Voicemail

Voicemail is a phone system feature that plays a greeting and records the caller's spoken message when nobody answers, so staff can listen and reply later.

Almost every vet clinic has voicemail, and most use it in two ways: as the after-hours greeting and as the place unanswered daytime calls end up. It is cheap and always available. Its weakness is that it shifts all the work to later. A message is only useful once someone has listened to it, worked out what the caller wanted, found the right record and called back.

What callers do when they hear it

Not every caller leaves a message. Some hang up and try again, some send a text or email, and some call another clinic. How many of your callers do each is something only your own data can tell you, which is why a missed-call audit compares unanswered calls with the messages actually left.

Making voicemail work better

A clear greeting helps. It should name the clinic, give opening hours, say where to go for an emergency outside hours, and ask callers to leave their name, number, pet's name and reason. Someone should own the voicemail box each morning and after lunch, with a rule that every message becomes either a returned call or a logged callback request the same day.

Its limits at a vet clinic

Voicemail cannot book an appointment, answer a question about opening hours or tell a worried caller where to go right now. Messages left late at night wait until morning, and garbled numbers or missing details lead to phone tag. For routine requests, a recording is a slow route to a simple answer.

An example

At a two-vet clinic, the first job each morning used to be working through the overnight messages. Several had no callback number, and a few were clients asking to book a routine visit who had already booked elsewhere by the time the clinic called. The team rewrote the greeting to ask for specific details and gave one receptionist ownership of the box at opening.

How Tilly handles it

Instead of a recording, Tilly answers the call: it says it is an AI, books or moves appointments in your practice software, takes a callback request when the caller wants a person, and puts every call in your dashboard with a summary.

To see how many calls end in voicemail, use the missed-call audit. Related: missed call and callback request.