Writing your phone script and voicemail greeting with AI is a Skill job you finish in one sitting, usually forty-five minutes to an hour including the recording. You give the AI your hours, your services and the calls you actually get, it hands back a short script for live calls and a voicemail greeting, and you read them aloud, cut what does not sound like you and record the greeting. The goal is simple: every caller hears the business name, knows they reached the right place and knows what happens next. The AI writes both pieces; you are the voice.
- Shape
- Skill
- Sitting
- one sitting
The shape: Skill
This job is a Skill because it is a small piece of writing with a known structure that the AI does well once it has real material. A voicemail greeting has four parts and a time limit. A phone script has an opening, a few common calls and a close for each. Neither needs a tool connected, a plugin or a paid add-on, and any chat model you already pay for can do it in a few messages.
It is also a skill in the sense that you will use it again. Keep the brief from this sitting. When your hours change, you hire someone to answer the phone, or you close for a holiday, you paste the same brief with one line changed and get a new version in a minute.
What this means for you: the writing is the fast part. The slow part is the one the AI cannot do, which is saying the words out loud until they sound like you. Plan the sitting around that. Spend fifteen minutes on the brief and the draft, then the rest on reading aloud, cutting and recording.
What you give the AI
The AI cannot guess what your callers want or how you talk. Give it these, by name, in your first message:
- Your business name exactly as you say it on the phone, plus how to pronounce anything unusual, since a script that stumbles on the name fails in the first second.
- Your hours and your real callback time, for example "same business day if you call before 3 PM, next morning otherwise."
- Your services and your service area, in one or two lines each, so the script can tell a caller whether they reached the right place.
- The five calls you get most, in your own words: "Do you do X," "How much is Y," "Can you come out this week," "I need to reschedule," "Are you hiring."
- How you answer each one today, even if the answer is rough, because the AI should tighten your answer, not invent a new one.
- The one next step you want from a new caller, such as booking a visit, getting a quote or coming in, and the link or number for it.
- What you must not say on the phone, such as prices you only give after a visit, medical or legal advice, or promises about timing.
- Who answers, whether that is you, a partner or a front-desk person, since the script should fit the person who reads it.
- A short sample of how you talk: two or three emails or text replies you sent customers, with names and private details removed.
If your website has a page that answers your most common questions, paste it too. The AI works from what you give it, and your own answers beat a guess every time.
What comes back
You get two pieces in plain text. The first is a voicemail greeting of forty to seventy words, written to be spoken, with a second shorter version for after hours or holidays. The second is a one-page phone script: an opening line, a short answer and a next step for each of your five common calls, a line for when you do not know the answer, and a closing line that confirms what happens next.
Paste this brief into ChatGPT or Claude, with your inputs filled in below it:
Write a voicemail greeting and a phone script for my business.
Voicemail greeting rules:
- Written to be spoken aloud, 40 to 70 words, under 30 seconds at a calm pace.
- Order: business name; confirm what we do and where; when the caller will hear back; what to leave (name, number, reason for the call); one faster route if we have one.
- Write one main version and one short after-hours or holiday version.
- No "your call is important to us," no "press 1," no filler.
Phone script rules:
- One opening line that says the business name and the speaker's first name.
- For each common call below: a short answer in plain words, then one clear next step.
- Use my current answers as the starting point. Tighten them; do not invent new facts.
- Never state a price, a timeline or a claim that is not in my inputs. Where a fact is missing, write [CHECK] instead of guessing.
- Include a line for when the speaker does not know the answer, and a closing line that repeats the next step and the callback time.
- Match the tone of my sample messages. Short sentences. Contractions are fine.
- Keep the whole script to one page.
Business name and pronunciation:
[paste]
Hours and real callback time:
[paste]
Services and service area:
[paste]
The five calls we get most, and how we answer each today:
[paste]
The one next step for a new caller, with link or number:
[paste]
Things we never say on the phone:
[paste]
Who answers the phone:
[paste]
Sample messages we sent customers:
[paste]When it comes back, read the greeting aloud before you change a word. Then ask for one round of edits at most, such as "make the greeting shorter" or "the answer about pricing sounds stiff, make it sound like my second sample message." More rounds tend to sand the words into something nobody says out loud.
How to judge it
Judge it with your ears, not your eyes. Words that read well can sound stiff, and the caller only ever hears them. You can reject a bad result in a minute if you know what to look for.
A bad result looks like this:
- It runs long. If the greeting takes more than thirty seconds at a normal pace, callers hang up before the beep.
- It sounds like a phone tree. "Your call is important to us" and "please listen carefully as our options have changed" tell the caller nobody is there.
- It invents a fact. Any price, response time, guarantee or years in business you did not give it is made up, and it has to go.
- It promises a callback time you cannot keep. "Within the hour" sounds good until the first busy Tuesday.
- It buries the business name. If the caller hears a greeting before they hear who they reached, they wonder if they dialed wrong.
- It asks for too much. Name, number and reason are enough; a list of six details means fewer messages.
- The script answers questions you never get. If a section covers a call you have never had, cut it.
- It sounds unlike you. If you would not say a line to a customer standing at your counter, rewrite it until you would.
A good result passes a simple test. Someone who hears only your greeting knows they reached the right business, knows when you will call back and knows what to leave.
What stays with you
The AI can write the words. It cannot speak them, answer the phone or keep the promises they make.
These parts stay with you:
- The callback time. The greeting makes a promise, so pick a time you will keep on your worst week, not your best.
- The facts. Check every hour, service, area and link in both pieces yourself, and replace every [CHECK] with a real answer or cut the line.
- What you are allowed to say. If your profession limits what you can say on the phone about prices, outcomes, health or legal matters, those limits come from you and your license, not the AI.
- The recording. Record in a quiet room with the phone held where you normally hold it, and listen back before you save it.
- The setting. Your phone carrier or phone system has its own steps for changing the greeting, so look them up in its help pages.
- Everyone who answers. A script on paper does nothing until the person answering has read it aloud a few times and you have heard them use it.
- Every line you own. A business line, a cell you give out and a call-forwarding number may each keep their own greeting, so update all of them.
- The callback itself. No greeting helps if the call is not returned when it said it would be.
An example (invented business)
This is an editorial example with a made-up business, to show the shape of the work.
Say you run a two-truck garage door repair company. You answer the phone yourself between jobs, so many calls go to voicemail. Your current greeting is the carrier default, which reads your number back in a robot voice. The calls you get most are "my door won't open," "how much for a new spring," "can you come today," "do you service my town" and "I need to move my appointment." You never quote a spring price before you see the door.
You give the AI those five calls, your rough answers, your hours, the towns you cover, your booking link and three text replies you sent customers.
The main greeting might come back like this:
You've reached Northgate Garage Doors, repair and new doors in the East Valley.
We're probably on a job right now.
Leave your name, your number and what your door is doing, and we'll call you back the same day if it's before 3, or first thing tomorrow.
If your door is stuck open, say so and we'll call you first.You read it aloud with a timer. It runs about twenty seconds. The callback time is one you can keep, it promises nothing you did not give it, and it asks for three things. You change "what your door is doing" to "what's going on with the door," because that is how you talk.
The script's answer to "how much for a new spring" might read: "It depends on the door, so we look before we quote, and we can come out today or tomorrow." That keeps your rule about pricing and ends on a next step. You record the greeting, call your own number from another phone to hear it, and tape the script next to the truck's phone mount.
Script, greeting or both
There is one real choice here, and it depends on who picks up your phone.
| Your situation | What to write first | Why |
|---|---|---|
| You answer every call yourself and rarely miss one | The phone script | Your live answers carry the business; the greeting is a backup |
| You miss more calls than you answer | The voicemail greeting | It is what most of your callers actually hear |
| Someone else answers for you | Both, script first | They need your answers in your words before they need anything else |
If you work with your hands and answer between jobs, you are probably in the second row. If that is you, do the greeting today and the script next time you have credits to spare.
Where the same words go next
The answers in your phone script are the same answers people look for before they call. If your callers keep asking about price or timing, those are objections worth answering in writing too, and objection handling with AI takes the same answers and turns them into replies you can use everywhere. Many callers have already checked your reviews, your profile and your posts before they dial, and what customers check before calling a local business walks through that list. When a call ends with a quote, the next job is the follow-up, and quote follow-up emails with AI picks up from there.
Of every job on this list, social media is the one that comes back every week, and Boomp is software that does that one for you. See ten posts made from your website, free
