How to : Record a professional phone message

Record a professional phone message

If you are running a home business you are hands-on in managing the business. You are occupied most of the time. More often than not you are not at your desk but out somewhere attending to customers and handling the different aspects of business. You may or may not have the luxury of having a receptionist or an assistant to man the phone and answer the calls.

First impressions count a lot when a customer calls you. If you are unable to take the call at once, the caller should be hearing a message to inform them that you are not available at the moment. Having a professional recorded greeting that contains the message that your customers would be satisfied to hear is therefore very important to your business and retaining customers. Here are the steps on how to make your recorded phone message more professional sounding.

Buy a business phone with an automatic attendant capability. Write down your script. It should be short and to the point, giving enough details to satisfy a client as to the reason why you are not able to attend to their call. It should include your company name, a brief statement about appreciating the call and the statement informing the caller that their call cannot be attended to at the moment. The script should include an invitation for the caller to leave a message and the instructions on how to record their message. You should also give them a time frame for when you will be able to return their call. Time your script. It should be not longer than twenty-five seconds. Veer away from the almost standard opening sentence informing the caller that their call is important to you. That phrase has been used over and over and is even part of some pre-recorded phone messages. Edit your message script as you fit until you are satisfied with it. Practice reading it aloud several times and check if the script sounds right. Ask a friend to read or listen to it so you can get some inputs. For sure your friend has listened to several recorded greetings also. If you have an audio recording software application installed in your computer, use that to make a sample of the greeting. You can then hear how it will actually sound and find out if your voice, your accent and pitch sound professional and business-like yet inviting. The recording should be crisp and clear. Do your recording at night when everyone had gone home and the office is silent. Outside noises can ruin the recording. Review your recording. It should be at the right pace and must not sound rushed. If your voice does not sound professional and business-like, ask some of your staff to do it or you can ask a friend who has a good voice to record it for you.

Check the file format requirement for your business phone and export the recorded message in that format for uploading to your business phone. Program your phone to play the professional recorded message whenever you are not able to attend to the call at once.