Editor’s Note: The article is part of the blog series Grow Your Business brought to you by the marketing team at UniTel Voice, the virtual phone system priced and designed for startups and small business owners.
We’re keeping it simple with this one. Just a few basic elements to help you get started. As long as you know who your audience is, the message you wish to convey, and the information you need from the caller, the rest should fall into place quite nicely. Let’s face it, a voicemail greeting for a lumber company will probably be different than that of a psychologist’s office. One greeting is aimed at securing potential customers, and the other is geared towards appointments, more or less. Once you are certain who your caller is, the better your voicemail. Center on your audience, first and foremost. Knowing what to relate ensures that your caller will leave the right message. For instance, if you’re a retail store, you would include your hours of operations, and perhaps any specials that you’re running. If you are a therapist’s office, then you’d need to include an alternate number in case a patient is having an issue and requires immediate help. Again, this will vary depending on the business. Here, a therapist would definitely request the caller leave their contact information. However, a retail store chain might not request that. There are also complex voicemail systems such as those used by mobile phone services, which ask you to press a certain number on your phone, where you are asked to leave your account information. Again, as you can see, it all boils down to the demographics of your callers, and what you need from them to conduct the best business possible. Depending on the situation, your caller might be in a good mood or not. In either case, they’ll probably be eagerly awaiting your call. So, it stands to reason that you only promise them a call back if you can deliver. In other words, if you’re a small shop and you’ve decided to close due to a much-needed sabbatical, then don’t leave a voicemail greeting where you promise them to call right back. However, if you have an active customer service staff, then you can promise to return their call within the same day.

26. Thank you for calling [your name] at [company name]. Unfortunately, I can’t take your call right now. Please leave your name, number and a message, and I will call you back as soon as I have the opportunity.
This method overwrites the current night message, so you will have to follow these steps in the new year to re-record your night message. Press the button designated as the Night Mail retrieval (enter password if asked) Press option 8 Press option 1 Press option 7 Speak at tone Press # to save Hangup or press speaker button to end Put your phone into night mode following your usual process upon end of year closure. Aria 24, Aria 130 & Aria 300 Phone Systems To change an existing voice mail greeting, you must be on the Attendant/Admin handset which is usually the first extension number in your range i.e 100 or 101 From this handset, dial Trans/Pgm then 61 followed by the # key. You will hear a prompt when to start recording the greeting and when you are finished simply press the Hold/Save key. Your new message should now play where the previous greeting used to. Updating Avaya Phone Systems Greetings