Which Comes First: Options Or Actions?

Hey, there!

I really extol the virtues of being of high value to your VO clients.

If you offer not only great voicework, but also care about the quality of the programs in which your clients use your voice work, you’ll solidify your value to them – and they’ll come back to you time and time again for more work.

Here’s one way to make your IVR clients love you: make sure their scripts make their IVR programs easy for callers to use.

You’ll often hear people give examples of IVR as being phone programs that go like this: “Press one for sales, press two for service.” And although that phrase is great for instant recognition of what an IVR program does, it’s a bad example of what an IVR program should sound like to the caller.

In fact, you should always offer the caller a description of the option BEFORE you give them the action they need to perform to choose that option. Don’t say this:

Press one for service, press two for sales.
Hit the pound key to return to the main menu.
Tap the star key to repeat these options.

Why? Because you’re asking someone to listen to an entire sentence just to get to what it is you are allowing them to do, and by the time they process whether or not they even want to take advantage of that option, there’s a good chance they will have forgotten what you told them to do to make that happen in the first place.

Whew.

[tweet_box]What’s the one thing you can do to create more useful IVR prompts?[/tweet_box]

Instead, offer the action AFTER you tell them the option, like these re-written versions of the examples above:

For service, press one. For sales, press two.
To return to the main menu, press the pound key.
To repeat these options, press the star key.

Offer to go over your clients’ scripts to check for these snags. They’ll love you for it.

Hope this helps.

David