Whether you’re a small business or a large corporation, professional voicemail greetings make your business look more professional, and can also help to increase sales and improve customer satisfaction.
Extension mailboxes enable businesses to share a group of mailboxes, but route incoming calls to one main voicemail number. They include a primary mailbox and up to nine (9) additional boxes. Each has characteristics of standard voice mailboxes and must be activated by an authorized user before they can be used. Once activated, log in to the mailbox, change the PIN, record your greeting and your name.
.
Interesting Read : Interactive Voice Response: What Is It And How Is It Beneficial?
Good voicemail greetings should include your name and/or company, your reason for missing the call or an apology, and instructions for leaving a message. How to Turn Your Customer Complaints into Business Benefits 50% of Business Owners Over 50 Back Trump's National Emergency Declaration How Zoho Bookings Helps Your Business Grow Square Seller Fees Stay Consistent as PayPal, Venmo Raise Rates Sponsored by Square Use Emojis in your Business Communications? Than Check Out These! How Can Your Alma Mater Help Your Small Business? Annie Pilon is a Senior Staff Writer for Small Business Trends, covering entrepreneur profiles, interviews, feature stories, community news and in-depth, expert-based guides. When she’s not writing she can be found on her personal blog Wattlebird, and exploring all that her home state of Michigan has to offer. Small Business Trends is an award-winning online publication for small business owners, entrepreneurs and the people who interact with them. Our mission is to bring you "Small business success, delivered daily."
5) Sound genuine. Smile when you record your greeting. At the same time, try to find a good balance in your voice that is not too over the top and yet not monotone.
Voicemails need to maintain a professional consistency that’s aligned with the entity it’s representing. That said, the structure can vary depending on the situation. There’s no template set in stone. In fact, trite and generic should be off the table. The goal should be a balance of uniqueness and practicality.
Remember that Brittney Spears song where you hear her voicemail greeting at the end and she does that fake-out “beeeeep” and says “do yo thang?”
Help CenterJoin a Test MeetingOnline ClassesBlogWebinars & Daily DemosIntegrationsWebex EssentialsWebex CommunityBusiness Continuity Planning
Voicemail and phone settings while working remotely As you prepare to work from home, consider updating the outgoing message on your desk phone so external callers know you are working remotely. The following templates for voicemail messages are available for departments and individuals to customize and use. We appreciate everyone following a standard format to […]
38. Thanks for calling [company name]. We’re unable to take your call right now, but leave your details and we’ll call you right back.
It may sound silly, but the tone in which you say something can either play the professional status up, or it can bring it down. You can’t change what your voice naturally sounds like, but you can work on controlling it to make sure you sound calm and collected when recording your message.
12. Hi, this is [your name]. I’m away from my phone at the moment, but leave a message after the tone so I can get back in touch later today.
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.
A relatively unprofessional one — like mine, for instance — does the opposite: It encourages prospects, recruiters, and potential connections to run in the other direction.
Some voicemail greetings are too loud and distracting and some are so quiet you can barely figure out who you’ve called. Whoever sets up the voicemail greeting for a business should be a confident speaker. Here’s a pro tip—write out a script of what the voicemail greeting should say and practice it a few times before you record it. It will be well worth it in the end!
A professional voicemail greeting is a recording that informs clients and business partners you are not available to receive their call. It is an essential part of any effective business communication strategy, especially if you are in sales.
That's why I would definitely resist any temptation to leave any kind of joke message, even if it seems very clever, suitable or relatively benign. People might love it the first time they hear it. The eighth time is definitely going to annoy them. Fa5t3r December 4, 2013