Voicemail, set up and listened to
Record a greeting in your own voice, and hear a message somebody left without calling a number and sitting through a menu.
Voicemail is an answering machine that is not in your house. It sits with your phone company, and it picks up when you do not.
Two things stop people using it. The first is never having recorded a greeting, so callers hear a robot reading out a number and hang up. The second is not knowing how to listen without calling a service and pressing buttons.
Key points
- Record a greeting in your own voice, once, for good
- See your messages as a list and play the one you want
- Make a message louder with Speaker, and call back with one press
- Know that a missed call always leaves two traces: Recents and voicemail
What to remember
- A greeting in your own voice makes people far more likely to leave a message.
- A missed call is never lost without trace. Recents holds the number and voicemail holds the message.
- Every message has a Call Back button beside it, so you never have to note the number.
Try this
Call your own cell phone from a landline, or ask somebody to call you, and listen to what your greeting says at the moment. If it is a machine reading your number out, it is worth ten seconds to replace.
Practice: Voicemail, set up and listened to. Your first lesson is free, with no account or card; the rest are part of a Lantern plan. Interactive lessons require JavaScript.