When it comes to offering a service, one of the most important elements that businesses and people overlook is the user journey and the customer experience.
This includes voice overs (aka the service I provide and the business that I operate as a voice actor).
A recent interaction with a potential client led me to think about this and just how crucial it is.
I won’t get into the details for obvious reasons, but I was able to save this because I realized I wasn’t providing good customer service and instead created a negative user experience.
Thanks to the help of the voice over community and the kind souls within it, I was able to pivot and turn that negative into a positive. We are currently in discussions for an upcoming project.
Here's what I learned and how I saved the day.
Information Overload
During that interaction, I noticed that the user journey I was creating for potential clients was not very user-friendly when trying to select a voice actor for their project.
Getting to my voice over demo, blog, and other items was simple enough. However, when they’d get to my rates page, things got hairy.
I had a gigantic form with a bunch of requirements that made things difficult for someone who just wanted to tell me about their project. All for the sake of giving them a quote.
When a client reached out for a project, my approach was terrible as well. Rather than thank them for choosing to work with me and find out what they knew and go from there, I would instead ask too many questions about their project.
Total information overload. What was I thinking?
In my search to find every detail of the project, I never stopped to consider that this might be all that the client knows about it. In doing this, I’m sure I’ve cost myself many opportunities by creating a negative user journey.
To all my would-be clients that this deterred, I’m sorry.
The Big Pivot
When I realized what I had done, I reached out to the voice over community. These awesome folks pointed me in the right direction and I’ve changed up my game.
Head over to my rates page and see how I course-corrected my project contact form.
The form is now bare bones. All the project information I need is stated in the copy to help the prospect know what to give me instead of a requirement in the form. They no longer need to know everything about the project and its usage to move forward (if they do, great. If not, no worries. We'll figure it out together).
If you didn’t click, here’s what I did:
As for my approach, my email responses are less about getting the information and more about working with the customer to help them achieve their goals. Now, we work with what we have, and I assist them as best I can.
Turning a Negative into a Positive (Beyond User Experience)
In our everyday interactions with people, a good experience is everything. This is the one factor that determines whether someone wants to hire you for a job, be your friend, help you out, or even go on a date with you.
When it comes to providing voice over services, it’s not about getting every bit of information about a project for an accurate quote. It’s about making the client happy. When you create a good experience, you have a happy client. A happy client means a happy voice actor. Everybody wins.
A big thank you to Paul Schmidt, Duncan Shiels, and everyone in the VO Pro community for helping me figure this out and making me a better person. You guys are awesome!
Project Update: We locked in that gig about a day after this article went live.
Want a professional voice actor who learns from their mistakes and knows what their doing? Fill out the new and improved contact form or shoot me an email to get in touch today!
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