Responding to voicemails is time-consuming. Fortunately, with the right greeting, you might be able to save yourself some hassle. If you don’t have an auto attendant, you can give callers the information they are looking for with your voicemail greeting. Of course, this means that your greeting may be a little lengthy, but that can work in your favor as callers will only stay on the line to leave a message if they still need assistance.
4. The Urgency. When we ratchet up the urgency by adding a timeline (and even a little mystery), we astronomically increase our odds of someone dialing us immediately after getting the message.
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I’m out walking my donkey but as soon as I get my ass back in I’ll call you back. Leave me a message.
Morgan Freeman is known for his voice so much that he was asked to play the voice and image of God in Bruce Almighty. Allow him to greet your callers and prompt them to leave a message for you.Need some ideas for funny voicemail greetings?
You’ve reached [LinkedPhone – Where Freedom Rings]. We are currently off-duty. Our business hours are [Monday through Saturday, 9am to 7pm Eastern Standard Time]. Please leave your name, number, and the reason for your call and we’ll get back to you on the next business day. Thank you.
Being reincarnated as an answering machine is the pits. Keep your karma clean by leaving your name, number, message, and the time that you called.
You have reached xxx-xxxx. We picked this machine up at a garage sale in “as-is” condition. You can try to leave a message on it, but we are not sure it will be recorded. If we don’t return your call, it means the machine did not work.
5. "Hello, [Person's name] is chasing new adventures and is no longer with [Company name]. Please forward all future requests to [New or interim person's name] at [phone number]. Thank you!"
As we iterated in 5 Voicemail Message Myths, when you are leaving a message for your potential leads, there are certain rules everyone should follow. Those myths have been studied and show that dismissing them result in fewer callbacks. Nonetheless, few studies have been dedicated to voicemail greetings. Therefore, you should think outside of the box and do something different. A comedic voicemail like this famous greeting from George Costanza in Seinfeld is a great example.
For those with voicemail greetings that get changed about as often as a new president is elected, know that this is doing a serious disservice to the caller-recipient relationship. It signals to callers that the business is anything but an authority, most likely not very detail oriented, and has questionable overall credibility and competency. Those aren’t traits that any business wants to associate itself.
In this version, you pretend to realize how dumb it is to leave instructions WHILE you are leaving instructions. Hey everyone, listen to me having an epiphany, and then leave me a message.
Morgan Freeman is known for his voice so much that he was asked to play the voice and image of God in Bruce Almighty. Allow him to greet your callers and prompt them to leave a message for you.Need some ideas for funny voicemail greetings?
-Hello, this is ________. I’m not home right now, but I can take a message. Hang on a second while I get a pencil. (Open a drawer and shuffle stuff around.) OK, what would you like me to tell me?
We could be in, we could be out. You could leave us a message and later find out.
My 12 y/o niece put on her cell phone message, "Leave your name and number. If I love you, I'll call you back." Although not earth-shatteringly funny, it was cute the way she said it. In college my roomate was a cop, he told me that the worst things you can say on an answering machine were 1) telling them your name, 2) telling the caller your number, 3) and that you aren't at home. Well, here's what I did... Thats probably good advice for a home phone, but at the same time, I don't think it applies to a cell phone really. I used to have a longer message aimed at keeping people from leaving messages ... but I hate getting voicemails for the most part. One summer I had my little cousin start singing take me out to the ball game, I cut him off after a few lines, but it was just my version of satire against parents who have their kids sing, and it was pretty funny.
The bottom line is that a business’s situation is likely to change often and rapidly, each of which need a unique and applicable voicemail greeting to cover the circumstances and timeline. For example, callers shouldn’t reach a business-as-usual voicemail, and therefore expect a return call within the business day, if the subject they’re calling is out on vacation for two weeks. Such a lack of communication is a recipe to lose that caller’s trust and tarnish the brand’s reputation.
Like, right before you recorded this greeting you realized how dumb it would be to leave instructions. But you still wanted me to know how dumb it would be for you to leave instructions, so you wasted 20 seconds of my time telling me that you already knew I would know how to do it.