10 Rules of Auto-Attendants (Part 8)

This post is guaranteed to be legalese-free!

Over and over we call companies that have filled their Aut0-Attendant messages with legal disclaimers and notices. It creates a very skeptical caller, and it frustrates the true purpose of the Aut0-Attendant. Which is to quickly and efficiently route your call to the proper destination.

But like the old saying goes “The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away.”

Once again, I give you Melanie Polkosky and her 8th Rule of Auto-Attendants (From “The Hooptedoodle of Phone“):

8. Avoid legal explanations: True, legalese serves a protective function, but it also characterizes an organization in a generally unflattering light.

The most common reason we hear that companies include legal jargon is because they don’t know if they have to or not!

Please find out.

In some situations, the requirement to include the legal disclaimer is based on the length of the message.

Yes, it may depend on your state. Yes, it probably depends on what legal statement you are discussing. But there are resources for finding this out, and not just having to default to include it.

Don’t believe that you have to include a legal disclaimer just because that’s what you’ve always heard on other phone systems. There is no rule that your Auto-Attendant has to sound like every other company.

Consider being a refreshing difference!

 

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