What is a call greeting?

Three things belong in it. The business name, that they are speaking with an assistant, and one question.

Everything else is a cost. Opening hours, a menu of departments, a promotional line, all of it delays the reason they rang.

Length is the most common error by a distance. A twenty-second greeting has callers talking over it or pressing zero before it finishes.

The disclosure belongs here rather than buried later, which is both a legal point and a practical one.

Different numbers can warrant different greetings. Each number can have its own greeting, hours and calendar under one account, so an ad line needn't open like the main one.

Say you're choosing between three openers. The first goes: "Thank you for calling Birchwood Family Dental, where your smile is our priority. Our office hours are Monday through Thursday 8 to 5 and Friday 8 to noon. Please listen carefully as our options have changed." That's 36 words, or about 14 seconds at a normal speaking pace, and your caller has learned nothing they called for.

Option two is just "Birchwood Dental." It lasts one second, and your caller can't tell whether they've reached a person or a machine, or even the right office. The third reads: "Birchwood Dental, this is the practice's AI assistant. Are you calling to book or change a visit?" At 17 words, it's done in about seven seconds. It names the business and says what's answering, then hands the caller an easy first move. Write yours, then divide the word count by 2.5 to get seconds.

Open last week's transcripts and look only at the first thing each caller said. Three patterns tell you the greeting is failing. If callers say "Hello?", they didn't know it was their turn, which usually means your greeting doesn't end in a question. When they ask "Is this a real person?", the AI notice is missing or too easy to miss. Callers who start talking before the greeting ends are telling you it's too long. Count each pattern across 50 calls.

Fix one thing at a time and count again the following week, because greeting changes interact with each other.

People also treat the greeting as if it were the whole script. It's only the first breath of it. Its job is to get your caller talking comfortably within ten seconds. If you record calls and play a recording notice, keep that to one short sentence right after the AI notice. Everything else, including hours and directions, belongs after they've told you why they called.

You write the greeting and can change it whenever you like, including the AI notice wording.

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 and law.

Transcripts show how many callers interrupt the opening line, which is the clearest possible signal that it is too long.