Today’s blog post will connect voicemail greetings with Shakespeare.
No, we don’t expect your Voicemail to sound like its from The Bard. We just want you to consider the phrase from Hamlet: “Brevity is the soul of wit.”
Brief voicemail greetings can display your intelligence as a business. They can save your callers time and keep your messages on-point.
Let’s take a look at how making educated assumptions about caller intent and actions can keep your voicemails short and informative.
Make Assumptions About Caller Intent
You can use your market to make a number of assumptions about why a caller has reached you.
For example, think about the type of person who would call your lumber shop, Southside Lumber Wholesalers. You’ll probably see business owners and contractors reach you most often.
Therefore you can cater a business-wide voicemail greeting to that audience. Something like this could work well:
- “You’ve reach the company voicemail of Southside Lumber. Reach us daily from 9-7 to schedule a local delivery and ask about rates for large orders or specialty lumber. Leave your number to receive a call back when we open.”
Southside Lumber would have no need to address individuals who want to buy a single 2″ x 4″. It can also eliminate the need to list a physical location because it primarily delivers large orders and doesn’t expect to see walk-ins.
The nature of your business here would depend on operating hours and responsiveness to after-hours calls. This message hits those points and doesn’t labor the caller with any further information.
Know the Customer’s Calling Path
If you use an Automated Attendant like we offer with VirtualPBX Business Phone Plans, then you can use a caller’s path to further guess their intentions. This works particularly well for individual voicemails that aren’t company-wide.
Using the Southside Lumber Wholesalers example business from before, its auto attendant might suggest that the caller dial a few individual departments.
Callers might reach Sales, Order Fulfillment, or Management sub-menus before finding a voicemail. The head of Sales would use their position further narrow down the intent of the caller, based on their path through the automated system. As a result, this voicemail could be appropriate:
- “This is Denise Smith, head of Sales. My hours are Monday to Friday, 9 to 7. For new purchases, leave your phone number and order details. I will call you back with a quote.”
This message gets to the heart of what Denise and the Sales department offers. The department processes new orders and provides quotes.
To that point, Denise’s message avoids mentioning any extraneous information. Denise expects callers to be of a single type (large contractors), and expects that they made it to Sales because they don’t have an existing order – there’s already an auto attendant menu for that.
Smart, Short Voicemail Greetings
Are your voicemail greetings long and labored? Do they accurately address callers’ needs or just ramble in hopes of hitting the right point? Do they follow the same principles you’d use when writing effective emails?
A quick inspection of your business’s goals and products/services can help you guess caller intent. Just ask yourself: What is my target market, and what would customers in that market call about?
That information cascades into business-wide and individual voicemail boxes. You can address broad business concerns in your company inbox. And individual department heads can speak more distinctly about how they handle customer concerns.
Finally, make sure your Automated Attendant is set up in a logical manner. It helps define a caller’s path, which is essential to the creation of fine-grained voicemail greetings.
