The Founding of GM Voices Highlights a Year of Important Moments

President Reagan is sworn in for his second term. Hulk Hogan and Mr. T team up at the very first Wrestlemania. New Coke debuts and fails. Live Aid brings our most talented (and mulleted) musical personalities together to raise money for Ethiopian famine relief. Everyone agrees that Back to the Future is awesome. It is 1985, a year of many cultural landmarks.

Perhaps less celebrated, but nearly as important, is the founding of GM Voices. It’s 1985, and voice automation is still in its infancy—no IVR, TTS, GPS. Actually, acronyms had not even been invented yet. But what did exist was after-hours messaging—“our business is closed.” And it all sounded bad. Enter one man. Like Marty McFly, Marcus Graham came with a vision of the future; a day when branded caller experiences would be omnipresent, a day when companies would have no choice but turn their customer relationships over to automation.

Enter one business—a Rich’s department store in Atlanta. Marcus, a former DJ at Georgia State University and as aspiring voice talent, calls Rich’s after hours and is shocked by what he hears. “This recording is not fitting of the Rich’s brand,” he thinks. Then, a commercial breakthrough: “I can record their messaging in my buddy’s studio, make it sound professional, and I can probably make some money.” And so it was, and so it shall ever be.

Since 1985, GM Voices has exploded as voice automation proliferated across customer-facing technologies—telephony, telematics, business narration and multimedia. The Back to the Future series, while entertaining, was not a predictive force—why did it feature hovering skateboards and not IVRs fronted by natural-sounding, brand-consistent voice prompts from GM Voices? It is a slight we often think about.

Watch this video rumination on 1985, the year it all got started.

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Client dial-in ensures the best read style for your application. Also: How the GM Voices creative team cajoles voice actors for persona auditions.

A unique benefit to working with GM Voices for brand-consistent voice prompts and phone greetings is our production telephone patch. Our client dial-in allows customers to listen in and/or direct their talent’s recording session. For people who are really keyed into Voice Branding, this provides peace of mind and opens the door to the “Hollywood” aspect of GM Voices. It’s just cool to ride shotgun in a studio session, y’know?

During an expanded Voice Branding initiative, GM Voices will audition voice actors from a persona report, a document that includes vocal characteristics and a biographical summary of a fictional virtual representative. This helps our voice actors “become the persona” after a pre-session reading. But, if that wasn’t enough, our creative team sits in during the recording sessions to ensure a brand-consistent performance that matches the specifications of the persona report. It’s a mutually beneficial experience for both our “office” employees and our talent; the office types learn the strengths of our performers, and the performers learn more about the corporate aspect of Voice Branding. Basically, it’s a thorough process that guarantees that the audio delivered for customer review was recorded with a lot of thought and care. It’s these little extra steps that put GM Voices above the competitive set.

If you missed it a few blog posts ago, check out our persona samples page. Here, you can listen to how our voice actors change their styling for three persona examples.

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An open letter to every company with automated customer contacts. This is who we are. This is what we do better than any company in the world.

Hello,

You have happened upon the official blog of GM Voices. We are the global leader in professionally-recorded voice prompts for IVR, auto attendant, speech recognition and other automated voice systems. We have provided natural-sounding recorded voice for phone greetings and voice messaging for over 25 years. Other businesses may specialize in voice recording, but none are so uniquely positioned to improve your automated customer experience. We do what what we do specially for customer contacts and marketing voice messaging.

Our business is one of process perfection. IVR phone systems require frequent updates. That’s why we offer next-day turnarounds of ready-to-load audio files in any format. We work in a global economy, where customers shop for quality of product and experience, disregarding borders and the past. That’s why we record in 100 languages and dialects, all in-country and in-context. We’re attuned to the fact that your corporate image is wholly unique. We’re attuned to the fact that your customers are wholly unique. That’s why our roster of professional voice actors are trained, certified and available by the hundreds.

Our QA process and audio expertise is thorough and incomparable. Our audio engineers were educated specifically for our business. Voice files are edited to sound crisp, clear and professional, every time. Our archiving ensures that any audio update sounds seamless compared to previous orders.

We help companies communicate with world-class Voice Brands. We affirm your customers’ decisions to do business with you in the f irst place. We help your application achieve a higher rate of caller containment, lowering your expenses. We record for expansive and deep call menus, and quick-and-easy auto attendants and on-hold messaging.

We’re available right now to take your call (770.752.4500). We’re available to elevate your customer communications.

Any language, any media, any market, any application, any platform provider. We’re GM Voices. We’re your voice to the world.

Listen to Our Voices (Full Media Player)

Listen to Quick Samples

Listen to Voice Persona Styles

Listen to Business Narration Samples

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Bringing the Voice Prompt Magic to NYC August 2-4

He wears this every day to work.

Indeed, there is a magical component that goes into developing world-class Voice Brands, editing voice prompts better than anyone in the biz, and localizing speech applications. Usually, we keep the wizard gear at home (in favor of our patented green shirts), but we make exceptions for special occasions like SpeechTEK.

This year, GM Voices is attending SpeechTEK with a wizarding theme. Why? GM Voices has the magic touch to help your application succeed in any market. With naturally-recorded voice in 100 languages and dialects, GM Voices localizes speech technology for instant credibility, whether you’re looking for U.S. English or Mandarin Chinese.

As part of SpeechTEK’s “Passport for Prizes” raffle, we’ll be giving away a “Wizarding World of Harry Potter Prize Pack.” We may also give you one if you can say that five times fast. The WWoHPPP consists of two (2) tickets to Universal Studios so you can check out the new Harry park, four (4) movie passes so you can see the new Harry movie in November, and a cauldron (literally) of assorted magical swag (because you have kids).

Stop by booth 409 and talk to the friendly sorcerers and sorceresses from GM Voices. We’ll make your application a magical customer experience!

Also of note: We’ll be traveling with our very own Professor Moody, GMV audio engineer Andrew Bates. We take this seriously, ya’ll!

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Save the date with GM Voices’ safeguard for Voice Branding consistency.

GM Voices’ bread and buttah is the IVR application. This is for a reason. They’re expansive and feature deep menu trees. Probably more importantly, they evolve. New options are added. Existing options are changed. People, locations, information… it’s constantly becoming something slightly different. As such, companies constantly need to update their application with new voice prompts. This is why GM Voices is the best option.

GM Voices offers dozens of its most talented voice actors in weekly recording sessions. Our talent record on the same day each day week, ensuring timely and consistent updates whenever called for. These voice actors are also locked into long-term contracts with GM Voices, ensuring consistency across the life of the application. A consistent Voice Brand has never been easier or more economical.

The concept is pretty easy. Say your preferred voice talent records on Tuesday. Just email your script Monday, the talent records Tuesday, and you get your ready-to-load voice prompts on Wednesday. Lather, rinse, repeat, repeat, repeat every Monday. Easy, no?

It helps these complex IVR apps provide a more pleasant caller experience. It’s a jungle in there anyway, so it’s good to have a voice guide you can depend on, who’s there on the phone at every prompt and in the studio every week.

Listen to samples from all our weekly voice actors at http://www.gmvoices.com/listen

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The editing bone is connected to the inflection bone.

Voice prompts are tricky beasts. These short, concise audio files can give you relief or a big headache. It all depends on who’s behind the microphone. And you can’t discount the talent of a professional audio engineer. If your IVR sounds bad, people will hang up or they will press 0 and try to get a live agent. It all snowballs into the perfect storm. You frustrate customers or you inflate your payroll. Or, you can just record your system the right away and not worry about it. GM Voices recommends this option.

So, what goes into a good voice prompt? First, you need a voice actor. These people are paid to sound awesome, speak clearly and be professional. GM Voices offers a huge number of people of this trade.

Next, you need the right environment. If you record your accountant over the phone from a noisy cubicle, there will be audio interference, mumbling, sharpness and generalized catastrophe. GM Voices records from state-of-the art studios. High-tech equipment, crystal-clear sound.

You also need a little post-production. After all, nobody is perfect. Even our voice actors stumble. They inhale, exhale and embellish with audible imperfections. Our engineers remove all these extras, resulting in a clean and smooth audio file. Even through the receiver into the ears of your customers, they sound great.

Finally, a word about inflection and concatenation. Most of the time when an automated voice speaks your phone number or account balance, it sounds robotic and unnatural. Sometimes it’s so distracting it’s hard to tell what’s being said. GM Voices strings these numbers and words together (concatenation) so they sound seamless with the other recorded files. It’s about tonal shifts and different inflections. It makes a big difference.

If you record your voice prompts correctly, you’ll increase caller containment and improve your caller experience.

There you have it: The anatomy of a (good) voice prompt.

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