10. "Hello, you've reached [X company]. We can't take your call right now, but please leave your name, contact information, and reason for reaching out, and one of our team members will be in touch within 24 hours.
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The last few years have seen a huge rise in the use of automated voicemails and auto-attendant greetings. This has been especially true for the business sector, where professionals should record friendly and polite voicemails to greet their customer callers.
Feel free to add a personal touch to make your voicemail message fun and interesting. Clients will feel reassured when they know their messages have been received and you will get back to them.
While covering all of the relevant information, aim to keep your voicemail to about 20 seconds. You definitely should not ever record a business voicemail longer than 30 seconds, and anything less than 10 seconds will typically mean that you are either speaking too quickly or aren’t providing all of the required information.
General Voicemail Greeting Examples. Here are a few ideas for greetings that can get you started, ranging from strictly businesslike to a less formal greeting. Hello, you have reached Jim Smith. Unfortunately, I cannot take your call right now, but I would like to return it as soon as I can.
The size of your business doesn’t matter as much as its reputation. One small way you can build trust between you and your customers is with a toll-free number. It shows that you’re reliable, and it helps people remember your number more easily. Support your marketing and strengthen your brand with a toll-free vanity number.
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Regardless, you have to remind your callers that it’s the holidays, that things are busy, and that in order for you to run your business more smoothly and get to as many customers as possible, you need your customers to leave a detailed message, and you need your voicemail greeting to express that it’s the holiday season and things will be slower. Remaining transparent by acknowledging it’s the busiest time of the year allows customers to anticipate a wait. This helps improve the customer experience and make them feel more welcome.
Rehearse or write down your message before recording it. Remember that old saying “practice makes perfect?” It’s certainly true when it comes to creating an electronic greeting. The more you’ve rehearsed, the easier the message will be to restate. If you don’t have time to practice, writing down the greeting before recording it – and then reading it aloud from the paper – may help you stay focused on the correct wording.
Cell phone voicemail greetings are generally more personal and casual than office phones. Consider a greeting like “Hello, you’ve reached [your name]’s cell phone. I can’t take your call at the moment, but if you leave a brief message, I’ll get back to you as quickly as possible.”
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Kall8 is a little different from some others on this list of small business phone services because its primary focus is as a toll free number service. It touts itself as a way to direct and track online ad campaigns to toll free numbers. Along with it, Kall8 also offers basic phone service features such as voicemail and call forwarding. Prices start at $2.00/month per number. Vanity numbers and local numbers cost more. Add to that a per minute rate of roughly $.06 to .07 per minute. You could easily use this service to tie a Google Ad campaign to a phone number and allow you to track which ad performed best. Feature We Like: The online tools for tracking.
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If done tastefully, you can promote your products or services on your voicemail greeting without sounding pushy. In fact, it’s a great way to keep customers up-to-date on company events, sales, and other news. Be sure to keep it short and have fun with it.
If you’re not going to apologize or sound regretful about it, chances are you will lose on potential prospects. Mean it to your prospects how you are really sorry you can’t assist them at the moment.
The problem is maintaining control over your voice quality at so many different locations. Even if you've got several business-grade routers working in a bunch of branch offices, this problem is surmountable since (1) it's usually not overly difficult to provision those branch office routers remotely, and (2) the routers at those locations were chosen by your IT staff specifically because they work well with the routers at your primary location. That's not the case with home routers.