The 25 Best Voicemail Greetings for Your Business

If customers call your business but you can’t get to the phone, won’t they be annoyed if they have to leave a message?

Not necessarily. When done well, your voicemail greeting is an opportunity to show your customers what your business is all about. By using a tailored voicemail greeting with a professional tone, you reassure your customers that they’re in good hands with you. It’s also a chance for you to convey useful information, making it easier to work together in the future.

No matter what, you don’t want to leave a bad impression. We’ve all heard the garbled, lackluster voicemail greeting that sounds like it was recorded in a windstorm. If you can’t get to the phone, and this is the first thing a new caller hears from you — they probably won’t call back.

So how do you create a voicemail greeting that leaves a great first impression with your customers? Of course, you need to convey basic information and request that the caller leave a message. Beyond that, there are subtle things you can do to improve your message to better serve your customers.

To help you get started, we’ve drafted 25 professional voicemail templates you can use for your own voicemail greeting. Read on to learn how you can craft the perfect voicemail greeting for each situation.

What Makes A Good Business Voicemail Greeting?

First and foremost, a standard voicemail greeting for a business has to be instructive and informative. Your customers need to know:

Who They’re Calling: Maybe the caller found your phone number online, through Google Maps, social media, etc. Maybe they copied it down from a billboard or saw your number in their missed calls. In any case, people often want to make sure they call the right place. You’d be surprised how many businesses forget to start their greeting with this key piece of information. Starting with, “Hi, you’ve reached [your business name],” should be enough to orient your callers. Plus, if they did call the wrong number, it’s still an opportunity to introduce yourself!
Required Information: Simply asking someone to leave a message may be enough. But it’s always better to be specific about what you need from callers. If you want their name, phone number, email, or their reason for calling, ask for it. People get nervous on the phone and may forget to provide their phone number for a call back, or they may hang up because they don’t know what to say. Give your callers a template to which they can respond to avoid this problem.
When to Expect a Reply (and How): When people reach your voicemail box, they want to know when they’ll hear back from someone at your business. Be specific (and realistic) about when you will contact the caller again. If you may want people to call back themselves during business hours, say it. Let them know if messages are only checked at the beginning of the day, if they will be answered in the order they were received, or if any other special conditions apply. It’s also important to manage customer expectations. Don’t say you’ll get back to them in one business day if you can’t always do that.

Every basic voicemail should provide this information. Even if you don’t add any more flair, a voicemail that provides these three things will usually work just fine.

Optional Voicemail Components

If you really want to make your voicemail stand out to customers, you can also include these components in your greeting:

Alternate Forms of Contact: Some customers will worry that their message will be lost in your inbox, and that they’ll never get the help they need. If you want to avoid those angry messages, mention an alternate way for your customers to contact you within your voicemail greeting. It might be a form of communication at the same level, i.e. emailing your customer service team. But it may keep you from losing a customer who hates leaving voicemails. Just be sure to mention if it’s only for emergencies or specific types of requests.
Why You Can’t Come to the Phone: If you usually miss the phone because you’re busy with other customers, say so. No matter what the real reason is, customers want to know that you aren’t ignoring them. Reminding customers that you’re being productive elsewhere is a good way to quell frustration.
State Your Business Hours: Just in case someone calls when you aren’t open, it’s a good idea to state your business hours. This tells customers when you typically operate, and often explains exactly why you didn’t answer the phone. For anyone who doesn’t want to leave a voicemail, this tells them exactly when they can call back.

What To Avoid In A Business Voicemail Greeting

We’ve all had the bad experience of a voicemail greeting saying something that sounds like “please leave a message” — but you’re not totally sure. That’s why poor audio is one of the biggest contributors to an unhelpful business voicemail greeting. Poor audio comes off as unprofessional, confusing, and annoying. Take time to record your voicemail greeting in a quiet room, and be sure to rehearse your message before recording yourself.

No one likes to listen to a voicemail that’s too long. Lots of people have short attention spans and might miss important details, or be confused about what information is most important. Try to keep your voicemail greeting no longer than ten seconds (although it’s okay to go a little longer in some cases).

The 25 Best Business Voicemail Greetings

Here are our top recommendations for voicemail greetings you can use in a business setting. Feel free to adjust or edit these templates to suit your business’s needs. Just remember to provide the information your customers need in a clear and understandable format.

Basic Greetings

If you don’t need any special instructions for your customers, use one of these basic voicemail greetings that are sure to come in under ten seconds.

Greetings With Special Access Conditions

If you only check your voicemail at certain times, it’s best to disclose these times to your customers in your voicemail greeting. It sets accurate expectations for when you’ll be able to contact them. This is also an opportunity to direct customers with special needs or requests to a more direct source of knowledge (if applicable). Use these templates for special cases where a caller might want to reach you elsewhere:

You have reached [Company Name]. Our phone representatives are available to answer your questions from [hour] to [hour] Monday through Friday [optional: and from hour to hour on the weekends]. If you wish to receive a call back from our representatives, please leave your name, phone number, and reason for calling. This mailbox is checked once per day, and we respond to all messages in the order they were received. Thank you for your patience. We look forward to connecting with you.

Greetings With Special Instructions

You might need specific information from your customers in order to best serve them when you eventually call them back. Regardless of how complicated the instructions are, be as clear as possible about what you need (and in what order you need it). Here are some voicemail greeting templates that can help with that:

Special Greetings For Tech Support Lines

If a customer is calling your technical support line and reaches a voicemail message, they may be frustrated or confused because they expected to speak about their problem directly to another person. Do your best to convey your concern through your voicemail greeting so your customer knows you still care about solving their problem. You may also provide specific directions for emergency situations. Here are a few templates to get started:

Temporary Greetings With Additional Details

Many times, you’ll need to provide additional information in your voicemail greeting that is only relevant for a certain period of time. For instance, you might have an employee that’s currently on leave. Other times you might close an office and not answer calls during that time. Be sure to also inform your customers of when you will be able to take calls once again. Try these voicemail greeting templates to keep your customers informed:

Greetings With Seasonal Details

If your business only operates during certain seasons (such as a party store or ski resort), you may choose to record a special greeting for the holiday season. In your greeting, you can explain why and how things are different during the off season. However, before you record a new message, decide on how casual you’d like your holiday greeting to be. Not every brand is well-suited to a holiday-themed voicemail greeting. But for some businesses, a cute greeting may be a great way to show off the company’s personality. But no matter how you do it, make sure you still convey all necessary information.

Special Greetings For Entrepreneurs

If you’re running a business from your personal cell phone, you want to come across as professional but still friendly. Here are some outgoing voicemail greetings that’ll convey business details to your customers but also remain casual for non-business callers.

Special Greetings For Medical Offices

Dentists, doctors, pediatricians, and other medical practices have extra privacy concerns when it comes to leaving voicemail messages. Unlike many other industries, medical professionals need to be careful with what they say in their voicemail greetings so as to remain HIPAA compliant. Don’t ask patients to provide confidential information regarding medical conditions or billing information.

Thank you for your call. You have reached the after-hours line for [Name of Office] and the offices of [name of medical practitioners working in the office]. If this is a medical emergency, hang up and dial 911. If your concern is non-urgent, please call back during our office hours or leave a voicemail. We will return your call as soon as possible. You can also email our general office at [front desk or general scheduling email]. Our office hours are [hours] from [start day] to [end day].

Multilingual Voicemail Greetings

If your business frequently serves non-English speakers, it’s important to consider their needs. You may even decide to record your entire voicemail in the most dominant language among your customer base, if that works for you. In any case, offering a different language option will increase the chances that information will be communicated clearly and completely to any customer that calls in. Otherwise, you may completely alienate part of your customers.

Adding a recording in another language doesn’t have to be complicated. Even something as simple as requesting a message and phone number can help your non-English speaking customers understand you. You can say this greeting after the English version, or offer an option to hear the non-English greeting from a menu at the very beginning. Here’s a simple Spanish voicemail greeting template you can use:

Tips to Create a DIY Voicemail Greeting for Your Business

The first thing you should do if you’re going to create your own professional voicemail greeting is figure out what you want to say. The recommended length of a professional voicemail is just 20-25 seconds, so don’t waste time with filler information that doesn’t actually add value to your message.

Certain pieces of information should be present in every professional voicemail greeting, including your name, the name of your company and department, and a statement about you not being able to take a call at the moment. Your greeting should also include an invitation for a caller to leave a message, a notice of when they can expect a return call and instructions about where they can get immediate assistance — a coworker’s direct line, website, etc.

If you need your callers to leave certain pieces of information in their message, such as an order or reference number, ask them to do so in your voicemail greeting. To limit the chances you’ll end up playing phone tag with a caller, it’s also advisable to ask them to provide the time of day that’s best for you to return their call.

Once you’ve finalized your script and made sure it includes all of the information mentioned above, you can use the following tips to record a voicemail greeting that will make the right impression on your callers:

Practice, Practice, Practice: While it’s normal to pause during conversations and say “um” from time to time, these things can ruin the impression you want your greeting to make. To avoid sounding unprofessional, practice your script several times over until you can get through it perfectly.
Record in the Right Environment: It’s important to pick the right environment in which to record your voicemail greeting. Ideally, the environment you pick will have a minimal amount of background noise. If your message is filled with ancillary noises, you won’t project a professional image, and your callers may get distracted or feel unimportant. If your work environment is noisy, consider recording your greeting at home or another quiet location.
Smile: When you smile while you’re on the phone, the people on the other end of the line know it, and they know you care about them. Be sure you keep a smile on your face and an upbeat attitude as you record your voicemail greeting.

When to Use a Professionally Recorded Voicemail Greeting

Even if you follow our tips for creating a professional voicemail greeting, you may still want to use AccessDirect’s recorded voicemail greeting services. There are plenty of circumstances that warrant using a professional voicemail greeting from us. As a small business owner or entrepreneur, you don’t have time to spend trying write and edit a script, record your greeting multiple times, or figure out how to seamlessly upload it to your phone system.

With AccessDirect, we do the work for you. Our experts work with you to create a customized script, complete with a warm greeting and instructions for callers. To add another level of professionalism, AccessDirect offers voice talent to record the greeting, so you know the voicemail greeting will be crystal clear and recited at the perfect pace. Finally, AccessDirect will upload the recorded voicemail greeting to your virtual business phone system.

Our voicemail greetings instantly communicate you’re a serious business that takes its callers seriously. Your message can include dial-by-name or extension options, and you can easily remove employee names and extensions as necessary. Even if you’re a one-person operation, you can use our voicemail greeting to give callers the impression your business consists of multiple departments and a roster of employees.

Do you want your voicemail greeting to make the right impression every time someone calls your business? Contact Us to learn more about our customizable, professional voicemail greetings and auto attendant systems now.

Final Thoughts

In reality, you can’t always answer the phone. But that shouldn’t stop you from leaving a great impression on new and existing customers every time they call. To do that, you’ll need to give some thought to your company’s voicemail greeting. It may only last ten seconds, but in that time, you show potential customers:

Your voicemail is an opportunity to reinforce your professional reputation, and to build trust with your future customers.

However, recording a voicemail can be intimidating. Sometimes, you may feel that your own voice isn’t the most representative of your business or your brand. Other times, you may lack the proper recording equipment, or you might not be confident in your ability to record a professional greeting.

If so, you’re not alone. That’s why we offer customized voicemail scripts and professional recordings to all AccessDirect customers. We’ll help you write a unique, professional voicemail greeting and record it on your behalf with trained voiceover specialists and high-quality recording equipment. When you set up a new phone system with us, you also get a whole suite of other features — voicemail greetings, virtual receptionist services, voicemail transcription, auto attendant menus, and so much more.

Get back to doing what you do best: serving your customers. We’ll set up your phone system and all the other features for you. Call us today to learn how AccessDirect can upgrade your phone presence.