If you’re not available to take a call or someone tries to get in touch with you outside of opening hours, your voicemail greeting will be the first interaction that clients have with your business. A voicemail message is the perfect opportunity to make a great first impression. Therefore, it’s important to include all the relevant information to help clients on their buying journey.
Be Brief but Detailed
You don’t want a voicemail message that rambles on about opening times, treatments and special offers. Yes, these are all important aspects of your business but they can be discussed more in depth when you get in back in touch with the client or you can direct them to your website for more information. Instead, try and be as brief but detailed as possible in your message.
- Be professional – above all, ensure your voicemail message is professional and clear. It should be friendly and open but you also want to come across as the professional business owner that you are.
- Only include important details – it can be easy to get carried away and waffle on when recording yourself. Therefore, write a ‘script’ or some keywords down and have them near when recording the message to make sure you don’t go off track when recording your greeting.
- Do as you say – if you ask for your client to leave contact details and advise that you’ll get back to them within a certain timeframe, make sure you do. If you don’t keep your word and get back in touch with people when you say you will, they’ll likely go elsewhere.
What Details Should I include?
Take some time to think about the information that you’d like to gather from a voicemail message if you were to phone another business. Go from there.
- Advise that you’ll be back in touch and ask for the caller to leave a contact number and a quick overview of what their query is. Knowing what the caller would like to discuss beforehand gives you an advantage and lets you get prepared.
- Suggest on the voicemail that the person calls back within your opening hours (you can include a brief indication of these as long as they don’t differ too much day to day) or go to your online booking or website if this is an option.
- Thank the individual for calling and apologise for not being there to take their call.
Keep Up to Date
When it comes to your voicemail message, ensure that you’re reviewing it regularly and keeping it updated with relevant and helpful information. This is particularly important on bank holidays as many clients may not know that your opening times will change.
The interaction that your clients have with your business is called a ‘touch point’. If it’s the first time a client has ever contacted you, it’s the only interaction they will have had with your business and therefore, the only interaction to base their opinion of you on. With this in mind, it’s essential that this very minor but important first point of contact is a positive experience. As a result, it will ensure you have happy and, more importantly, returning clients.26
If you’re reading this and you don’t currently have a voicemail message set up, make it a priority that you do. There is nothing worse than hearing the phone providers generic message and it doesn’t look very professional either.
Image:istock.com/Zinkevych
