If your team runs a support or sales phone line, the voicemail greeting is often the first thing a customer hears from you. It is also the thing most teams record once and forget for two years. Here is the checklist we use when we help small teams set up or clean up their greetings.
1. Write down what a caller needs to hear
Before recording anything, list the facts a caller needs in the first 20 seconds:
- The company or team name, so they know they dialed the right number
- Whether anyone is available right now
- When they can expect a callback
- What to include in the message (name, number, order or ticket ID)
- One alternative channel, such as a support email or help page
Anything beyond that list can usually be cut.
2. Keep one greeting per situation
A single greeting that tries to cover every case gets long and vague. Most small teams need three:
- Open hours: everyone is busy, callback within a set window
- After hours: the office is closed, opening times, next business day callback
- Holiday or closure: the dates you are closed and the day you reopen
Write the three scripts in one shared doc so anyone on the team can update them.
3. Name your audio files so they are easy to swap
Phone systems tend to hide uploaded greetings behind menus. A simple naming pattern saves time later:
support-open-hours-2026-10.wav
support-after-hours-2026-10.wav
support-holiday-2026-12.wav
The date in the file name tells you at a glance when a greeting was last refreshed.
4. Check the audio format your phone system expects
Many VoIP and PBX systems are picky. Common requirements are WAV or MP3, mono, and a sample rate of 8 kHz or 16 kHz. If an upload sounds muffled or is rejected, convert it first. With ffmpeg that is one line:
ffmpeg -i greeting.mp3 -ac 1 -ar 8000 greeting.wav
5. Test it like a customer would
Call the line from a personal phone, outside the office network, at the time each greeting should play. Listen for three things: the volume matches a normal call, the first words are not clipped, and the callback promise is one you can keep.
6. Put a review on the calendar
Opening hours, staff and holidays change. A short recurring reminder every quarter to replay the greetings catches most of the stale ones before customers notice.
A note on recording
You do not need a studio. A quiet room and a phone held about a hand's width from your mouth works fine. If nobody on the team wants to record, a text to speech tool can turn the script into audio you can upload. We built AI Voicemail Greeting for exactly that, but any tool that exports a clean MP3 or WAV will do.
The script matters more than the voice. Get the six steps above right and callers will know who they reached, when they will hear back, and what to leave.
Written by the AI Voicemail Greeting Team.
Top comments (0)