What does the caller hear first?

People decide fast. Within a few seconds they have worked out whether this call is going to be easy or annoying.

A greeting is not a notice board. Opening hours, a list of departments and a promotional line all delay the reason somebody rang.

The AI notice belongs here rather than later, and it costs about two seconds.

Name the business first, because that is the caller's confirmation they dialed correctly.

Say plainly that they are speaking with an assistant. Something like speaking with the practice's assistant does the job without a paragraph of explanation.

Then ask one open question. How can I help is better than a menu, because people describe problems more accurately than they categorize them.

Read the whole thing aloud with a stopwatch. If it runs past ten seconds, something in it is for you rather than for the caller.

Then check the transcripts. A run of callers interrupting the opening line is the clearest signal you will get that it is too long.

Strictly speaking, the first thing a caller hears is ringing, and with no-answer forwarding it can be a lot of ringing. Say you own a bike shop and forward calls after four rings. Here's one call on a stopwatch.

At zero seconds the caller dials. From 2 to 22 seconds your shop phone rings while your mechanic has both hands on a wheel. Around 22 seconds the carrier gives up and forwards, and the caller may hear one more ring as the call moves. At 23 seconds the greeting starts. By 31 seconds the caller gets to speak.

That caller had been waiting for 23 seconds before your first word. A ten-second greeting on top of that is a very different experience from a ten-second greeting on a line that answers on the first ring. None of this applies when you forward every call. If you forward on no answer, the ringing is part of your greeting whether you wrote it or not.

You control two dials: how long your own phone rings before the forward, and how long the greeting is. Most carriers let you set the no-answer delay in five-second steps. Fifteen seconds gives staff three rings to grab it, and twenty-five is enough to lose an impatient caller. Call your own number with a stopwatch and find out what yours is now, because many owners have never checked.

The opening line has competition too, because the business name, the AI notice and the recording notice all want those first seconds. Put them in that order and keep each short: "Spoke and Chain Cycles. I'm the shop's AI assistant, and this call is recorded. What can I do for you?" That's 20 words, about eight seconds, and both notices are done before the caller says anything.

There's a reason the legal pieces go first. Maine's notice rule, and Utah's rule for licensed professions, are about what the caller knew at the start. A recording notice only works if it comes before the recording captures anything that matters.

You write the greeting and change it whenever you like, including exactly how the AI notice is worded.

Maine's chatbot law effectively requires notice for conversations of this kind, and Utah requires a verbal disclosure at the start for licensed professions such as medicine, law and accountancy.

Each number can have its own hours, greeting and calendar under one account, so a second line or a second branch opens with its own words rather than borrowing the first one's.