A greeting has five jobs. Confirm the caller reached the right place. Explain why you didn't answer. Say when you will respond. Say what to leave. Say what to do if waiting isn't safe.

Most greetings do the first two and stop, which is why so many therapists end up with voicemail boxes full of half-messages from people who had no idea what was expected of them.

Here is a version that does all five, short enough to say without sounding scripted:

"You've reached {{name}}, {{designation}}, in {{city}}. I'm with clients during the day and don't take calls live. Please leave your name, a number I can reach you at, and a sentence about what you're looking for, and I'll get back to you within one business day. If this is an emergency, please hang up and call 911."

If you want to point people to a crisis service as well, there is one that works anywhere in Canada. 9-8-8, the Suicide Crisis Helpline, takes calls and texts, runs around the clock in English and French, and is led and coordinated by CAMH. The extra line is:

"If you're in crisis and want to talk to someone tonight, you can call or text 9-8-8."

Write it as three digits when you script it, so that whoever reads it aloud says the digits rather than a number in the hundreds.

That's the whole thing. Under thirty seconds, and it answers every question a first-time caller has.

Why say when you'll respond?

Because otherwise the caller invents a number, and the number they invent is always shorter than yours.

"I'll get back to you as soon as I can" sets no expectation and therefore sets the highest possible one. "Within one business day" is a promise you can keep, and a caller who knows they'll hear back tomorrow doesn't ring again this afternoon.

Pick the window you can actually honour on a bad week, not a good one. The greeting is a commitment, and the point of making it explicit is that you keep it. If two business days is the truth, say two business days.

Why ask for a sentence about what they're looking for?

It does two things at once.

It sorts. A message with a name and a reason in it is a person. Automated calls leave nothing or leave silence, and therapists describe getting silent five-second messages daily. When your messages arrive with words in them, the sorting problem mostly disappears.

It also saves the callback. If someone says up front that they're looking for couples work, or want evening appointments, or are asking about a fee you don't match, you can answer in one message instead of playing phone tag to discover a mismatch.

What if I don't return calls without a message?

Then say so, in the greeting, plainly.

Practitioners do this and report it works. One describes an outgoing message that states they don't return calls without a voice message and asks prospective clients to email instead so nobody ends up in phone tag. Another goes further and redirects entirely — don't leave a message, use my website to book a consultation.

Both are fine. What isn't fine is running the policy silently, because then the caller who left nothing has no way of knowing that nothing will happen.

If you redirect to a website or email, give the address slowly and say it twice. People are writing it on the back of something.

What about the emergency line?

Include it, keep it short, and don't let it dominate the greeting.

The purpose is not to protect you — it's that a person in a bad moment who reached a recording needs to hear, immediately, where to go instead. Put it last so it doesn't front-load the message with crisis language for the ninety-nine percent of callers who are asking about availability.

Say "hang up and call" rather than "please contact", because the instruction has to be actionable by someone who is not at their best.

No Ontario College publishes guidance on what a greeting should say. Worth saying plainly, because the absence is easy to mistake for a rule you have not found yet. Across the psychotherapy College's full standards, its abridged standards, its electronic practice guidance and its security checklist, the word voicemail appears exactly once — in the commentary on closing a practice, as one way to let clients know. There is no published requirement to state your availability, your response times or your emergency arrangements in a greeting.

Where those expectations do live is the conversation you have with a client at the outset, not the message a stranger hears. The psychotherapy College's electronic practice guidance asks that a practitioner cover "the therapist's usual hours of work and average response times to between-session communications from clients" (CRPO Electronic Practice Guideline) — with the client, in the agreement.

So a greeting is yours to write. Everything above is drawn from what practitioners actually do with them, not from a standard.

What should I leave out?

Your personal mobile as a backup. Once it's on a greeting, it's out.

A long explanation of your practice. Nobody is listening for your modalities on a voicemail greeting. They want to know when you'll call back.

Anything that will go stale. Specific dates, "I'm on holiday until the fourteenth" left up in March, current availability. A greeting you have to maintain is a greeting that will be wrong.

Apology. "Sorry I missed your call, I'm so bad at this" is common and it undermines the whole message. You were with a client. That's not a failing.

Do I need a different greeting for after hours?

It helps, if your setup supports it. A daytime greeting can say you're in session and will return calls at a set time. An evening greeting can say the practice is closed, name when it reopens, and give the emergency route.

If you can only have one, write it for the after-hours caller. That's the person most likely to be in difficulty, and the daytime caller is the one who can most easily wait.

And record it yourself rather than using the carrier default with your number read out by a robot. The single most common piece of feedback prospective clients give about therapist voicemail is that they weren't sure they'd reached a person at all.

The short version

Five lines: who you are, why you didn't answer, when you'll reply, what to leave, what to do if it's urgent. Record it in your own voice, keep it under thirty seconds, and only promise a callback window you can keep on your worst week.

About Rivet

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