Voicemail transcription: the best service for your customer, also when you’re not available 

Preferably, you want to help your customers at any time of the day, but you can’t always be available. This is a dilemma that a lot of businesses experience, because what if not being available causes you to lose your customers? Through smart installation, you can overcome this challenge and you won’t miss any phone calls. 

To keep an overview and to follow up your customers’ voicemail messages faster, we have a new smart feature for you: voicemail transcription, using privacy-friendly AI. From now on, in addition to the audio file, you will also receive your customers’ transcribed voicemail messages in your email box.

In this blog post, we will tell you all about the smart use of your voicemail and you will discover exactly how the new feature works.

Being available at all times is impossible

There are always calls that are inconvenient. For example, you’re just about to go for your afternoon run, you’re in an extensive meeting, or you’re in full focus mode writing an offer. Of course, there is a big temptation to pick up anyway. Because yes, it could be that one nice customer, a new lead, or a complaint you want to deal with right away. But if you decide to answer every phone call while trying to finish other work tasks, you simply won’t get anywhere. Somewhere you have to make choices.

For many business owners, this goes a step further. Even on days off, the phone rings regularly. At your child’s swimming lesson, in the supermarket or when you’re just about to start eating dinner. The impact of missing a phone call can be huge for your business. But the impact on your personal life when you do pick up is also huge. Because a healthy work-life balance is important.

No matter what you do, it always feels like you’re letting someone down.

A good voicemail greeting is a good solution

The solution is a lot easier than you think. With a good voicemail greeting, you’ll be able to capture most customer calls well. A voicemail doesn’t have to be irritating or frustrating at all if you’re smart about it. 

With the right voicemail greeting, customers who otherwise might call a competitor will stay with you. In fact, with a voicemail greeting that fits your business perfectly, customers actually feel welcome and you immediately give a good first impression. 

But because a lot of businesses are so focused on their reachability, they often forget to pay attention to voicemail. It becomes one of those to-do’s that’s on your list for someday, when you have time. Which, of course, is never the case. 

3 tips to instantly improve your voicemail greeting 

Perhaps you recognise this and want to get started on your voicemail right away. If so, we have three super great tips for you that will allow you to let your phone ring when you’re sitting on the toilet.  

(Let’s be honest, there are customers who really seem to have a radar for that!)

Tip 1: Give immediate confirmation that the customer has called the correct number

Always include your company name and your own name first, so that customers immediately know they’ve called the right company. That gives a lot more confidence than, ‘This is the voicemail of: …BLEEP…’

If you’re not clear about this, many customers will opt out immediately. It simply does not come across as trustworthy. 

Tip 2: Say what you expect from the customer

Do you want customers to leave their name and phone number, or do you also want to know the reason why someone is calling? Or would you rather prefer that the caller goes to the website, or calls back at a later time? The possibilities are endless. 

If you don’t specify what you want, chances are the customer will do nothing at all or think of something of their own. So be a step ahead of ambiguity and specify exactly what the next step is. 

Tip 3: Give clarity about the follow-up

When you expect clarity from your customers, you obviously need to provide clarity yourself. Therefore, in your voicemail message, tell exactly what customers can expect from you after leaving a voicemail message. Will you call back the same day, will you call back within 24 hours, or will you arrange for a colleague to call back?

Be clear here, but also honest. A promise you can’t keep never works in your favor. 

Bonus tip: Write down your voicemail greeting

Before recording your voicemail greeting, it is a good idea to write it down first. This way, you can easily check if what you want to say actually makes sense. Also, say it out loud a few times to someone in your surroundings, to see if they also understand what you are saying. With a little writing and editing, you’ll soon have a voicemail that customers will love to listen to. 

Written voicemail in your mailbox

You haven’t yet tackled one challenge and you’re already facing the next. After all, as more customers start leaving you voicemails, how do you keep track of it conveniently and effectively? And do you really need to set aside time to listen to all those messages?

The answer is no. 

We came up with something super clever: voicemail transcription based on privacy-friendly AI. That means that you receive every voicemail message transcribed in your mailbox. That makes following up your messages infinitely easier. And it’s nice – reading an email can be done more often, easier and faster than listening to your voicemail messages. As a result, you’ll never miss an important message again. 

The great thing is: you immediately let your customers experience that after leaving your voicemail, they can also count on good service. The transcription helps enormously as a useful reference. In the response, you can reflect the customer’s question, making them feel heard immediately. 

Some of our customers were allowed to test the new feature, and we got pretty enthusiastic results. The test group of customers indicated that scanning voicemail messages saves a lot of time. Determining whether something is urgent is also much easier now, which is exactly what we had in mind. 

Voicemail transcription to improve processes

That voicemail is ideal for maintaining customer relationships when you’re not available yourself is clear. But we’ve come up with a few more clever ideas that we’d like to share with you. Because, and now we’re being immodest for a moment, you can do quite a few brilliant things with voicemail to text to make the processes in your company run just a little smoother. 

A few examples: 

• The physicians assistant’s prescription line: how much time and work does it save if all messages are written out, allowing the assistant to process repeat prescription requests twice as fast?
• Shared inboxes in the support department: from now on, you no longer need to take notes on the content of a voicemail message. From the transcription, everyone can immediately see how urgent the message is. 
• Taking sick calls: how convenient is it if a colleague gets an email that someone has called in to say they are better and back to work? That saves time, and avoids disturbing someone while they are working.. Our colleague Jeroen, who answers the phone when someone calls in sick, is quite enthusiastic about this. 
• Placing orders: imagine being able to place orders for parts, for example, directly with your supplier. Especially with regular customers, you don’t need to go through an endless list of questions; you want to provide fast service. 

Do you make use of a CRM package? Then there’s the possibility of having the transcription put directly into your CRM. Or how about having a call summary created with AI. You get the picture: voicemail transcription can set a lot in motion for your business. 

Feature with privacy-friendly AI

You may now be thinking: ‘Wait a minute, it’s obviously a great solution, such a written-out voicemail in your mailbox. But privacy-friendly AI, what is that?

We understand that particular question very well and are happy to answer it. Because if you know us a bit, you know that we take your privacy very seriously. We therefore provide a completely secure application for AI for this feature, allowing you to use voicemail transcription worry free within your company. 

In any case it’s good to know that we do not use an external service for transcription and do not use our customers’ voicemail messages to train the AI. We improve the feature entirely based on user reviews. That means; your messages remain 100% private. 

Voicemail transcription did get us thinking. There are huge opportunities to make our service even better with AI. But we won’t dive in head first. Your safety and our reliability are far too important for that.

What we are doing instead: we are exploring how to incorporate this privacy-safe AI application into the new product we are developing. What that will look like, we don’t dare say at this point. It depends on what is possible within the limits we have set: privacy, security, and reliability are paramount, with compliance with the GDPR being a no-brainer, of course. 

Give your opinion on voicemail transcription

From now on you’ll receive every voicemail message in your mailbox as transcribed text by default, in addition to the audio file containing the voicemail message that every Freedom user receives by default. We are very curious about your opinion on voicemail transcription. Be sure to fill out the feedback form so we can keep improving the feature. 

Not a Voys customer yet, but enthusiastic about transcribed voicemail messages in your mailbox? Then join or request a quote for your business telephony.