Setting up voicemail

Voicemail is an essential tool for any business and here at Chalkboard, we understand the importance of being able to stay in the loop, even when briefly, you were out of it.

Being able to create your own voicemail to greet callers when you're busy or enjoying some downtime is something that helps personalise the experience whilst giving you the opportunity to capture details you might miss if you didn't have voicemail services enabled like a last-minute order or request.

We've made the whole process simple, just read on and if you don’t yet have Chalkboard, you can get started here.

Firstly, it's good to understand the two types of voicemail options available to use within Chalkboard:

• Missed call voicemail
• Out of hours voicemail

Your missed call voicemail is able to field all those calls you might miss when dealing with another customer or when you're out for lunch and is a great way to be able to let your caller both leave a message and also let them know you've acknowledged they called.

When enabled, out of hours voicemail kicks in outside of your set working hours to send your caller straight to your selected greeting.

You can learn more about how the out of hours voicemail helps to improve your use of the app, and how to set up and manage from our working hours FAQ.

Creating a custom voicemail that fits the needs of your business not only allows you to give the personal touch when you're not around to take a call, but also gives you the opportunity to pass on key information like opening hours or a tailored message to suit your needs.

Want to set up a custom voicemail?

Simply tap on your user avatar (top left), select Manage workspace, tap on Phone numbers, select your number, hit Voicemail and select Add custom greeting.

You can label the greetings to make it easy to see the difference between an "I'm on another call right now, I'll call you back shortly" missed call voicemail greeting and the typical "Our opening hours are..." out of hours voicemail greeting and change them as/when to suit your needs.

Once you've created the greeting, you can press Set on the voicemail types to apply this new greeting to either your OOH VM or Missed call VM.

There's no limit to how many custom greetings you can add, so get creating!

(Don't worry, if voicemail isn't a feature you need right now, you can just leave it switched off)

Gone are the days when you have to actually dial your voicemail and press all combinations of numbers to listen to and manage voicemails.

We've simplified the whole process by adding voicemails you've received from both saved contacts and new numbers directly within the message thread making everything visible in one place - simply press play on that new voicemail and you're all caught up!

You even get the option to switch on voicemail transcripts for when business keeps you busy and you want to read the content of the voicemail on the go - just head to Settings (cog icon at top right), select Voicemail, and switch on Voicemail transcription.

You might want to update your voicemails from time to time either renaming or deleting them accordingly - you can manage this by pressing Edit on the relevant voicemail and make the changes accordingly.

Once recorded, voicemails can't be edited, so if you're looking to make a change to an existing voicemail you'll need to delete and start again.