Users often don’t invest enough time into their messages, resulting in incomplete, unprofessional, or otherwise under-whelming greetings. Sure, crafting a greeting doesn’t sound all that complicated; however, there are a number of pitfalls users can fall into—i.e. informality, terseness, sincerity, lack of direction, and more. While none of these sound too catastrophic, they are often interrelated. As such, they tend to worsen any problem. For example, humor can cause informality, worsen ambiguity, and weaken sincerity. That being said, users should strive to avoid ALL these pitfalls.
The biggest barrier is actually getting them to leave the voicemail in the first place. Don’t get in your own way by recording a long, drawn-out voicemail greeting that might do more to convince them to hang up than actually leave a message.

“Good morning. You’ve reached the voicemail of [your name]. Today is [date]. Please leave me a message with your name and contact information. Oh, and here’s my motivational quote of the day: [read quote].”
Avoid using ‘please’ more than once, it gets wordy and redundant. The goal is to keep the content as concise as possible, moving callers quickly and seamlessly through the options.