Best Practices for Your Custom Automated Attendant Greetings

Callers’ first impression with your on hold message is important. Remember what we always say? “You don’t get a second chance on first impressions; make sure you put your best foot forward.”  Well, the same is true for your telephone system’s automated attendant prompts! Having an automated attendant installed in your telephone system gives you all the more reason to make sure that you’re helping the customers rather than leave them feeling frustrated with your seemingly unending message, or confusing instructions.

Learn about the best practices when it comes to custom auto-attendant messages, and you’ll thank us later.

Remember the rule of 3

The rule of 3 basically means that, ideally, you should not present more 3 levels of options or menu to your callers. According to studies, customers are disheartened when they have to go through more than 3 levels. Don’t get too overwhelmed by providing a lot of options because no matter how many departments and extensions you have, it won’t matter anymore the moment the caller hangs up. Customers simply have no time to listen to all those lists, and chances are, by the time the whole recording is finished, they’ve forgotten which button they have to press, or which instruction they need to follow.

Provide an escape route right away

Let your callers get off the hook as quickly as possible, so the first options of your menu should be the information that most of them need or ask for. The goal of having a well-crafted automated attendant greeting is to get the most number of calls in the fewest number of prompts possible.

Apply the Mini-Skirt Theory

The Mini-Skirt Theory is popular among blogs and articles. It means that your write-up should be short enough to be interesting, but long enough to cover the details. However, we at The Original On Hold, Inc. figured that we can also apply this style in writing on hold and auto-attendant messages because we believe that by adding redundant, irrelevant words, the message will eventually feel insincere, losing all its meaning.

Sound professional

See to it that your automated attendant voice recording sounds the best that it can be. Don’t let people who don’t have the talent be the voice of your telephone auto attendant voice recording as it will only result to a major disaster. Invest in a professional, custom automated attendant greeting, whom can speak clearly, and with the tone and style that will reflect your company’s image.

Don’t forget about the FAQs

Make sure you include self-help options or FAQs in your auto-attendant message. By giving them the link to your website’s FAQ, not only did you reduce the number of calls that your agent has to attend to, you also saved some of your caller’s precious time.