If you can communicate professionalism and personality with a recorded message, you are building a positive image of yourself and your business that the caller can keep in their mind.
Don’t leave customers and colleagues on edge. If you say you’re going to call them back, follow up. If you tend to fall behind in this area, encourage them to email you or reach out in another way. Better yet, learn how to forward voicemail to email so you can access the message anywhere.
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"You see a lot more people working on collaboration technologies where you can share and exchange information in more social media-like contexts," he says.
Here are some great examples to help you compose your own professional voicemail message:
Visual voicemail on a Skype for Business desktop phone, Skype for Business app, or the Lync client for Mac. Note: To enable visual voicemail, ask your admin to make sure you are enabled for Exchange Unified Messaging, following instructions in the Configure Skype for Business Cloud Connector Edition guide.
When you create a professional voicemail greeting, it can be a good idea to think about what your callers might want to know. After doing so, you can make a list of points to cover in your voice message; it might also be a good idea to write out the entire greeting on a piece of paper. The ideal message should be somewhere between 10 and 20 seconds, so you may want to time yourself repeating your message before you record it. After composing your telephone message, it can be a good idea to get a second opinion of this greeting so you can make sure it sounds professional. Writing down a voicemail greeting helps prevent mistakes when recording it.
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When on vacation, provide your callers with a return date and a back-up contact person to accommodate emergencies. This prevents you from potentially damaging a valued relationship while you enjoy some time off.
Humor also leaves a lot of room for misinterpretation—which subsequently weakens sincerity and authority. A caller can be very turned off by merely misinterpreting your joke. Why take this risk? Additionally, this could even cause callers to question your character. Say, for example, the president of a company’s mobile phone voicemail greeting was funny. What’s to happen if the caller didn’t like or get the joke? What if they found it offensive? Another scenario is that a caller is reaching out to you for the first time—i.e. they have no idea regarding your personality. What next? The point is, with this type of greeting, humor is bound to be more divisive so just avoid it altogether. c. Poorly Pacing Your Message and Bad Time Management: Don’t speed through your message. Speak clearly so callers know what to include in their message and when to leave the message. At the same time, don’t drag your message out. No one wants to sit through a diatribe. Just get to the point clearly.
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If you are going to be unavailable for a predetermined time, let people know. Example, if you are on vacation for the next two weeks, inform your callers in your greeting that you will be returning calls on such and such date. This way they expect it to take a couple of weeks before you get back to them instead of stewing over why you haven't returned their call.
“Hi, you’ve called [name] at [XYZ company]. I’m currently busy [hiking through a rainforest, exploring China, climbing Mount Peru etc.] and so I can’t take your call right now. I won’t be back in the office until [date] and I look forward to hearing from you then.
“People often assume the voice mail lives on the phone when in fact it lives in the carrier's server. Verizon Wireless spokesman Paul Macchia said the company has a deal with CBW Productions that allows customers to save greetings or voice mails to CD, cassette, or MP3.”
That’s the simple structure of a voicemail greeting. Overall, your greeting should be professional, but the wording can vary depending on the situation. Check out a sample below.
9. “Hey, it’s [your name] at [your company] – thanks for giving me a call! I can’t wait to chat. Just leave your name, number and I’ll call you back as soon as I have the chance. Better yet, send me a text with the best time to reach you and the reason for your call. Looking forward to hearing from you.” Text communication is becoming much more relevant now. Direct your caller to text you in case they have a question you can answer easier via text. Who knows, they might prefer text messages to phone calls too.
On the Phone tab, click the voicemail icon below the dial pad, and then click Change Greetings.
Business Voicemail Goes Unanswered Most callers would rather hang up than leave a message Business Voicemail Goes Unanswered Most callers would rather hang up than leave a message