voices for IVR

Every company I have worked for has just used an employee, this even included Vodafone. Why go to the expense of a voice over artist when most people can sound fantastic when they try. I see from your profile, you work for a charity, why not run a competition within your staff to find the 'new face and voice of....'(most people will relate to an 'average'person facing a charitable organisation), contact celebs mentioning your charity, just some ideas! Failing that I'm available through my agent:)

Hi Stuart

I agree with some of the earlier comments that sourcing a voice internally can be a great project and a lot of fun. However, in my experience (I've worked both on these type of 'X Factor' competitions, and also helped source professional talent), there are a few BIG pit-falls that you need to consider:

- Quality: Remember an employee isn’t professionally skilled in audio recording, so you’re going to have to factor-in a hell of a lot of coaching
- Consistency: Linked to the above there’s a real risk of fluctuating quality both on the initial set-up, and critically ongoing
- Accessibility: The employee will be needed for planned recordings & those emergency situations – how will this fit with their ‘day job’?
- Delivery: You’ll need to look into how you’ll record on site and critically the quality of the audio – danger of it just sounding like any other in-house job
- The employee: There’s going to be great kudos in winning such a completion, but you could face real challenges with peer pressure, and their own career direction (G makes some good comment on this one)
- Time/Cost: It may seem a good cost-effective way, as everything’s in house but someone is going to have to manage; the audition process, the scripting & recording, HR changes, and ongoing change-control process

Like G, we helped facilitate an internal voice competition for one of the big Utility companies a few years back, and it was a fantastic project. However within weeks of going live the employee left!

I would strongly recommend you do look for external guidance from a professional agency (and I’m not just saying this for selfish reasons). They can help you define the right voice for your brand, operation, and specific requirements (on hold, IVR, video). Also offer you good guidance on langauge used, and style considerations. Critically they'll be able to respond to all the challenges listed above.

Whatever you decide Stuart, best of luck!

Kevin Freeman
soh

Very good point - otherwise you'll be left with a fragmented, inconsistent experience.

It's vital that you do have what we call 'voiceover guarantee' which in essence covers the client in the event the voice becomes permanently unavailable.