{"id":973,"date":"2010-12-20T09:00:38","date_gmt":"2010-12-20T17:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mycontactcentre.com\/?p=973"},"modified":"2010-12-20T09:00:38","modified_gmt":"2010-12-20T17:00:38","slug":"the-power-of-voice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/the-power-of-voice\/","title":{"rendered":"The power of voice"},"content":{"rendered":"

We almost should forget to speak \u2013 with a constant increasing set of online tools for text based communication. Tony Crawford indicates that\u00a0\u2013 due to improved technology on voice infrastructure \u2013 business people are doing business on the phone more\u00a0than ever.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Text: Erik Bouwer<\/p>\n

What is your connection with the topic of voice?<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m a specialist in Presentation Training and presenter coaching for business people. So how to use your voice effectively is crucial. My company is working for different clients helping executives craft their business messages, and ensuring they get their points across effectively every time they stand up to speak.\u201d<\/p>\n

People present in meetings, conferences, business pitches \u2013 so learning how to communicate effectively becomes more and more important?<\/p>\n

\u201cA good analogy\u00a0to illustrate my approach is the bicycle. If you want to travel to a certain destination on your bike,\u00a0you need to put a lot of power to the back wheel \u2013 that\u2019s what makes the bicycle move. You use the front wheel then to avoid obstacles and to control the direction. This is what I teach to business people: helping them with both back wheel and front wheel skills \u2013 you need both. The back wheel you could consider as the content, the messaging, and the structure of your presentations. Whereas the front wheel is all about how you personally direct your content using your voice, your body language and your attitude to really \u2018connect\u2019 with your audience.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you are face to face with people, research tells us that surprisingly \u2018words\u2019 are only to a maximum of 10 per cent determining the communication. Three and a half times more important than what you say is how you say something \u2013 let\u2019s say 35 per cent. Over 50 per cent of communication is build upon\u00a0body language.\u201d<\/p>\n

However we increasingly make use of communication over the phone. For example the conference call is playing an important role as travel budgets are decreasing.<\/p>\n

\u201cCompared to face to face contact, in telephone conversations the biggest component in communication in communication \u2013 body language -has disappeared. We \u2018re on the phone! The importance of words goes up a little bit, towards 13 per cent, but vitally, more important: the role of voice goes up to 87 per cent.\u00a0With this ever increasing number of business calls the question his how we can get ourselves to be more effective with our voice? We need to develop our own Voice Signature so to speak.\u201d<\/p>\n

We live in a world wherein face to face communication seems to diminish. \u00a0Chat and online (or instant) messages are gaining popularity.\u00a0Even contact\u00a0centres are focusing on web self service. Customers are\u00a0visitingthe web before buying\u00a0anything.\u00a0People believe that search engines provide answers to their questions.\u00a0So a lot of voice driven conversations are replaced by surfing and typing.\u00a0Is there an opportunity for video driven online communication?<\/p>\n

\u201cPhone based communication is going on to rise. Nearly 20 percent of business managers are doing four ore more conference calls a day. 37 % are doing more than a year ago \u2013 and expect it to increase. Video calls will increase too, as the technology becomes more robust. Most remembered in conference calls are the moments you dropped out, due to a bad connection or due to background noise. Compared with conference calls, video calls are often a bigger disaster. There\u2019s a long way to go. Even if you have state of the art video conferencing equipment. In a recent series of video conference meetings I attended, eight out of ten video sessions, where they address people from different parts of the world, end up in switching to a conference call because of the technical problems! Video conferencing is on the increase, mainly because the costs of it are going down. But the providers of these services have a long way to go when many locations around the world are involved – to even get close the quality level of telephone conference calls. And they are often a nightmare too.\u201d<\/p>\n

What about the upcoming \u2018net gen\u2019 \u2013 which makes use more and more of pinging, instant messaging et cetera? Is text messaging replacing communication by speech?<\/p>\n

\u201cMore communication channels are evolving. They are easy to use and are picked up even by older people. Furthermore people in general fear to stand up and speak in public \u2013 for some it\u2019s probably their greatest nightmare. So it\u2019s no surprise that \u2018hide behind\u2019 communication tools like e-mail and twitter are evolving. But basically these channel don\u2019t replace anything, they just add to it.. In fact, the importance of face to face contact has increased due to the proliferance of all these channels.\u201d<\/p>\n

What can contact centre professionals learn from this developments \u2013 should they adapt to new channels or should they focus on the power of voice based communications?<\/p>\n

\u201cI think they should do both. No organization can\u00a0ignore the inevitability of new media, \u00a0texting or social networking. But organizations should take into account that people are using their phones more than in the past. Technology is improving the quality of these calls. As part of the research program for speech impact, we found out that compared to the analogue era, the clarity of consonants when using hi-band telephony has improved tremendously. In earlier stages, the difference between \u00a0\u2018I\u2019m sailing\u2019 or \u2018I\u2019m failing\u2019 was hard to hear. Consonants are at the heart of articulation \u2013 that was discovered a long time ago, back in 1915 when the first transcontinental telephone line was installed. Professor Crandall noted in his publication \u201c The Power of Speech \u201c in 1917 that \u201c it is possible to identify most words in a given context without taking note of the vowels…..the consonants are the determining factor in articulation\u201d And now in with the present high definition digital connections, consonants can be heard and understood very well. So from the productivity point of view, there should be less confusion. People are saving\u00a0time because they don\u2019t have to say \u2018I didn\u2019t hear what you said\u2019.\u00a0So, if people are spending more time on their phones, making more business calls. Acoustic intelligence, as rolled out by Plantronics, will improve this. On the other hand there still is the human component. In voice communication we recognize the four P\u2019s: the power (how to project your voice), the pitch (varying in high and low tones), the pace (varying the speed in\u00a0the pronunciation of words) and the use of pauses.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the production of cars, automation has led to a record level of standardized quality. When a vehicle leaves the factory, you might expect it to be the same car as the next one. The technology has moved on and the production facilities have improved. But if you haven\u2019t \u00a0skilled your workforce how to interact with these machines or computers, then the product that will leave the production line will be inferior. That\u2019s what we\u2019re talking about here in voice based communication too. You might have the latest high definition audio including all the facilities to do business on the phone, but\u00a0you still should pay attention in becoming most effective in making use of these new technologies by focussing on your Voice. That is what the speech impact program is all about.\u00a0People are not conscious about the implications of using their voice. In a way it\u2019s a new revolution. Training is the solution for increased productivity of business people on the phone.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe proof is \u2013 at least to an extent \u2013 in the fact that Global Knowledge, which is\u00a0one of the largest IT training companies in the world, decided to sign up for the speech impact program for their customers across Europe. They offer technical training, but will integrate the speech impact \u00a0program in their offer towards clients. So from now on, power to the people will include the power of voice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tony Crawford is CEO of\u00a0Crawford Communications, a training and consulting company that helps\u00a0other\u00a0companies\u00a0to communicate more effectively: to\u00a0customers, to analysts, to the press, channel partners, to staff. Most important aim: to ensure messages are received by audiences\u00a0in the way they were intended \u2013with clarity and creativity.\u00a0Crawford is based in\u00a0London and\u00a0works with leading companies across Europe and internationally.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.crawfordcoms.com\/index.htm<\/a><\/p>\n

Erik Bouwer (1966) is editor of the Dutch Customer Contact Magazine. As editor in chief of Intellectueel Kapitaal \u2013 a Dutch business magazine on knowledge technology \u2013 one of his areas of expertise is social media. Bouwer worked for several years in customer service. He is a journalist since 1999.<\/p>\n

www.essentials-media.nl<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We almost should forget to speak \u2013 with a constant increasing set of online tools for text based communication. Tony Crawford indicates that \u2013 due to improved technology on voice infrastructure \u2013 business people are doing business on the phone more than ever.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[508],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/973"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/973\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}