We’re keeping it simple with this one. Just a few basic elements to help you get started. As long as you know who your audience is, the message you wish to convey, and the information you need from the caller, the rest should fall into place quite nicely. Let’s face it, a voicemail greeting for a lumber company will probably be different than that of a psychologist’s office. One greeting is aimed at securing potential customers, and the other is geared towards appointments, more or less. Once you are certain who your caller is, the better your voicemail. Center on your audience, first and foremost. Knowing what to relate ensures that your caller will leave the right message. For instance, if you’re a retail store, you would include your hours of operations, and perhaps any specials that you’re running. If you are a therapist’s office, then you’d need to include an alternate number in case a patient is having an issue and requires immediate help. Again, this will vary depending on the business. Here, a therapist would definitely request the caller leave their contact information. However, a retail store chain might not request that. There are also complex voicemail systems such as those used by mobile phone services, which ask you to press a certain number on your phone, where you are asked to leave your account information. Again, as you can see, it all boils down to the demographics of your callers, and what you need from them to conduct the best business possible. Depending on the situation, your caller might be in a good mood or not. In either case, they’ll probably be eagerly awaiting your call. So, it stands to reason that you only promise them a call back if you can deliver. In other words, if you’re a small shop and you’ve decided to close due to a much-needed sabbatical, then don’t leave a voicemail greeting where you promise them to call right back. However, if you have an active customer service staff, then you can promise to return their call within the same day.
What you decide will impact the type of VoIP system your business requires. Here are a few systems to consider when reviewing the providers in this article: PBX (Private Branch Exchange) – Used to communicate internally (within the company) and externally (with the outside world). It is a private telephone network. PBXs often handle internal phone extensions and call management. Virtual PBX – Used to provide businesses of all sizes PBX technology to manage phone tasks within offices and departments. SIP Trunking – A Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) Trunk is used for multiple real-time applications like voice and video applications. Data is sent and received via a SIP client. PSTN (Public switched telephone network)

Ooma Office is a cloud-based VoIP solution that caters to small-medium sized businesses across various industry verticals that helps them to manage their business operations. For businesses of all sizes, Ooma provides advanced voi... Read more
The Grasshopper virtual phone service for small businesses provides the standard call-management features you’d find with most companies, like auto-attendant, call forwarding, call transferring, simultaneous call handling, and voicemail. It even offers a voicemail transcription service.