Head over to GM Voices proper and check out our new white papers page. You’ll find CEO Marcus Graham’s “Speech Recognition, the Brand and the Voice,” which also appeared in William Meisel’s “Speech in the User Interface” collection. (See a short video on that book here.) This entry outlines how to choose a voice for your speech application.
Also included is “Building a Better (Voice) Brand,” tips and tricks for improving your automated voice and customer experience.
We’ll keep you faithful blog readers apprised of our latest epic screeds as we produce ‘em.
You Have a Story to the Marketplace. We Have the Skills to Help You Tell It Better.
Creative marketing and sales support doesn’t always come easily or affordably for B2B operations. It requires a unique thinking and technical skill set, as well as access to resources that are unavailable to many companies.
Bottom line: Your business has a unique value proposition; a story to the marketplace that’s a little different than your competitors. Through whatever means are available to you, you get new business whenever you’re able to communicate that story effectively to prospects. But allow yourself a moment of introspection. Are you telling that story as well as you can? Are you telling it consistently at your various marketing touch points?
GM Voices specializes in what we call Business Storytelling. It’s a combination of core competencies—skills that are pretty specialized when considering the business landscape—that help our customers capture the eyes and ears of an increasingly crowded marketplace.
What we offer:
Professionally-Recorded Voice
It’s our bread and butter, baby. GM Voices offers any type of branded voice for any targeted initiative. Professional narration sets you apart from competitors and keeps your message fresh for long periods of time (or extended sales cycles). Our voices can accompany any visual format, or simply stand alone. And we offer this service in 100 international languages and dialects.
Live Video
With the equipment, technical know-how and a travel-friendly team, GM Voices offers professional video solutions that won’t break your budget. We make interviews and testimonials more engaging, and make corporate video seem anything but.
Multimedia
Retire that tired old PowerPoint deck. GM Voices breathes new life into your content through design and animation in all formats and software suites: Final Cut, Flash or even an animated PowerPoint turned into a video file. Files outputted for use on YouTube, Web, on-demand hosting (Brainshark) and more.
Creative Scripting and Consulting
We have some creative thinkers in our production facility. Regardless of message or approach (straight laced, quirky, in the middle), use our creative resources to craft your narration, dialogue or acted scenarios. No comparable vendor will offer these inclusive services so economically.
Give us a call at 770.752.4500 to work out the details of your next go-to-market story.
Best for International Applications, Sometimes Neutral “American” English isn’t the Way to Go
English is the generally accepted international language of commerce. Outside of a country’s native language, English is almost always the top alternative for IVR voice prompts and marketing/business narration. But the approach should be considered carefully. GM Voices’ English deployment recommendation varies depending on the calling audience of the application.
For North American apps, we almost universally recommend a neutral, unaccented “Midwestern American” English voice. If you browse our Weekly Session voice actors on our voice library, you’ll notice that most everyone conforms to this standard. It’s the style least likely to offend someone’s sensibilities anywhere in the country.
But the American English style doesn’t work for non-U.S. applications, even with many English-language callers. To this end, GM Voices offers a great variety of international accented English dialects; some predictable, some surprising. Certainly, UK English is an important dialect in Europe, and GM Voices offers other accented English voices to best connect to English-as-a-first-language callers: Australian, Irish, even Canadian. Some others wouldn’t immediately come to mind, but do make sense; English in Indian, Singapore and Swiss accents. These countries have enough English-language callers to use that language on automation, but require a localized variation to better connect with callers.
It should be noted that GM Voices uses locally-authentic voice actors for every language and dialect, the exact opposite of what this young lady accomplishes all herself. Give this video a watch and note how different dialects would be essential for local caller acceptance.
Dozens of voice actors record in our studios each week, providing clients a consistent voice for any application. More than 90 languages and dialects are offered, with hundreds of voice actors comprising our roster.
We invented the term and concept of Voice Branding, a single-voice customer experience consistent with a company’s brand image.
We pride ourselves on being great storytellers, and we hope this forum helps us spin a few yarns and make some noise. Visit our home base: www.gmvoices.com.
