Dead Space in Your Phone System and How to Eliminate It

 

Though it’s not usually one of your highest priorities when you’re setting up your automated phone menu, this is something you might want to give some attention to.

Your service provider will likely have a system with the preset options which you can easily implement; however, there are multiple spots where it’s possible to end up with dead air in the audio. What follows below reveals those potential trouble spots and how you can fix them.

 

Speech of the Voice Actor

This is a problem that you can easily solve, but you need to identify the points in your recorded audio files when it is happening. You’re probably going to have a few audio recordings on your phone menu for callers to tell them what number to press or to give directions, hours of operation, etc.

Whether you have a professional voice actor recording this audio or you’re doing it yourself, carefully listen to it after it’s done to check for any spots in the recording where the person speaking pauses for too long because it can be off-putting to the caller.

 

Crop Recordings as Needed

Here is a common problem that comes up when you’re making the audio recordings for your phone system. Sometimes when you click, “record”, you accidentally wait a couple of seconds before you start to speak, and you sometimes don’t click, “stop”, after you finish speaking.

This results in dead air on the beginning or end of the recording. It happens all the time, but you can easily fix it by cutting off that dead space in the audio and just upload the edited version of the audio file.

 

Watch Your On-Hold Music Audio Files

If you’re using your own music for the on-hold program, then it’s important to make sure there are no pauses at the beginning of the audio file or within the music, itself.

Even if it’s intentionally recorded as part of the music, it’s a good idea to edit out those pauses, as they can be disorienting to the caller.

 

Inherent Delay

It is possible at times to encounter a delay before the line even picks up when someone calls in. This is one of the more difficult issues to troubleshoot, and though it is the issue business owners most often worry about because it’s the first thing a caller hears, it is not so big a deal as those mentioned above.

As long as the caller hears a ring tone when they call in, they will generally wait for your system to pick up. The good news is that if there is a delay before the system answers, you can contact your service provider and usually get rid of it.