Selecting The Right Persona For Your Speech System
|
Dr Bednall says a lot of effort goes into selecting the right automated voice talent to suit the corporate image of the organisation.
She says before going in search of your talent, companies need to work out the demographics of your customer base. “To work out the character profile for your automated voice, you need to take into account things like the age, accent, gender, and intensity that the voice talent should project.
Next the profile of the voice has to be created. “It is crucial to create a profile for the voice which helps the voice talent create the right tone and voice needed. This includes things like gender, age, background, attitude and many more personality traits that reflect your brand.”
Once that’s done, Dr Bednall puts the profile before a committee to determine which voice type would work, and then reaches out to prospective voice talents to match it.
However, there are a lot of other things to consider beside the voice.
“You can’t look at a persona as a stand-alone piece. The voice is just one part of the overall persona. The prompts, dialogues, etc., all have to match the voice. You even have to look at the on-hold music or announcements. It’s all about how you use the voice in the best and most natural way.”
Can small firms with small budgets afford professionals?
According to Ms Bednall, they can, particularly when using the Inference suite of products.
“Not only are our systems installed in a matter of weeks but changes and modifications to the system and to dialogue and prompts can be made in-house via a web interface. This eliminates the need for outside professionals and cuts back on costs.“
Should these automated voice personae be attributed with more personality?
“Provided it isn’t over the top, its ok. Give your voice a name, hobbies and so on if need be but remember what your business is. For a company with a lot of repeat callers, there’s an opportunity to get more personal, especially if they are in the entertainment field.
“However, it wouldn’t be right for a company in the financial services sector where people are simply wanting to check their account balance.”
Every company implementing speech should be looking from some expertise in persona development from their provider, but the process of developing a quality persona does not have have to be particularly expensive or time consuming if the right approach is adopted.
|
