Do you Have a Different Professional Phone Voice?

[kyphysics]

What I mean is everyone has their "normal" way of speaking to family, friends, and maybe even work colleagues.

We're often more laid back and are "ourselves."

Then, there are times we're talking to someone over the phone for business purposes, such as signing up for health insurance, calling about a automobile repair, hiring a plumber, etc.

Do you use a different voice/tone in these situations? If so, how different?

I realized I'm horrible at this. I have a "fake" phone voice for talking to like customer service reps and it is just overly nice that it sounds fake. Yet, I can't really use my real voice either, because it's too laid back and I sound like a surfer (ehhh, the "dumb stereotype" Keanu Reeves voice). I can't help it. My natural voice is very surfer-ish...But my "professional" phone voice sounds SUPER fake too...I only realized it this week when making a lot of calls and straining to maintain that fake professional voice while listening to really good and natural sounding people.

I'm just really impressed with how some people can "pull off" that really professional, yet friendly sounding phone voice. It's a skill! I've encountered people really good at yesterday and today after several hours of calls. And I know the difference between someone really good at it and someone who sucks (like me) at doing it for their job, because I've gotten the grumpy or awkward voices too (maybe they don't even know they sound like that).

If you have a different professional phone voice, how did you develop it? Did it just come natural to you? I want to get better.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Do you use a different voice/tone in these situations? If so, how different?

Absolutely! The professional voice is all about keeping your tone and volume in a mid range. Remove any unnecessary vocal irregularities and sounds. Stay diplomatic and on point. Keep language pleasant and minimize use of jokes or slang. Formalities are often used like "good day", use of "sir" and "m'am", plenty of "thank you", "your welcome" etc etc. In general think to yourself, what would make someone consider your sound to be confident, trust worthy, present and persuasive?

When you call someone for service whether a plummer or a bank rep, yes it is their job to serve you, but many times how you treat them and how they perceive you, will dictate just how well they end up serving you.

 

[Fig Neutron]

I use a different voice for talking to pretty much everyone. I have a telephone voice, a talking to little kids voice, a talking to friends voice, a professional voice, and a talking to family voice, that's about everyone I talk to. Before I started paying attention to it, I wasn't even aware of some of them. I don't have a very thick accent, I try to just pronounce things how they're spelled. I think this helps especially in formal discussions, but remember not to be to straight forward, you don't want to sound like a robot . I use to hate the way I sounded on the phone. After a while of playing around with I finally found something I liked. I enjoyed playing around with it and getting the advice of friends. My best advice would be to find someone who has a way of speaking that you like, isolate what parts of their speech you like, and do your best to imitate it.

 

[kyphysics]

Absolutely! The professional voice is all about keeping your tone and volume in a mid range. Remove any unnecessary vocal irregularities and sounds. Stay diplomatic and on point. Keep language pleasant and minimize use of jokes or slang. Formalities are often used like "good day", use of "sir" and "m'am", plenty of "thank you", "your welcome" etc etc. In general think to yourself, what would make someone consider your sound to be confident, trust worthy, present and persuasive?

When you call someone for service whether a plummer or a bank rep, yes it is their job to serve you, but many times how you treat them and how they perceive you, will dictate just how well they end up serving you.

Those are some very good points.

Eliminating jokes or slang was very helpful. Although, I know of one dental receptionist who is extremely pleasant and funny. She pulls it off while remaining professional, because she's naturally funny and she'd genuine sounding in her welcoming tone. She helps you, is efficient, and makes you feel good about yourself and it's made me stay with that business (they have good hygienists too!, of course) and never want to go elsewhere.

I guess maybe jokes, etc. can be used if you're natural and skilled at it?

I like the unnecessary vocal irregularities part. I have to work on that.

Are you familiar with Sam Harris? I greatly disagree with many of his intellectual views, but have really admired his even-tempered way of speaking. When discussing controversial and heated subjects or when being attacked by others, he's able to maintain a very level-headed and calm tone.

Would you or anyone else think this is a good way to model one's speaking voice?

 

[kyphysics]

I use a different voice for talking to pretty much everyone. I have a telephone voice, a talking to little kids voice, a talking to friends voice, a professional voice, and a talking to family voice, that's about everyone I talk to. Before I started paying attention to it, I wasn't even aware of some of them. I don't have a very thick accent, I try to just pronounce things how they're spelled. I think this helps especially in formal discussions, but remember not to be to straight forward, you don't want to sound like a robot . I use to hate the way I sounded on the phone. After a while of playing around with I finally found something I liked. I enjoyed playing around with it and getting the advice of friends. My best advice would be to find someone who has a way of speaking that you like, isolate what parts of their speech you like, and do your best to imitate it.

Yeah, I'm trying that re: your last sentence.

I used to like Obama a lot, but then realized he does a lot of "uhh"'s...and pauses. He's great at keeping a very calm tone like Sam Harris (mentioned above), so I would take that away from him. I get emotional and my tone sounds irritated when things aren't going my way, whereas a mature person and skilled speaker would remain calm and still pleasant (notwithstanding a genuinely horrible situation).

For now, Sam Harris is the best I can think of. If you guys have other famous people (or someone I might know of) you think are good models, I'd be interested to check them out. Incidentally, I think Richard Dawkins - one of Harris' atheist colleagues - is a bad voice role model. I feel like he gets too emotional.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

I guess maybe jokes, etc. can be used if you're natural and skilled at it?

There are certainly exceptions and often times humor is the best way to diffuse a situation or instantly get someone on their good side. The problem is, it's a big risk. You can easily offend or confuse someone without any intentions of it. Suddenly the encounter is uncomfortable and unproductive. You need to have a really good read on the person and situation before using a joke. Usually the more innocent and shorter the better. Puns can be very effective, but often times people miss them.

Are you familiar with Sam Harris?

Indeed, he's a great speaker. However at times almost too monotone.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Would you or anyone else think this is a good way to model one's speaking voice?

David Attenborough and Morgan Freeman come to mind

 

[kyphysics]

Indeed, he's a great speaker. However at times almost too monotone.

That's a good observation. You're right - he is too monotone at times. As with Obama, I think he's just very good at keeping calm. I respect that in heated exchanges, he focuses on the substantive content of an argument and never gets emotionally rattled or goes into personal attacks. I would say Sam is pleasant in tone, but doesn't ever show any extremes. Great if he never gets upset, but he doesn't really show a lot of happy emotions either. He's kind of low-key, pleasant and calm. I love listening to his voice, though. It's almost therapeutic!

He'd be someone I'd love to have dinner with and just chat for hours.

Will check out Attenborough. Love Freeman too. He's gifted! Too bad I could never model my voice after his. His is just too unique!

 

[kyphysics]

#1 goal: remove fakeness from my phone voice

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

#1 goal: remove fakeness from my phone voice

You can help do this by actually being genuine instead of forcing a genuine tone. Do you know what I mean?

 

[kyphysics]

You can help do this by actually being genuine instead of forcing a genuine tone. Do you know what I mean?

Intellectually, yes. In practice, it'll take some work. I think it's more about old habits at this point. It comes from watching my mom speak with her fake voice growing up. My dad is always genuine - talks the same to everyone. But, he's not much of a talker (very quiet guy), so I never imitated him much growing up. Instead, I imitated my mom's mannerisms to some degree (removing the gendered part).

One other difficulty is that even my genuine "tone" is kind of annoying sounding. I'm able to admit this. It's cool with friends, but I know it's not ideal for work or professional phone/interaction situations. If you've ever seen the movie (Lake Bell as the lead) "In a World..." (where she's a voice coach competing with her famous dad in the industry), there's a woman in the very last scene with a terrible kid-like voice and she's an attorney. Lake Bell's character is coaching her to get rid of that voice, because it's terrible for her profession and no one owuld take her seriously in court.

That's sort of me. I have "surfer-voice" to some degree. Add to it an overly excited and fake happy phone voice and you get problems.

I need to change both my genuine voice and my professional interaction voice.

 

[Choppy]

You could try taking a stage acting class.

While often drama classes can be all about the "improv" games, in the more serious ones you'll learn techniques for projecting, intentionally varying your tone, enunciation, etc. that you can use in your professional life to project that voice that you would like.

 

[Fig Neutron]

I agree Morgan Freeman is a good one, but very unique. I would also add James Earl Jones, Alan Rickman, and Gene Hachman.

Another good tip I have found is to stay relaxed. If you're nervous or tense your voice is automatically going to sound forced or stained.

 

[kyphysics]

You could try taking a stage acting class.

While often drama classes can be all about the "improv" games, in the more serious ones you'll learn techniques for projecting, intentionally varying your tone, enunciation, etc. that you can use in your professional life to project that voice that you would like.

It could be useful for developing speaking skills to talk a certain way. Is Toast Masters sort of the same?

At the same time, I kind of have to figure out my own natural voice and who I want to be. That part will require some introspection.

I think I'd want my professional interaction voice to have a good degree of overlap with my true and desired personal identity. That would reduce some "fakeness" issues. I realize there likely can't be 100% overlap - but having a lot could be very helpful.

One tension I see is that I'm trying to access two different parts of my brain at the same time: logical thinking and rhetoric/style of speech. In trying to "sound" professional, which requires a lot of mental work for me, I sometimes lose track of my logical train of thought. It's like multi-tasking two very different activities (say, learning to juggle and speaking on the phone with your plumber). You can lose focus of one area. I think the "natural" me wants to be logical.

One thing I feel Sam Harris (and others) may be good at doing is just talking aloud their logical thinking process. Just "thinking aloud" can be useful. And then adding to that a calm and pleasant tone.

 

[phinds]

Do you Have a Different Professional Phone Voice?

I tried hiring James Earl Jones to do it for me, but he was too expensive.