online’s
phone support system back when America
Online was the bomb
uh they were getting four and a half
million calls a day in the early 90s and
and so on and I ended up recording over
38 000 prompts for them
under a rate structure that was very
different from the rate structure that I
encountered when I became a member of uh
sag in the early 2000s now what is what
is all this all about what are all these
what are all these letters and numbers
you’re talking about here well ivr
stands for interactive voice response
and basically it’s those recorded
messages that you hear when you call a
phone comp a phone line that has a
recorded message program so you call the
bank and the bank says thank you for
calling Bank of America blah blah blah
or you call AOL back in the day and it
was like thank you for calling America
Online the world’s most popular online
service man if I said that once I said
it 38 000 times
um
those messages are sometimes voiced by
computer generated voices so we’ve been
dealing with synthetic voice and AI for
decades and have managed to survive I’ll
talk about that in another episode
um but the the the rates that people
were getting paid especially Union
Talent was very different from the rates
that I was used to getting paid when I
was doing my work for America online and
probably about 150 other uh companies
very large companies
um
so interactive voice response is a
covered
uh category of work for voice Talent who
are members of sag-aftra up until
January of this year
the way they were paid for that work was
basically studio time so however much
time you spent in a studio or working at
home in your home studio no matter how
many prompts you did in a prompt is an
individual announcement on one of those
uh on one of those systems and it could
be
combined with other prompts to create
full sentences so for example your
balance is five dollars and 68 cents
uh that’s one two three four five or so
prompts that are combined into one
sentence each one of those recordings uh
they were paid for the amount of time
that the recording took but not per
prompt I was being paid over the years
by The Prompt and I constantly try to
get the union once I became a member and
found out that’s how they were being
paid to switch
to a minimum studio time and per prompt
now it has taken a long time and uh
changing a lot of minds and a lot of
Skeptics but uh my fellow members on the
co-ed committee including Cara Ortiz and
uh Melissa exelberth who I don’t think
is on the committee but uh was involved
in the conversations
um we all kind of like helped move the
needle toward that and I’m really happy
to announce
that as of this past January 1st
uh we have a new rate structure now it’s
not the same per prompt rate structure
that I’ve been charging for God 30 years
or more 40 years is it almost 40 years
um but it’s it’s a start and it’s a way
to really
um reward the people that work in this
category it’s an easy category to work
in because there’s not a lot of
backstory and character development in
saying zero
or dollars and right you just want to be
clear we talk about this in the vo
Heroes classes on on ivr and on news and
co-educational corporate educational
um but now there’s a minimum uh studio
time of 300 per engagement so every time
somebody wants to use your services it’s
three hundred dollars plus that includes
up to five prompts in that in that
studio session and then for every prompt
beyond that it’s seven dollars per
prompt and some of these prompt bases
can be huge thousands of prompts now
most of them aren’t most of them are 10
15 20 sometimes one or two but the point
is it’s a new day for ivr talent who are
members of sag-aftra and hopefully
um everyone will follow suit because
this is the way you should be
compensated your work is going to be
used pretty much in perpetuity unless it
has a limited shelf life if you’re
saying through May 31st our sales rates
are blah blah blah that’s fine but if
you’re saying welcome to widgets
Incorporated name goes here that’s going
to be used pretty much forever
so you should be paid per prompt on that
and now you are so again
the new rates for sag after going
forward as of the time of this recording
and I’m really happy about this I mean
I’m like tearing up a little bit because
it’s been a long time
um 300 minimum plus that includes five
prompts plus seven dollars per prompt
beyond the first five prompts and it’s
really simple it’s right there in the uh
sag-aftra on the SAG after rate sheets
on the website they’ve got it up already
it’s fantastic I’m really excited about
this and if you haven’t worked in ivr
I know it probably sounds really boring
but it’s actually kind of cool uh I
remember when I used to live in DC and I
was working and I was the voice of AOL
um I was in a deli once and I was
talking with my kids they were like
seven and ten at the time and this woman
turned around at the table next to me
she goes are you that guy on that
America online phone line I hate you
okay well good you got mad at me before
you got mad at one of our tech support
people which is fine with me anyway new
rates if you haven’t done this category
yet check it out uh if you have any
questions about this or comments about
this uh I’d love to hear from you in the
comments below and I mean on
veoheros.com where the conversation is
nice and same questions about ivr what
it’s all about how it’s done we have a
whole class on it part of the video
Heroes curriculum but I’m really proud
of this and I’m really uh really
grateful to the other members of the
corporate educational committee that I’m
on for seg after for for moving this
forward and I I’m looking forward to
everybody making just a little bit more
money for their work which is great
listen hit the like button if you like
what you’re hearing in this episode uh
you can subscribe to the channel uh and
you’ll get notified if you click the
notification Bell of new episodes coming
up share this with another voice Talent
OR actor that might be interested in ivr
or working in ivr and not aware of the
new rates
go ahead just copy the the link above
and and in the address bar and forward
it on I’m David H Lawrence 17th I thank
you so much for watching and for
listening and I will see you in the next
episode of the vo Heroes podcast
[Music]

(from YouTube)