As I mentioned before, the features on your voicemail system depend largely on who you have decided to use as a host and what they have offered you. The good news is that most voicemail services are fairly standard, so you will not miss much if you just get the basic voicemail and attendant functionality.
- Out of office greeting: Set one or more out-of-office greetings for your customers and suppliers when you are not around to take their calls.
- Call back or reply: As you listen to your voicemails, you can reply to the sender or go directly to their voicemail system without actually talking to them. You can also call the person back automatically without having to hang up and dial the number from scratch.
- Deleted message retrieval: During a session, you can restore deleted messages to your system. That means if you delete something by mistake, you can undelete it—as long as you do not hang up first.
- Message identifier: Before every message, you will hear the date, time, and phone number of the call—which makes it easier to focus on what the message says.
- Urgent message retrieval: Order your messages however you want them; listen to them as urgent, new, or old messages.
- Outside caller messages: Choose to listen to outside caller messages first, before listening to internal calls. When an outside caller phones in, you will be able to see who it is, thanks to caller ID.
- Passwords and security: Business messages are kept private with special passwords that are used to keep your information private. All passwords need to be highly secure, so easy password options are not available.
- Management features: There are many other management features that come with voicemail. You will be able to set extended absence greetings, manage your mailbox, your playback lists, and general commands.