Author: Harvey Edelman

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music overhead announcements small business

4 Audio Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses

Small businesses working with limited resources are often overshadowed by competition from larger businesses with larger marketing budgets. And yet, small businesses need to outshine competitors and distinguish themselves from the rest, just like the big guys. So what to do? By incorporating affordable yet effective audio solutions such as Message On Hold, Overhead Announcements, Background Music, and Podcasts, small businesses can match their larger competitors when it comes to brand awareness, customer communication, and customer satisfaction.

Message on Hold

First impressions are extremely important to small businesses. The chances of your Message On Hold being a prospect’s first impression of your business is likely, therefore should be capitalized on. By incorporating a professional and informative hold message into your business’s marketing tactics you can enhance the perceived image of your brand.  And during call transfers and peak hours, an effective on hold message has the potential to decrease caller hang-ups and keep callers on the line longer, ready to do business.

Small Business Message On Hold Ideas:

  • Tell callers about current or upcoming sales.
  • Explain what makes your business unique from competitors.
  • Answer FAQ’s.
  • Announce time-sensitive information like upcoming events or limited time offers.
  • Introduce new products.
  • Provide alternate forms of communication like where callers can find you on social media.

Podcast

A podcast is another word for audio blog. Content is delivered in an interesting, informative message that packages content and personality. Providing your target audience with useful podcasts will increase the opportunity to build a following and reach your clients and prospects. Podcasts are extremely affordable and effective. The more creative and engaging you are, the better!

 Small Business Podcast Ideas:

  • Answer FAQ’s
  • Interview an industry expert
  • Give information on upcoming events, products, or services.
  • Turn your company newsletter into a podcast. Talk about what has been going on at your company.
  • Give listeners a set of tips about a particular topic related to your business.

Overhead Announcements

For retail stores, or businesses where customers are often physically present, overhead announcements are an effective marketing tool used to target the already captive audience–in-store or onsite customers. This particular audience is already interested in what your business offers, so overhead announcements serve as the perfect marketing opportunity to further engage them.

Small Business Overhead Announcements Ideas:

  • Promote new products or services.
  • Market a product or service that can potentially cause a significant financial gain or higher profit margin.
  • Business branding
  • Announce current or upcoming sales.
  •  Inform customers about your business hours, or holiday schedules.

Background Music

For retail stores, or certain types of businesses, background music can be a productive element. If overhead announcements are not appropriate for a retail store, music is still a viable and desirable option. Music triggers emotional responses. In a retail business setting, the emotional response can enhance the shopping experience. Background music should be chosen based on the theme of your store, and should fit the interests of customer demographics, and the products and services you offer.

Background Music Information:

  • If the customer likes the music your business is playing, they are more likely to stay in your store longer and come back more often.
  • Music played loudly and at a fast tempo with increase perceived time duration. If customers are waiting in line at the register or fitting rooms, the wait time may seem longer than it actually is.
  • Softer and slower music are responded to more positively than louder and faster music.
  • Rhythm and tempo have the greatest influence on shopper experience.

Small businesses can captivate and impress potential customers using these and other audio marketing strategies.  If it can be communicated via sight, the same message can probably be communicated through sound, either to reinforce or to reach people in a non-visual setting. With professionally produced audio messages you will reach and influence more potential customers, stand out from the competition, and help your small business grow.

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IVR tips

Four Things To Avoid In Your IVR, Auto Attendant, and Voice Prompts

Voice prompt menus, IVR, and auto attendant greetings can be a helpful way to get more information to your customers. You can mention your business hours, current specials, a temporary store closing, or a charity drive that you’re going to be having in the near future. Since you may already have an idea about what you want to say on your phone script, here are a few things you will want to steer clear of:

  1. Too Many Options – It’s important to have enough options to cover the various departments you have for your customers to speak to, but you also want to keep in mind that listing too many on your automated menu can seem cluttered. The more you have listed, the more apt your are to have confused customers, and the more apt they are to end up in the wrong department anyway. If they don’t quite fit in with option one and keep listening for a better selection, but by option eight they’ve forgotten what option one even was, they may end up hitting any number just to speak to a representative. The whole point of these options is to get the customer to the right department the first time around, so make the choices clear and concise. Keep in mind who the callers are and what they tend to call for. The main menu should then be tailored to the needs of the caller.
  2. Cornering the Customer – When using an auto attendant always provide the option to speak to a representative. They may not have an account number available, or they may have questions about the information your menu is requesting from them. Allowing them to speak to a person can avoid unnecessary frustration for your customer. If they know that every time they call you they are going to end up frustrated before they can even talk to someone, they may begin to associate negative experiences with your company.
  3. Giving Outdated Information – Keeping the informaion contained with your phone script up-to-date is important to your customers. You won’t be wasting their time with out-dated information, which is always appreciated. Telling customers about the wrong hours of business, an outdated website, or a wrong address can be frustrating. Be sure if there are any changes in your company that you update the recordings accordingly. 
  4. Don’t Bury the Lead – The term “bury the lead” comes from journalism. In a news story, the “lead” is the first sentence, which concisely conveys the main point of the article. Same hold true for your phone system.  If 80% of your callers choose one option over the others, don’t bury that option in the list of choices.  Making the caller wade through other options is tidus and inefficient.  Order your menu choices in the priority which they are choosen.  Not sure which is choosen more?  As your administrator for a report, or stroll on down and talk to the agents.  They’ll let you know who’s calling and why.
  5. Your phone script should be clear, concise, up-to-date, and helpful. Customers generally call you because they are having an issue with something, and you don’t want to compound the problem — you want to solve it. Send the message to your customers that you consider their time as important as yours by never making them take longer on a phone call than necessary.
Categories
marketing message on hold

Tools to Support Message on Hold Production

Can’t remember who said it or sang it, but there’s a line, “I can’t wait until tomorrow, because I get better looking every day.” Well that’s the way I feel about my business. As a service oriented company, we’ve always done a good job at a good price with responsive quality service, and we’ve been rewarded in kind. But now with things getting tougher and more competitive, we need to keep striving to keep service up and costs down. It’s a challenge but an exciting challenge, especially with all the ideas and solutions available to consider and implement.

In the past couple of months alone we’ve launched a robust company-wide wiki and an esign solution for our customers, which promise to streamline our internal operations and our sales initiatives respectively.

Our wiki contains or will contain the entire known knowledge of our business universe (I’m feeling like Superman’s dad, Jor-El), searchable by a few keystrokes by anyone in our organization who has a question or needs to respond to a question about anything we do. No longer will we need to meet in office doorways for impromptu trips down memory lane to remember “What do we do when this happens?” “Where do I find this?” “What’s our policy on that?” I suppose I’ll miss some of those doorway meetings, but hey, there’s always the water cooler.

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Categories
customer experience healthcare IVR

5 Ways IVR Can Improve the Healthcare Industry

Interactive Voice response or IVR, is a form of human-computer interface which takes its input from voice and keypad commands. Compared to a phone menu, call tree, or automated attendant, an Interactive Voice Response system is put in place to actually receive data, process it, and deliver meaningful value to the customer.

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Categories
hospitality message on hold

Why Your Hotel Needs Message On Hold

Hotels_and_Message_On_Hold
For most of us, being on hold isn’t exactly at the top of the list of our favorite ways to spend a few minutes. In this day and age, however, it’s sometimes unavoidable as a call is being transferred or held in a queue. Keeping hold time interesting and informative for your guests by including key information in your Message On Hold program can improve your customer experience, and therefore affect your hotel ratings.
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licensing message on hold music

Myths & Misunderstandings About Music on Hold Licensing

Myth: “I can use this music for free because I found it on the internet”.

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Categories
customer experience IVR resources

Voice Assistant Technology and its Part in Customer Service

Once relegated to the realms of sci-fi and seemingly far-fetched movie plots, voice assistant technology is now a huge part of the customer service experience. It works inconjunction with your Interactive Voice Response, known as IVR, to increase efficiency in your company’s communication, making it ideal for customer experience strategies.

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Categories
customer experience resources tips

Why Custom Audio is Important to Your Phone System

So you want to know why custom audio is important to your phone system? Your phone system is the first impression many customers receive.  It’s the “front door” to your business and it needs a professional image. It’s one of the easiest ways to improve customer experience. In addition to improving your image, professional recordings create a feeling of security and capability from callers as they recognize businesses who prioritize the level of communication on call flows. Let’s take a look at three good reasons why meeting your customer’s expectations with custom audio speaks volumes about your professionalism and dedication to service (a key factor in customer satisfaction). 

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Categories
customer experience phone menu prompts resources

5 Ways Auto Attendant Can Increase Efficiency in Your Business

Every business owner knows the importance of accurate and timely communications to keep the company running smoothly. A missed call or message can mean a significant loss of revenue and possibly a lost client. The auto attendant on your phone system can help to solve this issue. The obvious feature not missing a call is just one benefit of this technology.

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Categories
branding IVR resources

3 Reasons IVR Can Make or Break Your Brand

IVR systems. We’ve all used it and we’ve all had experiences where we were trapped in a routing loop unable to reach a human being and stuck yelling at a “robot” we can barely understand. 

When was the last time you’ve had an experience like that? How did it make you feel about the brand who provided that experience to you? Probably not good. 

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