4. "Hello, you've reached [your name and title]. I'm currently out on parental leave until [date]. In the meantime, please direct all phone calls to [alternate contact name] at [phone number] and emails to [email address].
Be brief. Don’t make your listener resent you for leaving a 5 minute long message. People are busy. Listening to 5 minute phone messages is not on the top of their priorities and wastes their time. Many callers seem to think they are the only person in the world leaving a voicemail for a particular person. Yet a dozen other people feel the same way and a man ends up holding the phone to his ear for an hour.

Of course, your phone rang because someone wanted to get in touch. They got your voicemail because you were busy or just not there. If you section off a block of your day to check voicemails, let the caller know so they can expect a time for you to return their call. People will leave more details if they know someone will check it later.
Users often don’t invest enough time into their messages, resulting in incomplete, unprofessional, or otherwise under-whelming greetings. Sure, crafting a greeting doesn’t sound all that complicated; however, there are a number of pitfalls users can fall into—i.e. informality, terseness, sincerity, lack of direction, and more. While none of these sound too catastrophic, they are often interrelated. As such, they tend to worsen any problem. For example, humor can cause informality, worsen ambiguity, and weaken sincerity. That being said, users should strive to avoid ALL these pitfalls.