If, instead, your message is vague or confusing customers are likely to get frustrated and hang up instead of leaving you a message. Here are four tips to help you create an effective after-hours voicemail greeting: 1. State your business name and hours of operation upfront. The first thing your callers should hear is the name of your business
Do they want to sit through an IVR menu that may or may not direct them to the right person? Do they know you’re a one-man/woman team and there’s no reason to sit through a menu? Skip the menu entirely and let them leave a message as quickly as possible. There’s no reason to add any additional steps or make your customers go through leaps and hurdles to leave a simple voicemail. When you identify what your customers’ pain points are, you make it much easier to determine what you want them to do to save everyone from the unnecessary stress.

There you have it, a basic introduction into how to write the best voicemail greetings. As you have seen, they’re not as easy as you’d think, but once you get comfortable with the type of information required by each, writing and recording your own should be a piece of cake. If you’ve tried to write one yourself and still don’t ‘feel you’ve captured the right essence, then please look at one of our voicemails greeting templates. When it comes to recording it, remember to rehearse your script and speak clearly. If you don’t care for your own voice, then have someone else record it, or hire a professional voice actor. Remember, there are also free audio editing software programs like Audacity, where you can manipulate your recording until you get exactly what you want.
1. Thank Them or Apologize. The basic rule of thumb is that callers should hear one of two things when they first connect with your voicemail — either an apology for not being able to answer the call or a “thank you” for having called.