Calling features

Changing your phone menu greeting (or making one with AI)

The greeting is the first thing a caller hears: your business name, then the options. You can switch to a greeting you already have, type a new one and have an AI voice read it, or upload your own recording.

Making a new greeting with AI

1. Open Admin, then Main, then Menus, and open the menu.
2. Next to the Greeting list, click Generate with AI.
3. Scroll down. The generator opens near the bottom of the page, under the timeout destination, and the page does not move to it. If it looks like nothing happened, it did. Keep scrolling until you see Text to speak.
4. Pick a voice provider and a voice. Each voice is labelled with its language and style. There are French Canadian voices as well as English.
5. Under Text to speak, type the greeting word for word, exactly as callers should hear it. Use full stops where you want a pause.
6. Click Preview. This is the step that makes the recording, so you have to do it before you can save. Wait for it to play. Change the words or the voice and preview again until it sounds right.
7. Click Save & assign to this menu. The greeting is added to your account and this menu is switched to it. You do not need to pick it from the list.
8. Click Save at the bottom right of the page.
9. A purple bar appears at the top of the page: You have changes that are not live on the network yet. Click Apply Now, not Dismiss.

Then call your number from another phone and listen to the whole greeting.

Switching to a greeting you already have

Open the menu and pick one from the Greeting list. Play lets you hear it before you choose. Then Save and Apply Now, as above. The list holds every greeting on your account: the two defaults, anything you have uploaded, and anything you have generated before.

Uploading your own recording

If you would rather record it yourself, or you need a language the generator does not offer, open Admin, then Advanced, then Greetings, and click Upload. The recording then shows up in every menu's Greeting list. Pick it, then Save and Apply Now.

What to say

Say what the menu does, in the order it does it. The greeting is the words. The keys are set separately, under Options on the same page. If you add, remove or renumber an option, change the greeting to match, or callers will press keys that go nowhere.

A greeting that works:

"Thank you for calling Northside Dental. If you know the extension of the person you are calling, you can dial it now. For appointments, press 1. For billing, press 2. Or stay on the line and we will be right with you."

Every sentence in it is backed by a setting on the same page. The extension sentence is the Allow direct extension dialing box. The numbered options are the Options list. The last sentence is the Timeout destination: where a caller goes if they press nothing. Leave out any sentence you do not have a setting for.

Keep it short. Say the business name once, give the options, and stop.

Changing the words later

Generate a new greeting from the menu and save it the same way. The old one stays on the Greetings page, which lists every greeting by name and shows which menu uses it. It does not show the words. A generated greeting is named after its opening words, so start with your business name and you will know it in the list.

Article SL-512