As I approached the elevators to head to my 14th floor room of the hotel I was staying in recently, I was met with this elevator selector. Someone on the design team of Otis felt 100% positive that this was designed clearly. So that I would have no trouble at all choosing whether I wanted to go up or down.

You may think so as well. But look closely…

If you wanted to go Up, do you push the button that the Up arrow is pointing to? Or the button beside the Up arrow?

It kinda looks a little circular to me, and that could get frustrating!

And here’s what that has to do with phone systems.

Too often, the Auto-Attendant is setup on the fly by whoever is installing the phone system. Sure, they’ve tried to get the business owner or manager to tell them what options to program, and what to say, but the truth is, the business owner is thinking “Phone System” at that point, not “Caller Experience“. See, those are two different parts of the brain!

How many times have you called a phone system that sounds like this: “Thank you for calling XYZ Corp, where we really value your business! If you know your party’s 4 digit extension, you may enter it at anytime. Please press 1 for Sales, Please press 2 for Service, Please press 3 for Parts, Please press 4 for accounting, Please press 5 for Human Resources, or press 0 to reach an operator. Press 9 to repeat this message.”

That’s even hard to write, must less listen to over the phone! And here’s why.

When you give the number before the option, I have to hold that number in my head while I listen to the option, and analyze whether that’s the option I need or not. After listening above, I’ve got a total of  7 options in my head, and they are all jumbled together. Because I’m not calling to push a number…I’m calling to go to a department.

If you list the department first, followed by the option (“to reach sales, press 1″) the department name “clicks” with what I’m looking for in my head, making it a very easy choice to press 1. If I don’t need the Sales department, I can simply forget about that option all together, and move on to the next one.

There’s a time to answer the phones with a live person. And there’s a time to use an Auto-attendant. (do you know which one to use when?)
When you decide to use an Auto-Attendant, make sure the options are clear, and easy for your caller to understand. Not confusing like our elevator. If you confuse them, they won’t know which way is up! (and they’ll go for the last option they hear…pressing “0″!)

So what does your Auto-Attendant sound like from the Caller’s perspective? You might want to use our Caller Experience Evaluation to find out!

I mean, who are they kidding, is your call really “very important to us”?

by Frank Halliwell ..
Jimboomba, Australia
Public Domain

Monday I was looking at the features of a customer’s phone system at the manufacturer’s website, and they had this to say about their On-Hold message:

The InterStellar Phone System (name changed to protect the guilty. C.H.) gives you the opportunity to have music playing while a caller is on hold. Best of all you can insert interruptions during each recording in order to play a message.

You’ve experienced this. You’re On-Hold, listening to the music or messaging, when all the sudden “click”, the music is interuppted, and hope springs up within you that your call is going to be answered. Only to have your hopes dashed by the message: “Your call is important to us, please continue to hold”.

Can you say dissapointment?

I was On-Hold with a company last week that interrupted their On-Hold music every 10 seconds with this! Never do this to your callers.

Just because you use an Auto-Attendant doesn’t mean it has to be a poor caller experience.

Want to know what your caller experience is like? Why don’t you try our Caller Experience Evaluation? It’s like climbing inside your customer’s head, and hearing your business from their perspective. Very informative!

From a recent client of this:

Thanks for getting the report to me as fast as you did. I will be correcting a lot of the concerns you pointed out. Thanks again!

Don’t give your callers the run-around.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Recently we were asked to do a Caller Experience Evaluation for a client who told us that most of their callers to this phone number would be potential clients, as existing clients were given direct access phone numbers. When we evaluated their greeting, we found that the first two options given were:

• “If you have an active user account, please press 1″, and
• “If you are calling to re-activate your account, please press 2″

Both of these options were only of interest to EXISTING clients, not potential new clients. If a prospective client was calling in, they had to wait until Option 3 (“To learn more about our service…”) or Option 4 (“If you’re ready to purchase…). While some may hang on the phone long enough to get to those, the client was missing out on engaging those prospects right up front.

Be sure your phone system is speaking to the caller, in the language the caller speaks…and is giving them the options they are looking for right up front. Prospective customers are sometimes skittish…don’t give them any reason to hang up the phone!