A voicemail greeting is the shortest piece of writing a business publishes, and it gets heard by more strangers than most websites. I have set these up myself, but the useful rules are in two published guides, so those are what this post uses. What I can add is a fact about the family restaurant where I work, which turns out to bear directly on what a greeting should say.

How to Record a Professional Voicemail Greeting, Townsquare Interactive on YouTube

The guides are TechRadar’s piece on business voicemail greetings, published in 2021, and a blog article on after-hours voicemail and auto attendant greetings from a company that sells business phone service. The second one has a sales pitch bolted to it. The advice inside it is separate from the pitch and I have used only the advice. No particular phone service is needed for anything in this post.

Say who you are first

The first four seconds decide whether they stay on the line

Both guides open with the same instruction: the business name comes first. TechRadar says callers who hear your name and company right away will not wonder whether they dialed the wrong number, and suggests adding a job title if it matters. The after-hours guide agrees and adds that if several businesses share a name, an address helps.

This is not politeness. A person who calls a number from a search result, a flyer or a friend’s text is partway through a decision, and the voice that answers either confirms it or breaks it. A greeting that begins with a long pause, or with a stock phrase read by a machine, tells the caller the number may have changed hands.

Short is the other rule both share. TechRadar says to keep it short, and the after-hours guide says the best after-hours greetings are “brief, direct, and punctual.” Each sentence in the greeting is something a caller has to sit through before they can do what they came to do.

What the message has to carry

Person recording a greeting on a phone with a written script on the desk

Hours, a way to reach you another way, and a promise you can keep

The after-hours guide gives a clear order. Say that you are closed, give your regular hours early, and then tell the caller what to do. Its reasoning: most callers expect a person to answer, so they need to know quickly that no one will and when someone will. A caller who knows your hours can decide to call back tomorrow, and a caller who does not know them has to guess, and usually leaves a message that asks.

Alternatives come next. Both sources say to tell callers what else they can do: a website, an email address, an on-call or emergency line, or a different contact for urgent matters. TechRadar adds that field workers might list a cell number. If you run a phone menu, the after-hours guide says to state which key goes with each option.

Last is the callback. TechRadar suggests a callback timeline “if you can realistically keep one,” and the other guide gives an example of promising a call back within 48 hours. Make the promise only if you will keep it. A greeting that promises a call by the end of the next business day and then goes unanswered for three has made things worse than silence would have.

A sample built from those pieces, written by me for an imaginary shop and not taken from either guide:

You have reached the shop. We are open Tuesday through Saturday, ten to five. Leave your name, your number and what you are calling about, and we will call you back by the end of the next day we are open. For quick questions, the details are on our website.

It runs about thirty words. Everything in it is something a caller can act on.

The hours have to agree everywhere

Disclosure: the Heritage Diner is a family business I work in and it sits under my mother’s name

The Heritage Diner’s Google Business Profile once showed stale menu prices. I updated the menus by hand and forgot to update that listing, and people called to order from the old menus. Today there is one menu, and it is synced to Google, the diner’s website and other places.

That is a menu story, not a voicemail story, and the lesson carries straight over. A caller does not meet your business in one place. They meet it in a search listing, on a website, on a printed card and on the phone, and the phone is the last place they check and the first place they will complain. If the hours in your greeting say one thing and the hours online say another, someone drives to a locked door, or someone calls at the wrong time and gets a machine that contradicts the website.

So treat the hours as one fact kept in one place. Write them down once. Update every other place from that one, in the same sitting, whenever they change. A greeting is the easiest place to forget, because it is recorded on a phone and not edited in a document.

It helps to write for the person standing outside a locked door with the phone in one hand. That caller wants three facts: whether anyone is coming, when, and what to do in the meantime. Anything else in the message is for the business and not for the caller, and a greeting built around the business reads exactly that way. Cut every sentence that would be missing from the caller’s three questions, then read what is left aloud once to see whether it still sounds like a person.

Recording it

Closed shop door in the evening with the lights off

Write it out, then read it slowly

TechRadar’s advice on the recording itself is plain: write a script first so you do not leave out key details or stumble, and speak slowly, clearly and confidently. It specifically says not to rush through information a caller may need to write down, such as an email address or phone number. If your website address is long, say so once, slowly, or skip it and say the business name so the caller can search for you.

On tone, TechRadar allows that light humor can work for some industries but says it should be brief and should never delay the information a caller needs. A joke at the start of a greeting costs the caller four seconds every single time they call, and a regular customer will hear it a hundred times.

Record it in a quiet room. Hold the phone steady and speak at your normal volume. Then call your own number from a different phone and listen as a stranger would. Does it start with the name? Are the hours clear the first time through? Does the callback promise match what you can do? You will hear a stumble or a wrong time that you could not hear while you were saying it.

Closures and holidays

A greeting that is wrong for a day is worse than a plain one

The after-hours guide says to update the greeting whenever you close for a holiday or an emergency, mention the closure early in the message, and give the closing dates or the reopening date if you can. TechRadar covers long absences the same way: update the greeting, include the dates you will be away, give a contact for urgent matters, and be precise about what callers can expect, including telling them if most requests will wait until you are back. Details about your trip are optional.

The usual failure is not the recording but the removal. A holiday greeting that is still playing in the second week of January tells every caller the business has disappeared. Put the reopening date on your calendar the same day you record the closing message, and put the re-recording on the calendar next to it. Write the closing message with the reopening date in it, so that if you do forget the re-recording, the greeting at least expires in plain words a caller can read as a date and not as a mystery.

One honest turn against all this: no greeting fixes a business that does not return calls. The words are only a promise, and a caller who has been promised a Tuesday callback and receives it on Friday will remember the Friday. If the callback window is a hope instead of a habit, make the window longer and keep it.

A short checklist

Notepad with a handwritten script beside a telephone handset
  • Business name first, and an address if the name is shared.
  • Hours, early in the message.
  • One or two other ways to reach you.
  • A callback window you actually keep.
  • Under about thirty seconds.
  • Re-recorded for every closure, and re-recorded again on reopening.
  • Hours identical to the website and the search listing.

For informational purposes only. Phone and call-recording rules vary by state and by how you use the recordings; consult a licensed attorney if you plan to record calls or collect personal information from voicemails.

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