The Story

If you haven’t noticed yet, I like to ask “why?” A lot. About everything. I think it’s healthy to question our traditions, standard approaches, and all the stuff we take for granted.

One thing that’s been under my skin lately is the standard, boring, traditional and ridiculously predictable language many people use on the phone. For instance, I betcha I can recite, with 95% accuracy, the outgoing voice mail message of at least 10 people you know. Here goes:

“Hello, you’ve reached __________. I’m either on the phone or away from my desk. Please leave your name, number and a brief message, and I’ll return your call at my earliest convenience.”

Snore. Isn’t there a slightly more interesting, memorable, and human way to say that? Of course there is.

On a similar note, I recently had a phone “conversation” (I use that term loosely) that went like this:

Jeff: Hi, I’m calling for Bob, please.
Drone: And your name is……
Jeff: Jeff Stephens
Drone: And your company is…..?
Jeff: CBC. Is Bob even at this office?
Drone: I’m not at liberty to divulge that information.

Seriously? Who uses phrases like “I’m not at liberty to divulge that information?” Who asks questions using fill-in-the-blank phrasing without a verbal question mark?!

The sad takeaway from this? You can differentiate yourself by simply being REAL. Not being a robot. By asking “why do I have to say this the same way as everyone else?” Here’s a fun experiment: make a commitment to never answer the phone the same way twice, all day long. Or record a new and different voicemail message every day, that goes away from the standard syntax of the message. Try your hardest to sound like you can fog a mirror.

I’m sending a $10 Starbucks card to the person who comments on this post with the coolest proposed voicemail message. Bring it on!

This entry was posted on Friday, July 18th, 2008 at 3:28 pm and is filed under Bank Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.