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:
- 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.
- 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.
- Giving Outdated Information – Keeping the informaion contained with your phone script up-to-date is important to your customers.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 Telling customers about the wrong hours of business, an outdated website, or a wrong address can be frustrating.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.
- 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.
- 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.