Answering Machine Greeting-Things to Remember

You've experienced it anytime you're about to leave a message for someone: You sit through 30 seconds of instructions on what to do to leave your message when it is common knowledge that we wait for the beep and speak. And then we turn around and make the same greeting on our own answering machine when we get one. The vicious cycle continues.

Answering Machine Greeting-Things to Remember

Answering Machine Greeting-Things to Remember

---

Answering Machine Greeting-Things to Remember

Answering Machine Greeting-Things to Remember

There are 3 things that you need to communicate to a person who is bound to get your answering machine:

1) A brief introduction

2) You're not available

3) A reminder to leave a contact number

The reasoning behind this is simple. Some people may not realize they're initially getting to machine and quality on the machines are much better than they used to be, so you want to communicate quickly that you aren'tthere. to minimize confusion.

The reminder to leave a number is important because people leaving a message will get so wrapped up in delivering the information quickly that they often neglect the most important piece: contact information. And don't expect to rely on caller-id either, since more and more people either install call blocking, or call from numbers that are re-routed, resulting in incorrect caller-id results.

There are two opposing schools of thought on the introduction. One states that you should never leave personal information up for grabs on the greeting, while others maintain that a simple first name won't hurt anyone. The answer lies in your own personal comfort level, but the advanTAGe to announcing your phone number in your greeting is that youwill reduce the number of wrong-number messages that are left for you. Simply using a name might not be enough to inform the caller they called the wrong number. However, using a phone number in the message is very impersonal and makes for a more robotic greeting. Utilizing both the phone number and your first name in the greeting is a slightly longer, but best of both worlds solution.

An example of all this could be as follows: "You've reached 555-555-5555. We're sorry we missed your call, so make sure you leave a number where we can get back to you. "Thank you".

Or, for a personalized message: "Hey, it's Julie. Sorry to miss you call, but make sure you leave a number so I can call you back right away! Thanks ".

Answering Machine Greeting-Things to Remember