You can’t always get to the phone when clients, partners, investors, or colleagues call you. When this happens, a professional voicemail greeting helps you make a positive impression and tells them what to do next. There are a variety of ways to convey your message. If you’re not sure what type of message to record for your own voicemail box, here’s a definitive guide to get you started.
Whether you’re searching for the best office phone for a small business or large enterprise, you should be communicating with your customers and employees on a higher level. Switch out your old telephone system for one of the best business VoIP providers.
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Whether you need phones for opening a new office, supporting employees working from home, or it’s time to update your business phone system, we have done all of the research and tested over 25 small business phone systems to prepare the list of our best Top 5 most recommended business telephone systems. The manufacturer must be reliable, with a proven history and warranty support. Be the most affordable for a small business to purchase and maintain. Be future proof — compatible with standard analog landline telephone service or VoIP cloud phone service. Provides feature to transfer calls to a cell phone, a smartphone app, and supports mobile and home office employees. Must have the essentials: automated attendant call tree menus, voicemail to email, intercom, call forward, transfer, and music on hold.
A virtual phone number is a phone number that lets you choose the area code of the phone number.
GoToConnect provides a robust business VoIP system to businesses, and of course offers virtual phone numbers as well. GoToConnect provides users with unlimited calling, call forwarding, and over 80 business-grade features for a fixed monthly rate per user. This option is ideal for organizations with a lot of remote workers.
The price of Jive phone service starts from $19.95-$29.95 per month per user. After that, price plans change with every additional group of users. GoToConnect plans use a tier method.
21. “Happy holidays. Thanks for calling OpenPhone. Our hours are a little different during the holiday season. Please listen carefully to the following changes. Customer Support is available December 23, 27, and 30th as well as January 2nd, 3rd from 11 AM – 5 PM EST. On December 24th, 31st, and the holiday weekends from the 21st to the 5th we are open from 12 PM – 3 PM EST. We are closed on December 25th, 26th as well as January 1st. In the case of an emergency, please leave a message and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible. You can also reach out via email to [email protected]. Thanks for using OpenPhone and enjoy your holiday season!” Since our holiday hours are shorter, it’s a little harder to get in contact with us immediately. That means we need to be as detailed as possible for our callers’ convenience. Yet, we still kept it brief and friendly.
The Estate plan is ideal for larger teams, bringing 3,000 free incoming minutes per month. It also comes with advanced call metrics, call barging, holiday routing, queue callback, and many other features. This plan will set you back $45 per month.
We were happy to see that the new Flex plan is incredibly cheap. For 2-99 users, the price is $14.99 per user per month. For a single user, the cost is $17.99 per month. Just like all the other VirtualPBX business plans, Flex comes with a 15-day money-back guarantee, so it’s definitely worth giving it a try.
In order to determine the number of users you need for your RingCentral phone system, count the total number of devices you need, including desk phones, softphones, conference phones, and fax machines.
The Solo plan costs $29 per month and comes with a single business number and three extensions. The Partner plan is $49 per month, and it will get you three numbers and six extensions. The most expensive tier, Small Business, is $89 per month. It comes with five numbers and unlimited extensions. The 10% discount for annual billing applies to these plans too.
Company Description: Do you wish you had a virtual phone system that could learn about your business the more that you worked with it? That’s exactly what CallHippo provides. Their intelligent virtual phone system comes complete with workflow automation, allowing you to build out how your customer support teams handle calls from your customers.
A landline-based business phone system is fixed to your location and severely hinders your ability to communicate, whereas a VOIP line can allow you to communicate like you are sitting right beside your desk phone, wherever you may be. As long as you have an Internet connection, your business is connected. The increased mobility is one of the top reasons many business owners choose to switch to a VOIP provider.
20. "Hey there, this is [your name] from [your company]. I'm out of the office until [date]. In the meantime, please direct your inquiries to [coworker's name] at [email address]. They can also be reached at [phone number]. Thank you."
Remember to watch out for ambient noise on your end of the call as well. Train signals, traffic, or even outside conversations can be very distracting to your callers and project an unprofessional image. Don’t forget the beep. Every millisecond – yes, millisecond – between the end of your greeting and the beep is time callers could potentially drop the call. That’s why the anticipated beep should sound the moment your greeting is finished. Leaving lengthy, silent gaps may cause your customers to wonder if they’ve been disconnected. Don’t give them the opportunity to hang up waiting to hear that affirmative tone. Check and then recheck your greeting. After you complete your outgoing voicemail message, play it back to verify you’ve said everything you intended to say. Then take it a step further and dial in to experience the greeting for yourself, and be mindful to contemplate the greeting from the customer’s perspective.
For those with voicemail greetings that get changed about as often as a new president is elected, know that this is doing a serious disservice to the caller-recipient relationship. It signals to callers that the business is anything but an authority, most likely not very detail oriented, and has questionable overall credibility and competency. Those aren’t traits that any business wants to associate itself.
I love my job because [XYZ company] is the best place to work at. Please leave your full name, contact info, number and other details and I’ll call back within 24 hours! Thanks a bunch.”