Video Best Practice Series from Marcus Graham
GM Voices recently completed a series of informational video interviews on Voice Branding topics such as auto attendant, IVR, and of course, professional voice actors for telephony. Each topic is collected on our main website. These are easy to understand, high-level overviews of the fundamental tenets of creating a great caller experience for your customers. Check them out over your morning cup o’ joe.
Here’s a sample:
Not Over the Top, Not Amateur; Getting a Sound That’s ‘Just Right’
Recent current events have caused GM Voices to look inward and evaluate the craft of its offering. Two voices representing opposite ends of the spectrum have made our radar.
The Radio Announcer
One of these is Ted Williams, the “Homeless Man with Golden Voice.” Williams, a former Columbus, OH radio jockey, became a national sensation when a viral video of his voice garnered millions of views in just days. Standing off the highway, Williams “worked for his money,” giving a man with a video camera a sample of his voice for a dollar. Dozens of TV appearances later, Williams was offered an announcing gig with the Cleveland Cavaliers, and was later hired by MSNBC to provide voice overs for an ad campaign.
The Non-Professional
Through a LinkedIn post, we heard about Kiki Baessell, a Google employee recently selected as the voice of Google Voice. Said the Google Voice Blog: “Kiki has absolutely no experience doing professional voiceover, which is exactly why we picked here – we wanted a pleasant, familiar voice that we wouldn’t mind listening to each time we called to check voicemail.”
The Professional Voice Actor for Telephony
We think Google’s stance reflects a basic misinterpretation of Voice Branding for telephony. Their selection of Kiki is a conscious overcorrection of the “radio voice;” a sound that works great for that medium, but is grating over the phone. At GM Voices, we record natural-sounding voice actors that help companies provide a better customer experience.
GM Voices CEO Marcus Graham posted this response to the news of Kiki’s selection, addressing the differences between a non-professional, a radio announcer, and a voice actor for telephony applications:
“On some occasions, you’ll find an internal voice that works well in an app. I recall a few voice talent who actually got started as an internal voice and now earn a good living as a talent. But it’s like any other specialty or craft. You might get lucky using someone down the hall to do the work reasonably well, but it very rarely makes economic or operational sense. That’s why you don’t get the promotions guy who speaks Spanish to do your translation work. There are too many variables for an amateur to get it right day-in and day-out. Google’s shear size and possible volume may lend itself to an internal solution, but this effort seems a bit too amateurish.
While the old ‘radio announcer’ has enunciation that is unnatural and a little hokey, you can understand it. An amateur is on the other end of the spectrum with enunciation that is undefined enough to make it difficult for the listener to understand the message or direction. The professional voice actor provides the ideal middle ground of sincere believability, concise diction and consistent, on-going availability.
BTW, voice actors don’t sound like real people. They sound like people “think” real people sound. That may sound silly, but think about it. A great performance by a voice actor is typically more animated than a real person speaking. There is no facial or bodily expressiveness. The voice has got to carry the entire message. Using real people in productions such as radio, TV and video is great for validation and credibility, but they don’t normally carry the entire communication effort. More often, you’ll see/hear a voice actor narrator type telling the story with ‘real people’ clips supporting the narrative line with personal anecdotes. The heavy lifting is usually by a seasoned voice actor.
I like the sound that only seasoned voice actors and directors can bring to the application. But I do, of course, have a vested interest in this issue.”
Sample some of our voice actors to hear the distinction.
Also, check out this video of Marcus speaking on the subject:
GM Voices Releases Everyone Connects (Enterprise Connect, GM Voices, Avaya); Unified Communications and Popular Music Changed Forever
In addition to being the foremost producer of natural-sounding voice prompts in the world, GM Voices is also among the best business storytellers. And lately, our preferred medium is the music video.
This time, our story is about Chad, an intelligent (if somewhat geeky) IT professional who learns about the best Unified Communications solutions by going to Enterprise Connect (formerly VoiceCon). Chad finds the best system solution for his business, Avaya, and then discovers the best professional service to finalize his application (GM Voices, naturally).
Check it out and see why Rolling Stone magazine called Everyone Connects “the greatest music video since Thriller.”*
*Rolling Stone did not say this… yet.
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.
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)
They say a picture is worth a thousands words. For our SpeechTEK 2010 pictures, here are several of those words: awesome, grown, man, in, a, wizard, costume.
When GM Voices goes to an industry show, we go all out. Business casual? Pleez. The hot new corporate fashions are all about wizard couture. So, we set off to SpeechTEK with a Harry Potter theme; as in, “GM Voices’ natural-sounding voice prompts in any language give your company a magical customer experience.” In case that wasn’t immediately apparent to you.
Here are several choice pictures detailing our wizarding exploits in the Big Apple.
How will we top this for SpeechTEK 2011? Transformers? (Robots that transform into a VoIP telephone system?)
Six GM Voices Preferred Voice Actors show you how they adjust their performances for different voice persona biographies.
Just like you see in movies, an actor assumes a different identity to meet the requirements of a role. It’s no different at GM Voices, where our voice actors tailor their delivery to best suit a company’s brand and target audience.
We’d like you to check out our new voice persona sample landing page, where this process is demonstrated with six of our best weekly voice actors. Listen to the different vocal characteristics of each style, how they match the biographies of their persona roles. This is the Hollywood component of GM Voices, and it’s essential to helping individual businesses achieve unique Voice Brands.
GM Voices works with the most talented voice actors in the industry. They don’t just have pleasant voices; they can create characters that meet the challenges of any company and any industry.
Check it out. Neat, no?
The Man. The Myth. The ‘King of IVR.’ His name is Champ Cash, and he is but one of the many salespeople GM Voices assists with complimentary sales tools.
Results may not be exactly the same, but GM Voices is committed to helping IVR platform providers get meetings, add credibility and close deals. Watch our humorous video and head over to www.gmvoices.com/americandream for free VisionClips. Think of us for your next opportunity.
The Official Voice of FreeSWITCH to Attend Telephony Developers Conference
August is shaping up to a busy month at GM Voices. We’re doing double duty the first week, sending team members to SpeechTEK in NYC and ClueCon in Chicago. If you’re part of the Windy City open source contingent, make sure to check out GMV President Darrell Hensley’s presentation on helping FreeSWITCH developers step into the enterprise space to target large, multinational opportunities.
Additionally, GM Voices persona Callie will be attending the show with our marketing film crew. For the unenlightened, Callie is the official voice of FreeSWITCH, a GM Voices preferred voice actor (weekly updates at our most economical rates), and one of the best overall voices on our roster.
Sample Callie’s smooth IVR and narration samples here, here and here.
We’ll see you at ClueCon in Chicago!
(Da Bears.)
Manager Sent to India, Laughs Ensue
Showing just how ingrained the far-flung call center has become in our culture, I have for your evening entertainment consideration “Outsourced,” a sitcom about an Indian call center. Just think: Now you can go home from your call center job and watch a wackier, perhaps slightly more South Asian version of your own life.
Sarcasm aside, it looks pretty funny. The zany ensemble is immediately reminiscent of “Community.” Hey, with Steve Carell leaving “The Office” after next season (and the show being placed in serious jeopardy), maybe we have natural replacement for NBC’s Thursday-night lineup.
I would be remiss to mention that if you in fact manage a call center (American, Indian or otherwise), GM Voices can front your IVR with a natural-sounding voice in any language or dialect.
Take a look at the trailer. What do you think?
