Ever call someone that you need to talk to and get their voicemail? Yesterday Shannon Milligan wrote an excellent post on how to craft an excellent voicemail greeting. She really nailed it and I could only improve on one feature.
Most voice mail systems have a skip feature that allows you to bypass the greeting and fast forward to where you can leave a message immediately. Trouble is different systems use different codes and the only thing worse than having to listen to a greeting you don't want to listen to in the first place is having to listen to the greeting all over again. If you happen to hit the wrong code you might not be able to leave a message at all or worst case the call will disconnect and you will have to call back, let the phone ring again only to listen to the greeting all over (and potentially annoy the person you are calling).
You will have to invesitgate what the forward code is for your voicemail system. It could be a call to your provider I found an article that listed them for various carriers, but noticed the one they had for some systems have changed and the article was 6 years old so I won't share their list. But typically the code is # or * although sometimes it's 1 or 0 - the list I found said AT&T was 7 - and my code with Google Voice is #.
So use a friend's phone, give yourself a call, and try different keys on your phone - starting with the # (pound or number symbol) or * (star symbol) and add it to the front of your voicemail greeting modeled after Shannon's excellent suggestions and save your callers a little time.
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