Glossary · M
Greeting message
What the caller hears on arrival — the only word your business says when you can't speak.
The greeting message is the announcement the caller hears on arriving at your line or voicemail: business identity, optionally hours, and above all what comes next — what to do now. On an answering machine, it's the "leave your name and number" instruction; on an auto attendant, the routing menu; on an AI agent, the opening line that frames the conversation.
The rules of a good greeting fit in three points: brief (under 15 seconds), current (holiday hours updated — not "closed in August" heard in October), and action-oriented (tell the caller exactly what to do — leave a number, reply to the text that follows, call back between 8 and 9). A voicemail's worst failure isn't technical: it's a stale greeting announcing hours you haven't kept for two years.
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