Voice mail: friend or foe?
By John J Keough -- Industrial Distribution, 8/1/1998
Has something like this ever happened to you? You're in an airport waiting for a flight and you call your office to check your voice mail. The third message is the call you've been waiting for from a major prospect. Only the caller speaks so fast when he gives his number that you can't get it. So you replay it over and over.Or you get a voice mail in which the message is so long, you practically fall asleep before the caller gets to the point and then leaves his number in such a rapid fire delivery you can't understand it.
The Wall Street Journal recently reported that in order to avoid having to replay his messages left by speed talkers, one executive asks callers to "leave your message twice.'' It's not a bad idea.
Welcome to the world of voice mail, a system so under attack that some companies are starting to wonder if it's worth putting in. In fact, just a few months ago, a distributor we know removed initial voice mail from his company so the telephone is now answered by a receptionist. "When people call a company, they want to talk to a real, live person who can connect them to the right contact," he says.
Of course a receptionist can make a mistake in transcribing a number, but the chances of that are less than a garbled voice mail, he believes.
Voice mail is often listed as one of the major complaints of consumers and industrial customers in any survey that's been undertaken.
It's not surprising that at a recent distribution convention, the keynote speaker received a huge ovation when he said that the worst mistake a company can make is to put their salespeople on voice mail.
A few months ago, I tried to reach my bank about a problem with my account. The phone was not answered by a person but by a robotic voice who offered me nine different options. I was bounced around from one to another and never did speak to a person. It was frustrating, to say the least.
It's no different in distribution. After calling a distributor friend, I eventually was put into his voice mail. Since he wasn't there, I transferred to his assistant. She wasn't there so I went into someone else's voice mail. Get the picture?
Don't get me wrong. Voice mail, when used effectively, can be an important communication tool. But here's just one person's opinion: always have a human answer your telephone and give the caller the option of transferring to voice mail. If you want your salespeople or customer service representatives to receive detailed information, you can't rely solely on voice mail.
And if you are going to be out of the office on business, update your voice mail to let callers know. Or if you're leaving a message talk slowly and succinctly. It sounds simple but it's good business sense.
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