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.
Before moving on to learning about voicemail message templates, let’s learn some tips to effectively take phone messages. Tips for Taking Phone Messages Effectively . Creating a phone message template is the first step in starting a good phone communication procedure – but it doesn’t stop there.

Many times, as an owner of a business, you may not really like the sound of your own voice on the voicemail greeting and you may not really be sure about what you should say. You can decide to use the voice of anyone on your staff to record the voicemail greeting; however, this may not be as effective as hiring a voice-over professional to do the recording.
5. "Hello, [Person's name] is chasing new adventures and is no longer with [Company name]. Please forward all future requests to [New or interim person's name] at [phone number]. Thank you!"