Forum Discussion
Voicemail Greeting
- 30-08-2024
Hi there. I know this thread is a few months old now, but I completely understand where you’re coming from with this. I have the same issues. What I did, was Google a text to speech service that said my name and record that as the greeting. There’s also “how to pronounce” videos on YouTube that have many names. That’s my workaround to the. I agree though, forcing people to record their own name to set up voicemail does make it inaccessible to some disabled people. Lots of folks are non-verbal for example.
I fully agree that the current voicemail greeting system on Smarty is atrocious! On all my previous contracts, dating back 25 plus years, I've been able to select a pre-recorded generic greeting as an alternative option to creating my own. For security reasons it's NEVER a good idea to state your name on voicemail, as it gives random dialling scammers new data on you.
The only way around the Smarty system appears to be using a text-to-speech service on your computer to say the words "the person you are calling" and play that while setting up your voicemail. The fact that I was using much better and more fully featured voicemail greetings a quarter of a century ago really shows you how limited and poor the current setup is. An upgrade would seriously improve my customer satisfaction level, and I think the same is probably true of most of us here.
Maybe give me a thumbs-up if you agree, and hopefully this will get noticed. 👍
- MSF16-04-2025SMARTY Guru
Xarq I see where people are coming from on this, but I do feel that it is danger of being blown out of proportion. As has already been stated, it's possible to simply make some noise/get someone else to say 'the person you are calling' etc.
For many of us, we get a fairly good service at a very reasonable cost; it is a no-frills service.
On a purely personal level, this feature would be very low down on a list of things I need from Smarty. I have left a message that simply says that I (no name given and using my posh voice) cannot take your call. If I were a more vulnerable person, I would have asked a friend to leave such a message.
- Xarq16-04-2025SMARTY Commentator
The problem is, the outgoing message is a combination of your personally recorded message followed by a pre-recorded statement of "...is unable to answer your call ..etc" so that's limiting as to what you can do, without sounding amateurish. I just feel that it's probably a simple matter for the network admin to re-program the system to enable the option of either a fully automated message, or a fully self-recorded message, as per other networks. It's the enforced hybrid combination that causes problems. I offer this more as a feedback suggestion to Smarty for an improved and more attractive service, rather than a complaint. Feedback is valuable after all 🙂
And yes, I agree that Smarty offers a decent, good value service. There's always room to improve though, and no business can afford to rest on their laurels.