Voicemail Greeting

Guidelines for Voicemail

Be sure to record your own personal greeting; don't use the standard default greeting or have another person record your greeting.

Write down what you want to say in your greeting and practice saying it a few times before recording. Even if the greeting sounds like you are reading it, it will ensure that you don't spend as much time trying to record it "just right."

Include in your greeting your name and department so that people know they have reached the correct person.

Your regular greeting should include your normal work hours. If you know that you will be on vacation for a few days or leaving the office early or have different hours temporarily, you should record an alternate greeting to let callers know this. Callers will know that they cannot expect a callback for a few hours or a few days.

Use the attendant feature! This feature allows the caller to reach another person in your department from your voicemail.

If your phone is the main department extension, you might want to consider playing an alternate greeting when you are closed.

If your message is rather long, you might consider informing callers of the option to press 5 to bypass your message and to start recording their message to you.

If you turn on the paging feature (you will be paged when a message is marked urgent), make sure to mention that in your message.

When you leave for the day or will be away from your desk for an extended period of time, forward your line to your voicemail using the call forward feature as a courtesy to your callers.


Guidelines for Leaving a Voicemail

Speak clearly and slowly.

Be sure to leave your name and extension number. It's best to say it at the beginning and end of your message.

Keep messages short and to the point.

Remember that you want to leave the person you are calling with a good impression of you.

Leave the date and time you called in the message. Let the person know the best time to call you back.

Cover one topic in one message; specify what you want the recipient to do.