“Hi, thanks for calling the office of (insert your name). I’m away from my desk or out of the office. Please leave your name and number, and I’ll return your call as soon as possible. If you need immediate assistance, please hang up and reach our customer support team at (insert phone number). Thanks, and have a great day!”
On hold messages can be recorded for many purposes, such as promoting your business, answering FAQs or announcing important customer service information. It's important to be clear in the message you are trying to get across. Confusion leads to disengagement and reflects badly on the brand. Determining your callers' wait times is necessary to determine the required length of the on-hold message. Making the recording too short can lead to the message being played too many times. This can be repetitive and lose the caller's attention while they hold.

For example, a message like, “Hi, this is Jim. You know what to do.” Well, not everyone is going to know what to do—i.e. they won’t leave you inclusive information. Additionally, they may not leave you a message at all. Aside from this, humor can again be detrimental to your message, this time lending itself to ambiguity and costing you clarity. For example, if a message read, “Hi this is Jim, sorry I can’t answer your call right now. Please leave your name and number and I’ll call you as soon as I can, but you already knew that right? Do I need to tell you what to do?” This is worse than the previous example as this is confusing and can also come across as rude and unprofessional. Complicating a greeting with phrasing like this is sure to cause some harm. e. Ignoring Personality & Identity: Don’t use computer generated greetings. Some users leave default messages (‘you’ve reached the voicemail box of 777-777-777, please leave a message). Believe it or not, even this can cause problems. Callers may be unsure if the voicemail box belongs to you; therefore, they don’t leave a message. Also, some may even be uncomfortable leaving information through a message in a nameless voice message box. As such, impersonalization can cause ambiguity, which again can hurt the effectiveness of your voice message system. This doesn’t mean you have to make an elaborate greeting if you don’t want to, just insert your voice and name so at least callers know they’re calling the right person.
In order to effectively market yourself and your business, there are a few basic tools that you will need to have perfected. You may not be thinking that your telephone skills are of much importance, but a good or bad voicemail message could make or break a professional opportunity. If you find that your personal voicemail is pretty blase or not even set up yet, you might need to check out these tips and tricks to make a great personal voicemail message.