Written by Allison Smith. Edited by Suzanne Bowen.

In my career as a professional telephone voice, I can tell you that the work is fairly formulaic — almost everybody requires a front-end (“greeting”) message, a message once people get to their various department selections, an after-hours greeting, and occasionally, an extended absence greeting.  That’s it. Sometimes, there’s deviation from that, but not often. Pretty straightforward!

What can really shake up my day is when I’m in middle of recording something, and I can’t believe I’m actually saying it. Sure, there are the big corporations and mainstream businesses I record for — but every now and then I’ll record conference intro prompts for meetings of tin-foil-hat societies banding together to thwart the dangerous rays being emitted via Keith Olbermann or from the pizza ovens at Sbarro’s. I voiced some prompts recently which assured the callers that they are automatically a litigant in a class-action lawsuit if they were prisoners who were strip-searched in a particular cell block of a certain prison during a specificed span of time. I voiced an entire IVR system for a dog (“If you are one of Scout’s friends from the neighborhood, bark once..”), and when I voiced the IVR system for a noted Los Angeles divorce attorney, and joked that a prominent celebrity — who is famous for her multitudinous and messy divorces — should have her own extension, the office administrator who hired me to do the system insisted that I tack that onto the end.

The oddest moment was a few years ago, when my phone rang one morning, and a woman from San Francisco explained she was interested in having me voice her phone options. She asked if I would be open to calling her existing system and giving her an estimate. No problem! I dial in — and don’t you know —  she’s a Call Girl. On her opening greeting, she had a veritable menu of everything she does and *does not* do (and how the items on the *does* menu costs extra outside of a certain radius.) Stymied, conflicted, and feeling very, very Amish, I called her back and respectfully passed on the job. I explained that I have a pretty high-profile clientele, and it just wouldn’t be a good venue for my voice. Frustrated, she sighed and said: “You’re the *fifth* voice talent to turn me down!”

I was *fifth* on the list? Now I was really depressed.

Have you encountered some strange/offbeat/unusual phone trees? Write me a comment and let me know about it.

Next blog: IVR 101 — some basics for those thinking of delving into writing IVR prompts. Related websites:
www.theivrvoice.com
www.theasteriskvoice.com
voicegal.wordpress.com

Everyone loves Allison. Contact her for professional experienced voice talent!