Nobody Wants to Be Trained by a Robot
Nobody wants to be trained by a robot.
Nobody wants to be sold to by a robot.
Nobody wants to be influenced by a robot.
So why are producers and educators increasingly trying to sell to us and educate us using voices that are robots?
Because it’s easier?
For whom?
The producer, maybe. But what about the person who’s supposed to listen?
Cost savings?
Again, maybe for the producer.
But when the whole purpose of that voice is to communicate with another human being, what happens when that human being discovers there was never another person on the other end?
That’s where this gets interesting.
She Sounds Like Someone You Trust
Think about the female voice you hear on a commercial.
She’s warm. Friendly. Trustworthy.
Maybe there’s even something familiar about her. She sounds like someone who knows what she’s talking about. Someone you might ask for advice.
Maybe she reminds you of your mom.
That’s not an accident.
The voice is there to make a connection with you.
To make a product seem approachable. To make a company seem trustworthy. To make you feel something about whatever is being sold.
And then you find out…
There is no woman.
There never was.
That person you thought you were listening to doesn’t exist.
Doesn’t that change things?
Because you didn’t just use a voice to deliver information.
You used the fake voice to falsify a relationship!
You gave the listener the impression that another human being was talking to them — reassuring them, teaching them, recommending something to them — when there was never another human being there.
And once the listener discovers that, what happens to the trust you were trying to create in the first place?
Now the internet has labeled you as the brand that lied. That’s a hard label to shake.
Were the cost savings on human voice talent worth THAT?
Now Put That Voice in a Training Course
You’re taking an online training course for work.
Let’s be honest. You probably weren’t exactly counting the minutes until you could begin.
But the woman walking you through it sounds OK.
She’s clear. Pleasant enough. You’re listening. You’re learning.
Then something happens.
Maybe there’s an odd pronunciation.
A strange pause.
An inflection that doesn’t belong there.
Something glitches just enough that suddenly you realize:
Wait. That’s not a woman.
It’s an artificial voice.
Can you still learn from it?
I guess.
But do you listen to it in exactly the same way once you know nobody is actually talking to you?
The information hasn’t changed.
The words haven’t changed.
But the relationship has.
A Human Voice Is More Than a Sound
This is where I think we sometimes misunderstand what professional voice actors actually do.
We’re not hired just to make sounds.
For example, a great female voice actor doesn’t simply have a pleasant voice and read the words on the page.
She understands them.
She interprets them.
She knows which word in a sentence matters.
She knows when a thought needs another half-second to land.
She understands when the copy is asking her to reassure someone instead of sell them.
She can sound amused because she understands why something is amusing.
She can sound concerned because she understands what the listener might be concerned about.
And when a director says, “Can you make that a little warmer, but don’t make it sound like you’re trying to be warm?”
She knows what the heck that means.
That’s not just a voice.
That’s a person communicating with another person.
That’s What I Listen for in Female Voice Talent
Throughout my career, producers have asked me to help them find female voice talent for commercials, corporate narration, training, explainers and all kinds of other projects.
And yes, the voice itself matters.
But I’m listening for something beyond whether she has a beautiful voice.
Does she connect?
Does it sound like she understands what she’s saying?
Does it sound like she’s talking to somebody instead of reading at somebody?
Can she take somebody else’s words and make them feel like her own thoughts?
Because whether you’re teaching someone, selling something, explaining something or trying to earn someone’s trust, there’s another human being on the receiving end.
And that’s why the female voice talents I recommend are professional human voice actors.
They’re not there simply because they can produce a nice sound.
They’re there because they can communicate.
They can listen to direction. Interpret a script. Understand an audience. Make adjustments. Find the thought behind a sentence.
They can connect one human being to another.
And that’s really why I created audio’connell’s FemaleVoiceTalents.com.
These aren’t artificial voices I found in a database.
They’re human women I know. Professional female voice actors I’ve known and/or worked with over the years, whose talent and professionalism I trust enough to recommend to producers.
You can listen to them, decide who connects with you and your project, and contact them directly.
They’re real people.
They understand the words they’re saying. They understand the people they’re saying them to. And they bring something to the microphone that can’t be manufactured simply by making a voice sound human.
Technology can reproduce a voice.
But the humanity isn’t in the sound of the voice.
It’s in the human person behind it.
I’ve been a professional voice actor for a very long time.
