Make your own phone greetings
The recorded announcements on a shop or office phone line do not need a professional voice actor to sound clean. Get the wording right and TTS finishes the recording in minutes — and when your opening hours change you simply make a new one. This guide covers what makes a greeting easy to listen to, example wording for each situation, and the settings to use here.
What makes a greeting easy to listen to
- Keep the greeting and the point short. The caller wants to reach the right place quickly. One sentence of greeting is enough.
- Say what it is before the number. "For reservations, press 1" lands better than "Press 1 for reservations" — people hear what it is, then remember the number.
- Four options at most. Past five, callers forget the earlier ones. If you need more, split it into two levels.
- Offer a repeat at the end. A single line — "to hear this again, press star" — makes the whole thing feel considerate.
Example wording
Copy these and change the name and times. (The Korean examples are written out the way they should be spoken — see the section below.)
Write numbers and phone numbers out
TTS reads digits differently depending on context. "1588-0000" may come out as a single large number, and "10:30" is not always read the way you expect. For phone announcements, writing it out in words is the surest approach.
| Written | Write it like this instead |
|---|---|
| 1588-0000 | 일오팔팔, 공공공공 |
| 10:30 | 오전 열 시 삼십 분 |
| 9/27–9/29 | 구월 이십칠일부터 이십구일까지 |
| #, * | 우물 정, 별표 |
If a form comes up often, register it under Pronunciation fixes on the main screen — "1588-0000 → 일오팔팔, 공공공공" — and you will not have to edit the script every time.
Settings to use
- Enter your text and try SunHi (female) first. It is the bright, clear tone most callers are used to hearing on an announcement line. For a male voice, InJoon is the one to try.
- Pressing the ARS tone sets a slightly slow, deliberate delivery and switches on the "Sharp" effect automatically, so the words carry over a phone line.
- Turn the Phone effect on briefly and preview — that is roughly how it will sound on a real call. Switch it back off before you create the file: the phone network applies the same colouring anyway.
- Leave background music on "None". At phone quality, music smears the voice.
Loading it into phone hardware
Internet phone services, office exchanges and carrier add-ons each accept different file formats. Many ask for something matched to phone quality — WAV, 8kHz, mono — while Voice Factory produces wav at normal quality (44.1kHz), so depending on the equipment you may need one conversion step.
- First check the accepted format, size and length in your service's admin screen or with their support.
- Plenty of services take mp3 as-is. If yours does, mp3 is the simplest route.
- If the specification does not match, an audio converter only needs to change the sample rate and channel count.
Paste an example in, press the ARS tone, and hear it straight away.
Make a greeting