To improve a a business voicemail greeting, keep these eight rules at the forefront of the creative process: Avoid turning customers off with overused and impersonal phrases like “your call is very important to us..." Avoid leaving customers unsure by not immediately telling them the business, department, and/or person they’ve reached. Avoid leaving customers confused with too many details and complications; just keep it simple. Avoid messages longer than 25 seconds. Do apologize for being unavailable at the moment. Do invite the caller to leave a message. Do tell the caller when they can expect a return call and actually follow through within that timeframe. Do tell the caller about any applicable alternative options of contact and information- website, live chat, email, social media, or emergency numbers. Voicemail Greetings 101
Matthew Burleigh has been writing tech tutorials since 2008. His writing has appeared on dozens of different websites and been read over 50 million times.

Before you push record, be sure to tell the person on the other end of the line you're recording; depending on your location, you may be breaking a law if you don't. Some US states—like New York and even the feds—only require one-party consent, which means you can record without telling the other person or persons. In California, all parties must know they're being recorded—even if the recorder is out of state. Under federal law, one-party consent is okay, but only if you're part of the conversation; otherwise that's considered eavesdropping.
However, most networks do allow you to adjust the length of time that the phone rings before switching to voicemail by dialing in a long code number. On Vodafone this is **61*121*11* followed by the number of seconds and then the hash symbol (#). So to set your phone to ring for 20 seconds you’d dial **61*121*11*20*.