A Job Well Done

Julie-Ann Dean: Welcome to Voiceover Experts brought to you by Voices.com, the number one voiceover marketplace. Voiceover Experts brings you tips, pearls of wisdom and techniques from top instructors, authors and performers in the field of voiceover. Join us each week to discover tricks of the trade that will help you to develop your craft and prosper as a career voiceover talent. It’s never been easier to learn, perform, and succeed from the privacy of your own home and your own pace. This is truly an education you won’t find anywhere else.
This week, Voices.com is pleased to present Lisa Rice.
Lisa Rice: There is something extremely satisfying about a job well done such as preparing a meal and watching others enjoy it or planning an event and seeing it turn out successfully. Even closer to my heart is voicing a project as a voiceover talent and knowing the client and their client is pleased.
Not that long ago, most voiceover talents would be called into a studio, voice the project at hand and go on their merry way but with the advent of the internet and the electronic transferring of audio files, more and more of our work is recorded in a home studio. The likelihood of talents meeting clients in person is pretty slim. Producers from all over their world can now find talent all over the world. Businesses conducted over different time zones, our fax machines and e-mail inboxes stand alert 24/7. Letters of agreement, scripts and auditions arrive while we’re fast asleep.
In the beginning of a voiceover business relationship, we usually have the opportunity to talk to the person who is hiring us to voice their project and of course, in a phone patch or ISDN session, there is some brief conversation with the customer. However, outside of these situations, many of us end up in our home studio talking into a microphone all day and never conversing with a single soul. Why? Because once a working relationship is established between the talent and the client, it isn’t out of the ordinary for the bulk of our communication to be carried out by e-mail.
Now if you think about it, it’s probably a compliment when customers can trust us with their voiceover projects completely. It usually goes like this. The customer has a project, they need voice. A script is sent by e-mail to the talent with a few lines of direction and usually a deadline. Then the voiceover talent records, edits and sends back the audio to the customer or uploads larger files through an FTP site. The producer receives the file and finished their project. Did you catch that? I didn’t mention any more communication between the talent and their customer. When talents and producers meet face to face, there isn’t any question whether or not a job is well done. But today, the whole process is changing.
I found and I bet I’m not alone that many producers live by the motto of, “No news is good news.” In other words, if we as talents don’t hear from them after they receive the audio, everything is fine. This can be risky. How do we know for sure that the job is finished, whether to delete files or bill our customer. Allow me to share a firsthand experience.
On a regular basis, I ask for verification from my clients once I send the audio, a quick reply letting me know they have successfully downloaded the file I’ve sent and have exactly what they need. One day I got an e-mail from a steady client asking for a quick turnaround for a broadcast television commercial. I e-mailed them back, confirming that I could voice, edit and return the audio on time. In fact, I was able to shuffle around some of my other not-so-urgent jobs that day and turn the project around quicker than promised. But this particular customer rarely sends a verification. I understand. They are under the gun. Once they get the audio they need, they hurry to finish things on their end. They want to please their client. Back to my story. Later that day, actually a half hour after the promised turnaround time, I got a call in my studio. The client wanted to know where the audio was. They knew it wasn’t like me not to follow through. I explained that I had already sent the file and asked if there might be a problem with their server. Bingo, there was and I felt bad for my customer and frustrated that this had occurred to begin with.
We, voice talents are put in a precarious situation. Once we send the audio to our customers, we need to know that they have received it. We can either let time pass and take the silence as a confirmation. No news is good news or call or e-mail the customer to make sure they did indeed get what they ordered but often, we are afraid that we might be perceived as harassing or pestering our customers and many times, we too need to move ahead to our next project. That’s why customer-talent protocol should always include a quick verification, a short reply, “Received the audio, it sounds fine” goes a long way and we’re not exempt from doing our part.
When we receive a script, we need to let our customers know it’s in good hands as soon as possible. Two words come to mind regarding this issue, etiquette and communication. Webster defines etiquette as the proper communication to be observed in social or official life, communication is the exchange of information between individuals. Voiceover seekers and voiceover talents can never be too polite and we both love to communicate. We just need to remember to communicate better with one another. Audio sent, audio received. That brings me back to where we started. There is something extremely satisfying about a job well done.
Julie-Ann Dean: Thank you for joining us. To learn more about the special guest featured in this Voices.com podcast, visit the Voiceover Experts show notes at Podcasts.Voices.com/VoiceoverExperts. Remember to stay subscribed.
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