Voice Casting Episode 4 Transcript

Welcome to the fourth episode of Voice Casting, a show designed to help you pick the perfect voice for your project.

Last week, we focused in on accents and dialects. This week, our topic is part one of two for small business telephone systems.

If your business is growing, there comes a point in time when you'll need to consider acquiring a small business telephone system. In this episode, you’ll discover 5 great tips for what you should be evaluating in a new phone system.

Before we dive into the specifics, I want to review some phone system basics.

Most business telephone systems have two parts, the phone server, a piece of hardware that receives inbound calls and routes the calls to the appropriate extension, and the telephones themselves which allow your staff to accept calls, transfer calls and conduct conference calls.

While names like Nortel and Avaya come to mind, there are more cost-effective solutions that do the job just as well, such as the TalkSwitch phone systems. Regardless of the brand, there are 5 standard criteria to consider when evaluating a business telephone system.

1. Usability:

First and foremost, you want a phone system that is easy to operate. The telephones themselves should have a familiar feel with the ability to complete everyday functions such as placing a call on-hold, muting a call, and increasing and/or decreasing the volume level. You'll also want to ensure that the phones themselves have both a handset as well as a jack for a headset.

2. Rich Feature Set:

Most businesses will require a main menu, call routing, and voicemail. Each member on staff will be equipped with their own extension and voicemail box. Your IT guy or gal should be able to set-up a new phone line or make any adjustments to the system settings by logging into the telephone system software. The software should be mature, and again, easy to use. Read reviews from other business owners or IT people about how the software performs and which features are included. By IT, I mean Internet Technology.

3. Storage:

Regular business hours are from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM. That means that the office is closed for 16 hours per day. If you receive calls from multiple time zones, it's likely a lot of calls will end up going to voicemail. With this knowledge, invest in extra storage for voicemail.

4. Customization:

Give your callers a strong first impression with a customized telephone system greeting. The auto-attendant is the technical name for the voice you hear during the main menu. You should hire a professional to record the auto-attendant and deliver an MP3 or WAV file to you that you'll then upload into the telephone system. While you’re at it, have the voice talent record a general voicemail message, office is closed message, holiday hours message and most importantly on-hold messages.

5. Upgradable / Expandable:

A basic phone system will include two phone lines. Before long, you'll want to expand to four lines. If your business continues to grow, you'll want the flexibility to easily add another four lines.

Be sure that the phone system you select has the ability to expand the number of phone lines. I'd also include the ability to plug in a CD player in your "expandable" requirements. The TalkSwitch lets you either upload on-hold messages or simply play the on-hold messages from a CD player that's plugged in. Having your on-hold messages on CD lets you easily update your messages, play current promotions or share timely news relating to your business. For more research on the power of on-hold marketing, read this document.

Final Thoughts

By jotting down your requirements, you'll be armed with a list of specific needs. Your requirements list will also help you avoid getting bogged down in technical specifications and detailed feature lists keeping you focused when you're doing research on which phone system to go with.

In our next episode, we’ll talk about how to script your phone system and select a voice over talent for your business phone system.

We’ll see you next week.