How to change your voicemail greeting
How you change a greeting depends on where it lives: on your mobile network’s voicemail, on your landline’s 1571 service or in your business phone system. Pick your case below.
Mobile network voicemail
On UK mobile networks you normally record the greeting during a call to your voicemail. File uploads are rare.
The same four steps, whatever you use
Write the script
Company name, the situation, one instruction. Start from one of our UK scripts.
Hear it with a voice
In the generator, free of charge, before you pay.
Upload or record
Upload the file where your system allows it. Where it does not, play the file into the call while the voicemail records.
Ring yourself
Call your number from another phone and listen as a customer would.
Play the downloaded greeting from a laptop or a second phone, hold your mobile close to the speaker in a quiet room, and start the recording. You lose a little quality compared with a direct upload, but the voice, the wording and the timing stay professional.
Questions
Can I upload a file to my mobile voicemail?
The official help pages of EE, O2, Vodafone and giffgaff that we link to describe recording by phone, not uploading a file. On an iPhone with Visual Voicemail, you record the greeting in the Phone app.
Which file format does a phone system need?
Often MP3 or WAV; some systems want a telephone codec such as u-Law. Our free audio converter creates the right file.
Do you upload the greeting for me?
No. You upload or record it yourself, or ask your phone system provider. Our guides walk you through it.