To provide as much helpful insight to businesses as possible, we've compiled the top must-have information that should be included in your office's temporary voicemail greeting. 1. Your voicemail should be timely and relevant to the situation at hand. 2. Indicate if you’re working remotely or changing office hours temporarily. 3. Set clear, reasonable expectations for your callers about when they should expect to hear back from someone. 4. State clearly what types of matters are urgent and give examples of issues that are not. This way, patients and callers can have a good understanding of what to expect about call-backs and reduce unnecessary follow-up calls. 5. If you have made disruptions to existing appointments, you should note this, as well as how you plan to reach people to reschedule.
This call may be recorded or monitored for quality and training purposes. If you don’t wish this call to be monitored or recorded, then please let the answering machine know when you leave your message.

A secretary in a doctor’s office creates a voicemail greeting that says, “If you have a scheduled meeting with us, we could use copies of all your medical documents from last year, so come prepared.” Using the word “could” gives patients the impression that they don’t necessarily “need” last year’s documents. See the difference between “could” and “need”? Your word choice can impact a future meeting significantly. If you want a customer to perform a specific action, you need to pay close attention to how you express your calls-to-action.
As the COVID-19 coronavirus continues to affect businesses around the world, many offices are being forced to change their hours, reschedule appointments, and even send employees home to work.