Never lead with the wrong word
This is the big one.Yes, you can see the dentist on Monday morning. Doctor Iyer is available on Tuesday and Thursday.Read on a page, that corrects itself. Heard on a phone, the caller stopped listening after “yes” and is already reaching for their diary. Put the answer first:
Monday is not possible — the dentist is here Tuesday and Thursday.
Say it the way you would say it
Written shorthand does not survive being read aloud.
The supplied instructions already cover titles and brackets. If you are quoting
prices or times a lot, add:
Keep replies short, then shorter
Two sentences is plenty. A caller cannot skim, and a long answer means either they interrupt you or they stop listening — usually both. The supplied instructions ask for one or two sentences. If yours are still long, the cause is normally your agent instructions telling it to be thorough, which is good advice for a website and bad advice for a phone.Do not describe things nobody can see
No lists, no links, no buttons, no “as shown below”, no “click here”. This is in the supplied instructions, and it is the first thing to re-add if you rewrite them from scratch. If you need to send somebody a link, the agent should offer to have it sent by message rather than reading a URL aloud. Nobody has ever successfully written down a URL from a phone call.Let people finish
People pause mid-sentence on the phone. They are checking a calendar, or thinking, or looking for their card. An agent that treats the first half-second of silence as their turn will talk over them. If callers are being cut off, say so plainly:Give it a first line that sounds like your business
First words on the Voice page is what the caller hears the instant they connect. Answer the way your staff answer.
Short, names the business, invites them to speak. Anything longer and they will
talk over it — which is not a failure, but it does mean nobody heard it.
Pick the voice by listening
The voice list is on the Voice page. Names tell you nothing useful, so press play and hear one. Then set it, ring the number, listen to a full sentence, and change it if it grates. Do it with your actual greeting, not “hello” — the sound of a voice reading your business name is what your customers will hear a hundred times. There are two tabs, Standard and Premium, with the per-minute price on each. Premium voices are warmer and cost more per minute; standard voices are what most lines run on and nobody complains. Listen to both before deciding the difference is worth the difference — on a short, transactional call it often is not, and on a line where the voice is the brand it often is. Both tiers are available on every plan, the free trial included. Try the expensive one early — it is easier to decide it is not worth the money once you have heard it than to wonder. Ignore the language a voice is listed under when you are judging it. Every voice speaks every language we support; that label is the accent it carries, not a limit on what it can say.When to change the model
Rarely. The recommended one is chosen for how quickly it starts speaking, which matters more on a call than almost anything else. Change it if the agent is following your instructions loosely — ignoring a rule you have stated plainly, or inventing details. Some models hold a long instruction better than others. Change it back if replies get slower; a thoughtful answer that arrives late sounds like a bad line, not a careful assistant.Every model in the voice list is fast enough to hold a conversation. That is
the filter — a model that pauses to think is not offered here at all, however
good it is at writing.
Test it the way it will actually be used
From a mobile, outdoors
From a mobile, outdoors
Not from a quiet room on speakerphone. Wind, traffic and a poor signal are
the normal conditions for a customer ringing a business.
With an accent the agent will hear
With an accent the agent will hear
If your customers speak Marathi-accented English, test in Marathi-accented
English. Testing in the accent the agent finds easiest tells you nothing.
Interrupting deliberately
Interrupting deliberately
Talk over it mid-sentence. It should stop. If it keeps going, callers will
hang up — being talked over by a recording is the exact thing people hate
about phone systems.
Saying something halfway and stopping
Saying something halfway and stopping
“I’d like to…” then a three-second pause. See whether it waits or jumps
in. This is the single most common real-world failure and the easiest to
miss when you are testing carefully.