Every local business should consider using customized greetings—it improves the customer experience and lightens the load for customer service teams.
Ready to learn more? Here’s everything you need to know.
What Are Custom Greetings?
Custom greetings play automatically when someone calls your business. If a customer calls you, a custom greeting is a prerecorded message they will hear before an agent picks up the phone.
Custom greetings are, as the name implies, completely customizable—you can tailor them to your specific needs. You can set your greetings to automatically play after hours when no one is in the office, or you can use them for every call.
The Benefits of Custom Greetings
To some businesses, using custom greetings may seem like a waste of time without much benefit. But they’re actually easy to set up and can deliver some amazing advantages. The exact benefits will depend on how you use the greetings, but they can include the following.
Make a Good First Impression
Customized greetings come across as very professional. They can improve the customer experience by ensuring that every call gets answered—even the after-hours ones. This can greatly improve a customer’s opinion of your business.
Immediately Deliver Necessary Information
Custome phone greetings can also be used to provide important information to your customers. For example, an after-hours greeting can tell customers when they can expect a call back from you. In some cases, your call greetings may answer the customers’ questions at the onset, so they don’t even need to continue on the call. This saves both you and your customers valuable time.
Route Callers to the Right Person
You can use custom greetings to route callers to the correct person or department. This can be done with a pre-recorded greeting that informs callers to press a number based on who they want to talk to. Through greetings like these, customers get access to the information or service they need with very little effort. And, you ensure that your team members don’t waste time on calls that they aren’t qualified to help with.
Improve Efficiency
Delivering necessary information and routing callers to the right person increases your business’ efficiency. Customers will be routed to the person or team most qualified to help them, so your team will be able to focus their efforts on other tasks.
Improve the Customer Experience
When phone greetings are used correctly, they provide callers with the information they need quickly, which leads to higher customer satisfaction. Your customers will appreciate your ability to answer their questions in a timely manner.
Eliminate Missed Opportunities
Say goodbye to missed calls and opportunities. Call greetings ensure that every call gets answered—even when your team is off the clock. Pro tip: make sure your greetings encourage customers to leave a message so you can call them back as soon as possible.
Best Practices for Custom Greetings
As you set up your business’s custom greetings, keep the following best practices in mind:
- Match your brand’s tone (calm, professional, friendly, etc.)
- Keep the greeting brief
- Make callers feel welcome
- Thank callers for calling
- Apologize for missing the call
- Remove all dead air and unnecessary sounds
- Consider adding sub-menus in addition to main menus
- Personalize the menu options based on common customer needs
- Make sure the auto attendant or recording is easy to understand
- Get a professional voiceover if you can’t make a quality recording yourself
- Thoroughly test every custom phone greeting on your phone system before launching it
Types of Call Greetings
You can easily adapt custom greetings to fit your business’s needs. The following customized greetings are the most common:
Welcome Greetings
Welcome greetings are designed to let customers know that they dialed the right number. They can also include additional information, such as your business hours or the phone queue.
Interactive Voice Response Greetings
These greetings have a phone tree that allows your customers to connect with specific departments or offer other options. This is where our tip on sub-menus can come into play. For example, you can have callers start by choosing a language and then proceed to select a department. Or they can choose a department and then a specific service. These kinds of greetings might say things like:
- “Press 1 for English.”
- “If you know your extension, please dial it now.”
- “Press 1 for customer service.”
Routing to Available Agents Greetings
This type of customized greeting is designed to keep your customers calm as they wait for someone to answer the phone. It lets them know that their call is being sent to another agent who will assist them with their concerns.
Delay Announcement
These are greetings that are designed to keep the caller updated about their wait time. They can be interspersed between other greetings or music. For example, you may have a delay announcement play every two minutes saying something like:
“Thank you for your patience. A representative will be with you shortly.”
After-hours Greeting
As the name implies, this greeting will be set to play only when your business is closed. At the very least, it should let the caller know when you will open shop again. It can also enable the caller to leave a message for you and inform them about how long it will take to get a callback.
Voicemail Message
Depending on your industry, you may opt to use voicemail messages during business hours. It could be as simple as a prompt to leave a voicemail and the assurance that someone will get back to the customer as soon as possible. This is especially common if the caller needs to talk to a specific person who may be busy at that moment. It might sound something like this:
“Thanks for calling [Name] at [Business]. I’m unfortunately busy at the moment. Please leave a message, and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.”
While the Customer Is on Hold
Many custom phone greetings will involve putting the customer on hold for at least a few minutes. This is most common when a short waiting time is necessary between the greeting and the customer being connected to an agent. So, what do you do to keep your customers entertained or at least engaged while they wait?
Some common options include:
- Playing messages about promotions
- Giving frequent updates about the call wait time
- Playing music
- Offering tips related to your industry
Make Call Greetings a Part of Your Communication Strategy
Custom phone greetings are an excellent way to make a positive first impression on people calling your business. They can come in handy outside of business hours and give customers more information that they may need. Overall, custom phone greetings are an important part of your overall communications strategy.
